The Dynamiter

The Dynamiter

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis
Stevenson (#32 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Dynamiter
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #647] [This file was first
posted on September 13, 1996] [Most recently updated: September 2,
2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
DYNAMITER ***

Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David
Price, email [email protected]

THE DYNAMITER

TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS

Gentlemen,--In the volume now in your hands, the authors have
touched upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is your glory to
have contended. It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit. Let
us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled strain, where crime
preserves some features of nobility, and where reason and humanity
can still relish the temptation. Horror, in this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:
he sits before posterity silent, Mr. Forster's appeal echoing down the
ages. Horror is due to ourselves, in that we have so long coquetted with
political crime; not seriously weighing, not acutely following it from
cause to consequence; but with a generous, unfounded heat of
sentiment, like the schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding what was
specious. When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved
false to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime was no less
cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and recoiled from our
false deities.
But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our
defenders. Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war of
politics; whatever elements of greed, whatever traits of the bully,
dishonour both parties in this inhuman contest;--your side, your part, is
at least pure of doubt. Yours is the side of the child, of the breeding
woman, of individual pity and public trust. If our society were the mere
kingdom of the devil (as indeed it wears some of his colours) it yet

embraces many precious elements and many innocent persons whom it
is a glory to defend. Courage and devotion, so common in the ranks of
the police, so little recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length
found their commemoration in an historical act. History, which will
represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. Forster, and
Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget Mr. Cole
carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming
coolly to his aid.
Robert Louis Stevenson Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson

A NOTE FOR THE READER

It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume,
and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW
ARABIAN NIGHTS. The loss is yours--and mine; or to be more exact,
my publishers'. But if you are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass
you a hint. When you shall find a reference in the following pages to
one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street,
Soho, you must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a
person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates
of Europe, now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the
tobacco trade.
R. L. S.

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
A SECOND SERIES
THE DYNAMITER

PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN

In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two
young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation. The
first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best fashion,
hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.
'What!' he cried,