1899. Part One of Twenty-three. Thonias Hewlings Stockton, clergyman, wrote fantastic tales for children under the pen name Frank R. Stockton. He also wrote books for adults. Among his amusing books for children Rudder Grange is the best known. The Lady and the Tiger, Adventures of Captain Horne, Mrs. Null, The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, The Hundredth Man, Great Stone of Sardis, and Captain's Tollgate were also quite popular. The book begins: There was a wide entrance-gate to the old family mansion of Midbranch, but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors; although occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two mules, came between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a roundabout way among the trees to a spot at the back of the house, where the chips of several generations of sturdy wood-chopper had formed a ligneous soil deeper than the arable surface of any portion of the nine hundred and fifty acres which formed the farm of Midbranch. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.