The Heart of Princess Osra

Publisher Marketing: "Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!" The impatient cry was heard through all the narrow gloomy street, where the old richly-carved house-fronts bowed to meet one another and left for the eye's comfort only a bare glimpse of blue. It was, men said, the oldest street in Strelsau, even as the sign of the "Silver Ship" was the oldest sign known to exist in the city. For when Aaron Lazarus the Jew came there, seventy years before, he had been the tenth man in unbroken line that took up the business; and now Stephen Nados, his apprentice and successor, was the eleventh. Old Lazarus had made a great business of it, and had spent his savings in buying up the better part of the street; but since Jews then might hold no property in Strelsau, he had taken all the deeds in the name of Stephen Nados; and when he came to die, being unable to carry his houses or his money with him, having no kindred, and caring not a straw for any man or woman alive save Stephen, he bade Stephen let the deeds be, and, with a last curse against the Christians (of whom Stephen was one, and a devout one), he kissed the young man, and turned his face to the wall and died. Therefore Stephen was a rich man, and had no need to carry on the business, though it never entered his mind to do anything else; for half the people who raised their heads at the sound of the cry were Stephen's tenants, and paid him rent when he asked for it; a thing he did when he chanced to remember, and could tear himself away from chasing a goblet or fashioning a little silver saint; for Stephen loved his craft more than his rents; therefore, again, he was well liked in the quarter. Contributor Bio:  Hope, Anthony Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins) was an English writer and playwright. Best known for his classic adventure tales The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau, Hope is credited with creating the Ruritanian romance genre. Although he originally published short pieces in popular periodicals, Hope started his own publishing press because of a lack of interest in publishing his longer works. The success of The Prisoner of Zenda allowed him to give up his career in law in favour of writing full time, but his later works never achieved the same popularity as Zenda. Hope was knighted in 1918 in recognition of his work with wartime propaganda, and he continued to write steadily until his death from cancer in 1933.