>>>  YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E06246  <<<

TITLE: THE STORY OF AB
AUTHOR: STANLEY WATERLOO
EBOOK: E06246 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

[Illustration: GREAT TRUNK SHOT DOWNWARD AND BACKWARD PICKED UP THE MAN
AND HURLED HIM YARDS AWAY]

                              THE STORY OF AB

                     A TALE OF THE TIME OF THE CAVE MAN

                                     BY

                              STANLEY WATERLOO

                                    1905

          Author of "A Man and a Woman," "An Odd Situation," etc.

INTRODUCTION.

This is the story of Ab, a man of the Age of Stone, who lived so long ago
that we cannot closely fix the date, and who loved and fought well.

In his work the author has been cordially assisted by some of the ablest
searchers of two continents into the life history of prehistoric times.
With characteristic helpfulness and interest, these already burdened
students have aided and encouraged him, and to them he desires to express
his sense of profound obligation and his earnest thanks.

Once only does the writer depart from accepted theories of scientific
research. After an at least long-continued study of existing evidence and
information relating to the Stone Ages, the conviction grew upon him that
the mysterious gap supposed by scientific teachers to divide Paleolithic
from Neolithic man never really existed. No convulsion of nature, no new
race of human beings is needed to explain the difference between the
relics of Paleolithic and Neolithic strugglers. Growth, experiment,
adaptation, discovery, inevitable in man, sufficiently account for all
the relatively swift changes from one form of primitive life to another
more advanced, from the time of chipped to that of polished implements.
Man has been, from the beginning, under the never resting, never
hastening, forces of evolution. The earth from which he sprang holds the
record of his transformations in her peat-beds, her buried caverns and
her rocky fastnesses. The eternal laws change man, but they themselves do
not change.

Ab and Lightfoot and others of the cave people whose story is told in the
tale which follows the author cannot disown. He has shown them as they
were. Hungry and cold, they slew the fierce beasts which were scarcely
more savage than they, and were fed and clothed by their flesh and fur.
In the caves of the earth the cave men and their families were safely
sheltered. Theirs were the elemental wants and passions. They were
swayed by love, in some form at least, by jealousy, fear, revenge, and by
the memory of benefits and wrongs. They cherished their young; they
fought desperately with the beasts of their time, and with each other,
and, when their brief, turbulent lives were ended, they passed into
silence, but not into oblivion. The old Earth carefully preserved their
story, so that we, their children, may read it now.

S. W.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER.

I. THE BABE IN THE WOODS.

II. MAN AND HYENA.

III. A FAMILY DINNER.

IV. AB AND OAK.

V. A GREAT ENTERPRISE.

VI. A DANGEROUS VISITOR.

VII. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS.

VIII. SABRE-TOOTH AND RHINOCEROS.

IX. DOMESTIC MATTERS.

X. OLD MOK, THE MENTOR.

XI. DOINGS AT HOME.

XII. OLD MOK'S TALES.

XIII. AB'S GREAT DISCOVERY.

XIV. A LESSON IN SWIMMING.

XV. A MAMMOTH AT BAY.

XVI. THE FEAST OF THE MAMMOTH.

XVII. THE COMRADES.

XVIII. LOVE AND DEATH.

XIX. A RACE WITH DREAD.

XX. THE FIRE COUNTRY.

XXI. THE WOOING OF LIGHTFOOT.

XXII. THE HONEYMOON.

XXIII. MORE OF THE HONEYMOON.

XXIV. THE FIRE COUNTRY AGAIN.

XXV. A GREAT STEP FORWARD.

XXVI. FACING THE RAIDER.

XXVII. LITTLE MOK.

XXVIII. THE BATTLE OF THE BARRIERS.

XXIX. OLD HILLTOP'S LAST STRUGGLE.

XXX. OUR VERY GREAT GRANDFATHER.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY SIMON HARMON VEDDER

"HIS GREAT TRUNK SHOT DOWNWARD AND BACKWARD, PICKED UP THE MAN, AND
HURLED HIM YARDS AWAY"

MAP

"AB SEIZED UPON TWO OF THE SNARLING CUBS, AND OAK DID THE SAME"

"AB SPRANG TO HIS FEET, AND DREW HIS ARROW TO THE HEAD"

"THE YOUNG MEN CALLED TO HER, BUT SHE MADE NO ANSWER. SHE BUT FISHED AWAY
DEMURELY"

"AB STOOD THERE WEAPONLESS, A CREATURE WANDERING OF MIND"

"WITH A GREAT LEAP HE WENT AT AND THROUGH THE CURLING CREST OF THE YELLOW
FLAME!"

"THE GIRL COWERED BEHIND A REFUGE OF LEAVES AND BRANCHES"

"UPON THE STRONG SHAFT OF ASH THE MONSTER WAS IMPALED"

THE STORY OF AB.

CHAPTER I.

THE BABE IN THE WOODS.

Drifted beech leaves had made a soft, clean bed in a little hollow in a
wood. The wood was beside a river, the trend of which was toward the
east. There was an almost precipitous slope, perhaps a hundred and fifty
feet from the wood, downward to the river. The wood itself, a sort of
peninsula, was mall in extent and partly isolated from the greater forest
back of it by a slight clearing. Just below the wood, or, in fact, almost
in it and near the crest of the rugged bank, the mouth of a small cave
was visible. It was so blocked with stones as to leave barely room for
the entrance of a human being. The little couch of beech leaves already
referred to was not many yards from the cave.

On the leafy bed rolled about and kicked up his short legs in glee a
little brown babe. It was evident that he could not walk yet and his lack
of length and width and thickness indicated what might be a babe not more
than a year of age, but, despite his apparent youth, this man-child
seemed content thus left alone, while his grip on the twigs which had
fallen into his bed was strong, as he was strong, and he was breaking
them delightedly. Not only was the hair upon his head at least twice as
long as that of the average year-old child of today, but there were downy
indications upon his arms and legs, and his general aspect was a swart
and rugged one. He was about as far from a weakly child in appearance as
could be well imagined and he was about as jolly a looking baby, too, as
one could wish to see. He was laughing and cooing as he kicked about
among the beech leaves and looked upward at the blue sky. His dress has
not yet been alluded to and an apology for the negligence may be found in
the fact that he had no dress. He wore nothing. He was a baby of the time
of the cave men; of the closing period of the age of chipped stone
instruments; the epoch of mild climate; the ending of one great animal
group and the beginning of another; the time when the mammoth, the
rhinoceros, the great cave tiger and cave bear, the huge elk, reindeer
and aurochs and urus and hosts of little horses, fed or gamboled in the
same forests and plains, with much discretion as to relative distances
from each other.

It was some time ago, no matter how many thousands of years, when the
child--they called him Ab--lay there, naked, upon his bed of beech
leaves. It may be said, too, that there existed for him every chance for
a lively and interesting existence. There was prospect that he would be
engaged in running away from something or running after something during
most of his life. Times were not dull for humanity in the age of stone.
The children had no lack of things to interest, if not always to amuse,
them, and neither had the men and women. And this is the truthful story
of the boy Ab and his playmates and of what happened when he grew to be a
man.

<<<  END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 395613 TOTAL CHARACTERS)  >>>