The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

THE HAMMER

The Cave among the Mountains.
BY ALFRED J. CHURCH, M.A. Lately Professor of Latin in University College, London AND RICHMOND SEELEY
If any reader should be curious as to the literary partnership announced on the title-page—a partnership that has grown, so to speak, out of another of many years’ standing, shared by the writers as author and publisher—he may be informed that the plan of the story and a detailed outline of it have been contributed by Richmond Seeley, and the story itself written for the most part by Alfred Church.
London, Sept. 3, 1889.


THE HAMMER

“Well, Cleon, you will allow that our little show to-day has been fairly successful. We are but novices, you know; barbarians, I am afraid you will call us. But we hope to improve. You Greeks are wonderful teachers. You can give in a very short time a quite marvellous appearance of refinement to the merest savages. And we are not that; you would not call us savages, my dear friend.”
“Savages! The gods forbid that such insolent folly should ever come from my tongue! You have a most elegant taste in art, my dear Jason. Our own Callias—he is our first connoisseur at Athens; you must have heard me mention him—would not disdain to have some of the little things which you have about you here in his own apartment.”