PATTER, patter, -the rain had beaten all day on the brown roofs of Eisenach. The wind swept in raw gusts across the rippling ocean of pines and beeches which crowded upon the little town from many a swelling hill. Under the grey battlements the Hörsel brawled angrily. At the Marien Gate, Andreas the warder dozed in his box, wrapping his great cloak tighter. He had searched few incoming wagons for toll that day. It was very cold, as often chances even in summer in tree-carpeted Thuringia. Andreas was sinking into another day-dream, when Joram, his shaggy dog, having opened one eye, opened the other, then started his master with a bark. "Hoch! hold!" cried Andreas, rubbing his eyes. "Who passes?" "Johann of the 'Crown and Bells.'" And the warder saw the tow-thatched stripling of the innkeeper tugging a great basket, whilst his buff coat dripped with rain. "And whither away?" quoth Andreas, settling back, as Joram ceased growling. "The 'Saint' in the Dragon's Dale needs his basket, rain or no rain-curse him!" And Johann's broad mouth drew into no merry smile.Andreas crossed himself as became a pious Christian. "Do not blaspheme the Saint. Ask his prayers rather. This is a noble time for the gnomes and pixies to go hunting in the Marienthal for just such blithe rascals as you. So pray hard and run harder...".................William Stearns Davis (April 30, 1877 - February 15, 1930) was an American educator, historian, and author. He has been cited as one who "contributed to history as a scholarly discipline, . . . [but] was intrigued by the human side of history, which, at the time, was neglected by the discipline." After first experimenting with short stories, he turned while still a college undergraduate to longer forms to relate, from an involved (fictional) character's view, a number of critical turns of history. This faculty for humanizing, even dramatizing, history characterized Davis' later academic and professional writings as well, making them particularly suitable for secondary and higher education during the first half of the twentieth century in a field which, according to one editor, had "lost the freshness and robustness . . . the congeniality" that should mark the study of history. Both Davis' fiction and non-fiction are found in public and academic libraries today.LifeDavis was born April 30, 1877 in the presidential mansion of Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, where his mother's father had been president for the twenty-two years preceding his birth. His father was Congregational minister William Vail Wilson Davis; his mother Francis Stearns. Due both to childhood illnesses and to family moves occasioned by his father's call to new congregations, Davis was largely educated at home until he entered Worcester Academy in 1895. In 1897 he matriculated at Harvard. Fascinated by maps and by historical figures, he had begun writing stories for himself while still at home. He now turned this experience and his desire to humanize history to writing historical novels, the first of which, A Friend of Caesar, was published in the year he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He continued at Harvard, being the first first-year graduate student to receive the Harvard Thayer Graduate Scholarship, and earning his A.M. in 1901 and his PhD in 1905.During these same years he continued publishing historical fiction.In 1904, Davis began his formal teaching career, beginning as a lecturer at Radcliffe College while finishing his doctorate. He continued thereafter at Beloit College (instructor, 1906-07), Oberlin College (Assistant Professor of Medieval and Modern European History, 1907-1909), and finally at the University of Minnesota (Professor of History, 1909-1927). "He was an excellent teacher with the ability to put life into his lectures." His steady output of non-fiction in both history and the historical background to contemporary world affairs began with his time at Minnesota...