Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home

Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home is by Bayard Taylor and gathers a story called Beauty and the Beast, A Story of Old Russia, and tales headed The Strange Friend and Jacob Flint's Journey. A story in the book is introduced as a story of mingled fact and fancy, with the facts borrowed from the Russian author, Petjerski, while the fancy is our own. One scene has a man take a goblet of wine in one hand and, embracing Mishka with the other, begin to waltz, while the bear stretched out his paw and clumsily followed the movements.

One tale has John, after desperate attempts that always failed in spite of the headaches they gave him, postpone the idea of distinguishing one from the other, until they should be old enough to develop some dissimilarity of speech, or gait, or habit. A narrator says most of the women, here in Burroak, at least, expressed a feeling of disappointment that there was no palpable change in their lot, no sense of extended liberty.