The Loom of Destiny

The Loom of Destiny is a collection of short stories by Arthur Stringer, first published in 1899. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, these thirteen tales probe how ordinary lives are shaped by fate, choice, and circumstance in rapidly changing modern settings.

Across city streets and country lanes, Stringer blends brisk realism with the clarity of a moral parable. His narratives turn on decisions made under pressure—moments when ambition, loyalty, desire, or pride tilt a life one way or another. The result is a sequence of studies in character and consequence, told with compact plots, sharp dialogue, and a watchful eye for social detail.

Though the tone is sometimes openly instructive, Stringer’s portraits remain empathetic. He is keen on the mechanics of class and work—factories, shops, railyards, and drawing rooms alike—and on the quiet transactions of power within families and communities. The stories consistently return to the tension between destiny and self-determination, asking what, in the end, we can claim as our own making.

The book contains the following short stories:

• The Undoing of Dinney Crockett
• The Fly in the Ointment
• The Iron Age
• The King who lost his Crown
• Life's Loaded Die
• The Crucible of Character
• The Essentials of Aristocracy
• The Honour of the House of Hummerley
• Thicker than Water
• Instruments of Eros
• An Essay in Equality
• The Heart's Desire
• Not in Utter Nakedness

"On the ragged skirts of the great city, where a steady stream of lorries and electric cars rumble over the Canal Bridge, stand twenty high-fenced, grimy acres of coal heaps. All day long, year in and year out, the blackened and lumbering coal-carts ply back and forth between those high-fenced acres of bituminous blackness and the switching yard of the railway, stopping only at the weigh scales as they go".