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    The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story
    The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story
    The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story

    By H. Rider Haggard

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    Dodo Collections brings you another classic from H. Rider Haggard, ‘The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story’
     
    There is a man who has lost his wife and daughter. He is the sole survivor in the accident and feels great guilt. And in this guilt, he begins to drink more and more each day. Then one day as the man was contemplating suicide, a stranger named Joren comes along and tells him not to worry. He tells him of reincarnated souls, of a life beyond the mortal one, and he teaches the man to transcend his physical body. But will he like what he finds on the other side?
     
    Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire.
     
    Haggard was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative candidate for the Eastern division of Norfolk in 1895. The locality of Rider, British Columbia, was named in his memory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDead Dodo Presents Rider Haggard
    Release dateSep 16, 2015
    ISBN9781508027928
    The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story
    Author

    H. Rider Haggard

    Sir Henry Rider Haggard, (1856-1925) commonly known as H. Rider Haggard was an English author active during the Victorian era. Considered a pioneer of the lost world genre, Haggard was known for his adventure fiction. His work often depicted African settings inspired by the seven years he lived in South Africa with his family. In 1880, Haggard married Marianna Louisa Margitson and together they had four children, one of which followed her father’s footsteps and became an author. Haggard is still widely read today, and is celebrated for his imaginative wit and impact on 19th century adventure literature.

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      Book preview

      The Mahatma and the Hare - H. Rider Haggard

      THE MAHATMA AND THE HARE

      ..................

      A Dream Story

      H. Rider Haggard

      DODO COLLECTIONS

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

      This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2015 by H. Rider Haggard

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      THE MAHATMA*

      THE GREAT WHITE ROAD

      THE HARE

      THE SHOOTING

      THE COURSING

      THE HUNTING

      THE COMING OF THE RED-FACED MAN

      INTRODUCTION

      ..................

      ULTIMATELY A GOOD HARE WAS found which took the field at . . . There the hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing the beach and going right out to sea. A boat was procured, and the master and some others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and, bringing the body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming out to sea is a sight not often witnessed.—Local paper, January 1911. . . . A long check occurred in the latter part of this hunt, the hare having laid up in a hedgerow, from which she was at last evicted by a crack of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went in after her. It was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare being lifted over a wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting for their prey behind the wall.—Local paper, February 1911.

      ..................

      The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must have impressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, just as he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, he cannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of this fantasy, including the command with which it ends. With a particular clearness did he seem to see the picture of the Great White Road, straight as the way of the Spirit, and broad as the breast of Death, and of the little Hare travelling towards the awful Gates.

      Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the merits of the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that, without search on his own part, presented itself to his mind in so odd a fashion. It is one on which anybody interested in such matters can form an individual judgment.

      ..................

      THE MAHATMA*

      ..................

      ..................

      [*] MAHATMA, GREAT-SOULED. ONE OF a class of persons with preter-natural powers, imagined to exist in India and Thibet.—New English Dictionary.

      ..................

      Everyone has seen a hare, either crouched or running in the fields, or hanging dead in a poulterer’s shop, or lastly pathetic, even dreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from a skinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met a Mahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who or what a Mahatma is. The majority of those who chance to have heard the title are apt to confuse it with another, that of Mad Hatter.

      This is even done of malice prepense (especially, for obvious reasons, if a hare is in any way concerned) in scorn, not in ignorance, by persons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word and even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers—well, than a hare.

      I confess that this view of Mahatmas is one that does not surprise me in the least. I never met, and I scarcely expect to meet, an individual entitled to set Mahatma after his name. Certainly I have no right to do so, who only took that title on the spur of the moment when the Hare asked me how I was called, and now make use of it as a nom-de-plume. It is true there is Jorsen, by whose order, for it amounts to that, I publish this history. For aught I know Jorsen may be a Mahatma, but he does not in the least look the part.

      Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face, piercing grey eyes, and very prominent, bushy eyebrows, of about fifty or sixty years of age. Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaum pipe, which he smokes even when he is wearing a frock coat and a tall hat, and you have Jorsen. I believe that he lives somewhere in the country, is well off, and practises gardening. If so he has never asked me to his place, and I only meet him when he comes to Town, as I understand, to visit flower-shows.

      Then I always meet him because he orders me to do so, not by letter or by word of mouth but in quite a different way. Suddenly I receive an impression in my mind that I am to go to a certain place at a certain hour, and that there I shall find Jorsen. I do go, sometimes to an hotel, sometimes to a lodging, sometimes to a railway station or to the corner of a particular street and there I do find Jorsen smoking his big meerschaum pipe. We shake hands and he explains why he has sent for me, after which we talk of various things. Never mind what they are, for that would be telling Jorsen’s secrets as well as my own, which I must not do.

      It may be asked how I came to know Jorsen. Well, in a strange way. Nearly thirty years ago a dreadful thing happened to me. I was married and, although still young, a person of some mark in literature. Indeed even now one or two of the books which I wrote are read and remembered, although it is supposed that their author has long left the world.

      The thing which happened was that my wife and our daughter were coming over from the Channel Islands, where they had been on a visit (she was a Jersey woman), and, and—well, the ship was lost, that’s all. The

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