Other editions of book The Pagan Madonna

This eBook edition of "The Pagan Madonna (A Treasure Hunt Tale)" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. "Humdrum isn't where you live; it's what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit..."Harold MacGrath was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

"Humdrum isn't where you live; it's what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit..."Harold MacGrath was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

The Pagan Madonna CHAPTER I Humdrum isn't where you live; it's what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit. The blank door of an empty house never intrigues you; you enter blind alleys without thrilling in the least; you hear a cry in the night and impute it to some marauding tom. Lord, what a life! And yet every move you make is governed by Chance--the Blind Madonna of the Pagan, as that great adventurer, Stevenson, called it. You never stop to consider that it is only by chance that you leave home and arrive at the office alive--millions and millions of you--poor old stick-in-the-muds! Because this or that hasn't happened to you, you can't be made to believe that it might have happened to someone else. What's a wood fire to you but a shin warmer? And how you hate to walk alone! So sheer off--this is not for you.

Humdrum isn’t where you live; it’s what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit. The blank door of an empty house never intrigues you; you enter blind alleys without thrilling in the least; you hear a cry in the night and impute it to some marauding tom. Lord, what a life! And yet every move you make is governed by Chance—the Blind Madonna of the Pagan, as that great adventurer, Stevenson, called it. You never stop to consider that it is only by chance that you leave home and arrive at the office alive—millions and millions of you— poor old stick-in-the-muds! 4 Because this or that hasn’t happened to you, you can’t be made to believe that it might have happened to someone else. What’s a wood fire to you but a shin warmer? And how you hate to walk alone! So sheer off—this is not for you. But to you, fenced in by circumstance, walls of breathless brick and stone, suffocating with longing, you whose thought springs ever toward the gorgeous sunset and the ends of rainbows; who fly in dreams across the golden south seas to the far countries, you whose imagination transforms every ratty old square-rigger that pokes down the bay into a Spanish galleon—come with me.

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Humdrum isn’t where you live; it’s what you are. Perhaps you are one of those whose lives are bound by neighbourly interests. Imaginatively, you never seek what lies under a gorgeous sunset; you are never stirred by any longing to investigate the ends of rainbows. You are more concerned by what your neighbour does every day than by what he might do if he were suddenly spun, whirled, jolted out of his poky orbit. The blank door of an empty house never intrigues you; you enter blind alleys without thrilling in the least; you hear a cry in the night and impute it to some marauding tom. Lord, what a life! And yet every move you make is governed by Chance—the Blind Madonna of the Pagan, as that great adventurer, Stevenson, called it. You never stop to consider that it is only by chance that you leave home and arrive at the office alive—millions and millions of you—poor old stick-in-the-muds! 4 Because this or that hasn’t happened to you, you can’t be made to believe that it might have happened to someone else. What’s a wood fire to you but a shin warmer? And how you hate to walk alone! So sheer off—this is not for you.

Harold MacGrath (1871-1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. As a young man, he worked as a reporter and columnist on the Syracuse Herald newspaper until the late 1890s when he published his first novel, a romance titled Arms and the Woman (1899). According to the New York Times, his next book, The Puppet Crown (1901) was the No. 7 bestselling book in the United States in 1901. From that point on, MacGrath never looked back, writing novels for the mass market about love, adventure, mystery, spies, and the like at an average rate of more than one a year. … A review of “The Pagan Madonna”… I found the story a very enjoyable drama with the characters deftly handled. It is an end of the war story as a young woman and a captain are returning to America from Russia and they get caught up in a grand theft and kidnapped aboard a yacht of an art collector, which is where things are to get really interesting. (Dave from Calgary)