>: 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^r 
 
 life p W 
 
 ut 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 J292 
 
 Hawthorne 
 Wonder-book 
 
 lr 
 
 1 
 
 348062 
 
UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00034695116 
 
 II 
 
 Mi 
 
 V 
 
 
 iMb^-M* 
 
 
 \ 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 IttVtr 
 
 ;R£D TO 
 
 ,iLE Hi3TrR',-,AL COLL. 
 
 M 
 
 ding Use Only 
 
 • ILE HISTORICAL COLL. 
 
 i 
 
 Building Use 
 
 Unly 
 
 BuilJing Us 
 
 -Gfrfy- 
 
 — — — 
 
 B uilding U 3 8 Only 
 
 CAYLOFO 
 
 PAINTKO IN U.S.A. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF 
 NORTH_CARO_LI_NA_ 
 
 School- of Library 
 lence 
 
A WONDER-BOOK 
 FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/wonderbookforgirOhawth 
 
The only music for poor Midas, now, was the chink of one coin 
 against another 
 
THE WINDERMERE SERIES 
 
 A Wonder-Book 
 
 FOR GIRLS AND BOYS 
 
 BY 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 MILO WINTER 
 
 RAND M9NALLY & COMPANY 
 
 CHICAGO , NEW YORK 
 
Copyright, 191 3, by 
 
 Rand M"?Nally & Company 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Edition of 1936 
 
 Made in the U. S. A. 
 
J 
 
 2SE 
 
 ■ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The author has long been of opinion that many of 
 the classical myths were capable of being rendered 
 into very capital reading for children. In the little 
 volume here offered to the public, he has worked up 
 half a dozen of them, with this end in view. A great 
 freedom of treatment was necessary to his plan ; but 
 it will be observed by every one who attempts to ren- 
 der these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, 
 that they are marvellously independent of all tem- 
 porary modes and circumstances. They remain 
 essentially the same, after changes that would affect 
 the identity of almost anything else. 
 
 He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, 
 in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dic- 
 tated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiq- 
 uity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of 
 time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. 
 They seem never to have been made ; and certamly, 
 so long as man exists, they can never perish ; but, by 
 their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate sub- 
 jects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of 
 manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own 
 morality. In the present version they may have 
 lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 the author has not been careful to preserve it), and 
 have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic or romantic guise. 
 In performing this pleasant task — for it has been 
 really a task fit for hot weather, and one of the most 
 agreeable, of a literary kind, which he ever under- 
 took — the author has not always thought it necessary 
 to write downward, in order to meet the comprehen- 
 sion of children. He has generally suffered the 
 theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and 
 when he himself was buoyant enough to follow with- 
 out an effort. Children possess an unestimated sen- 
 sibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or 
 feeling, so long as it is simple, likewise. It is only 
 the artificial and the complex that bewilder them. 
 
THE CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 3 
 
 The Illustrations 7 
 
 THE GORGON'S HEAD 
 
 Tanglewood Porch. — Introductory to "The 
 
 Gorgon's Head" 11 
 
 The Gorgon's Head 18 
 
 Tanglewood Porch. — After the Story .... 54 
 
 THE GOLDEN TOUCH 
 
 Shadow Brook. — Introductory to "The Golden 
 
 Touch" 59 
 
 The Golden Touch 63 
 
 Shadow Brook. — After the Story 89 
 
 THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN 
 
 Tanglewood Play-Room. — Introductory to "The 
 
 Paradise of Children" 95 
 
 The Paradise of Children 100 
 
 Tanglewood Play-Room. — After the Story . . . 125 
 
 THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES 
 
 Tanglewood Fireside. — Introductory to "The 
 
 Three Golden Apples" 129 
 
 The Three Golden Apples 136 
 
 Tanglewood Fireside. — After the Story . . . 167 
 
 5 
 
6 THE CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 
 
 The Hill-Side. — Introductory to "The Mirac- 
 ulous Pitcher" 173 
 
 The Miraculous Pitcher 177 
 
 The Hill-Side. — After the Story 207 
 
 THE CHIMERA 
 
 Bald-Summit. — Introductory to " The Chimsera" . 211 
 
 The Chimera 215 
 
 Bald-Summit. — After the Story 250 
 
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The only music for poor Midas, now, was the clink 
 
 of one coin against another Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 "Give us our eye!" 30 
 
 The small, embroidered wallet . . . grew all at 
 
 once large enough to contain Medusa's head. ... 46 
 
 It was a very pleasant life indeed 102 
 
 Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the 
 
 story of his life 134 
 
 And what should Hercules espy there, but an old 
 
 man fast asleep ! 158 
 
 An abundant cascade fell bubbling into the bowl. ... 190 
 
 As it came within arm's-length, Bellerophon made a 
 
 cut at the monster 238 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 
 
A Wonder-Book. 
 
 TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO " THE GORGON'S HEAD." 
 
 Beneath the porch of the country seat called 
 Tangle wood, one fine autumnal morning, was 
 assembled a merry party of little folks, with a 
 tall youth in the midst of them. They had 
 planned a nutting expedition, and were im- 
 patiently waiting for the mists to roll up the 
 hill-slopes, and for the sun to pour the warmth 
 of the Indian summer over the fields and pas- 
 tures, and into the nooks of the many-colored 
 woods. There was a prospect of as fine a day 
 as ever gladdened the aspect of this beautiful 
 and comfortable world. As yet, however, the 
 morning mist filled up the whole length and 
 breadth of the valley, above which, on a gently 
 sloping eminence, the mansion stood. 
 
 This body of white vapor extended to within 
 less than a hundred yards of the house. It 
 completely hid everything beyond that distance, 
 except a few ruddy or yellow tree-tops, which 
 
 ii 
 
12 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 here and there emerged, and were glorified by 
 the early sunshine, as was likewise the broad 
 surface of the mist. Four or five miles off to 
 the southward rose the summit of Monument 
 Mountain, and seemed to be floating on a cloud. 
 Some fifteen miles farther away, in the same 
 direction, appeared the loftier Dome of Taconic, 
 looking blue and indistinct, and hardly so sub- 
 stantial as the vapory sea that almost rolled 
 over it. The nearer hills which bordered the 
 valley were half submerged, and were specked 
 with little cloud wreaths all the way to their 
 tops. On the whole, there was so much cloud, 
 and so little solid earth, that it had the effect 
 of a vision. 
 
 The children above-mentioned, being as full 
 of life as they could hold, kept overflowing from 
 the porch of Tanglewood, and scampering along 
 the gravel- walk, or rushing across the dewy 
 herbage of the lawn. I can hardly tell how 
 many of these small people there were; not less 
 than nine or ten, however, nor more than a 
 dozen, of all sorts, sizes, and ages, whether girls 
 or boys. They were brothers, sisters, and 
 cousins, together with a few of their young 
 acquaintances, who had been invited by Mr. 
 and Mrs. Pringle to spend some of this delightful 
 weather with their own children, at Tanglewood. 
 I am afraid to tell you their names, or even to 
 give them any names which other children have 
 
TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 13 
 
 ever been called by; because, to my certain 
 knowledge, authors sometimes get themselves 
 into great trouble by accidentally giving the 
 names of real persons to the characters in their 
 books. For this reason, I mean to call them 
 Primrose, Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, 
 Blue Eye, Clover, Huckleberry, Cowslip, Squash- 
 Blossom, Milkweed, Plantain, and Buttercup; 
 although, to be sure, such titles might better 
 suit a group of fairies than a company of earthly 
 children. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that these little folks 
 were to be permitted by their careful fathers and 
 mothers, uncles, aunts, or grandparents, to 
 stray abroad into the woods and fields without 
 the guardianship of some particularly grave 
 and elderly person. Oh, no indeed! In the 
 first sentence of my book, you will recollect that 
 I spoke of a tall youth, standing in the midst of 
 the children. His name — (and I shall let you 
 know his real name, because he considers it a 
 great honor to have told the stories that are 
 here to be printed) — his name was Eustace 
 Bright. He was a student at Williams College, 
 and had reached, I think, at this period, the 
 venerable age of eighteen years; so that he felt 
 quite like a grandfather towards Periwinkle, 
 Dandelion, Huckleberry, Squash-Blossom, Milk- 
 weed, and the rest, who were only half or a 
 third as venerable as he. A trouble in his eye- 
 
i 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 sight (such as many students think it necessary 
 to have, nowadays, in order to prove their dili- 
 gence at their books) had kept him from college 
 a week or two after the beginning of the term. 
 But, for my part, I have seldom met with a pair 
 of eyes that looked as if they could see farther or 
 better than those of Eustace Bright. 
 
 This learned student was slender, and rather 
 pale, as all Yankee students are; but yet of a 
 healthy aspect, and as light and active as if he 
 had wings to his shoes. By and by, being much 
 addicted to wading through streamlets and 
 across meadows, he had put on cowhide boots 
 for the expedition. He wore a linen blouse, a 
 cloth cap, and a pair of green spectacles, which 
 he had assumed, probably, less for the preser- 
 vation of his eyes than for the dignity that they 
 imparted to his countenance. In either case, 
 however, he might as well have left them alone, 
 for Huckleberry, a mischievous little elf, crept 
 behind Eustace as he sat on the steps of the 
 porch, snatched the spectacles from his nose, 
 and clapped them on her own; and as the 
 student forgot to take them back, they fell off 
 into the grass, and lay there till the next 
 spring. 
 
 Now, Eustace Bright, you must know, had 
 won great fame among the children, as a narrator 
 of wonderful stories ; and though he sometimes 
 pretended to be annoyed, when they teased him 
 
TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 15 
 
 for more, and more, and always for more, yet 
 I really doubt whether he liked anything quite 
 so well as to tell them. You might have seen 
 his eyes twinkle, therefore, when Clover, Sweet 
 Fern, Cowslip, Buttercup, and most of their 
 playmates, besought him to relate one of his 
 stories, while they were waiting for the mist to 
 clear up. 
 
 "Yes, Cousin Eustace," said Primrose, who 
 was a bright girl of twelve, with laughing eyes, 
 and a nose that turned up a little, " the morning 
 is certainly the best time for the stories with 
 which you so often tire out our patience. We 
 shall be in less danger of hurting your feelings, 
 by falling asleep at the most interesting point 
 — as little Cowslip and I did last night! " 
 
 "Naughty Primrose," cried Cowslip, a child 
 of six years old; "I did not fall asleep, and I 
 only shut my eyes, so as to see a picture of what 
 Cousin Eustace was telling about. His stories 
 are good to hear at night because we can dream 
 about them asleep; and good in the morning, 
 too, because then we can dream about them 
 awake. So I hope he will tell us one this very 
 minute." 
 
 "Thank you, my little Cowslip," said Eus- 
 tace; "certainly you shall have the best story 
 I can think of, if it were only for defending me 
 so well from that naughty Primrose. But, 
 children, I have already told you so many fairy 
 2 
 
16 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tales, that I doubt whether there is a single one 
 which you have not heard at least twice over. 
 I am afraid you will fall asleep in reality, if I 
 repeat any of them again." 
 
 "No, no, no!" cried Blue Eye, Periwinkle, 
 Plantain, and half a dozen others. " We like a 
 story all the better for having heard it two or 
 three times before." 
 
 And it is a truth, as regards children, that a 
 story seems often to deepen its mark in their 
 interest, not merely by two or three, but by 
 numberless repetitions. But Eustace Bright 
 in the exuberance of his resources, scorned to 
 avail himself of an advantage which an older 
 story-teller would have been glad to grasp at. 
 
 " It would be a great pity," said he, "if a man 
 of my learning (to say nothing of original fancy) 
 could not find a new story every day, year in 
 and year out, for children such as you. I will 
 tell you one of the nursery tales that were made 
 for the amusement of our great old grand- 
 mother, the Earth, when she was a child in 
 frock and pinafore. There are a hundred such ; 
 and it is a wonder to me that they have not long 
 ago been put into picture-books for little girls 
 and boys. But, instead of that, old gray- 
 bearded grandsires pore over them in musty 
 volumes of Greek, and puzzle themselves with 
 trying to find out when, and how, and for what 
 they were made." 
 
TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 17 
 
 "Well, well, well, well, Cousin Eustace!" 
 cried all the children at once; "talk no more 
 about your stories, but begin." 
 
 "Sit down, then, every soul of you," said 
 Eustace Bright, "and be all as still as so many 
 mice. At the slightest interruption, whether 
 from great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, 
 or any other, I shall bite the story short off 
 between my teeth, and swallow the untold part. 
 But, in the first place, do any of you know what 
 a Gorgon is?" 
 
 " I do," said Primrose. 
 
 "Then hold your tongue!" rejoined Eustace, 
 who had rather she would have known nothing 
 about the matter. " Hold all your tongues, 
 and I shall tell you a sweet pretty story of a 
 Gorgon's head." 
 
 And so he did, as you may begin to read on 
 the next page. Working up his sophomorical 
 erudition with a good deal of tact, and incurring 
 great obligations to Professor Anthon, he, 
 nevertheless, disregarded all classical authori- 
 ties, whenever the vagrant audacity of his 
 imagination impelled him to do so. 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 
 
 Perseus was the son of Danae, who was the 
 daughter of a king. And when Perseus was a 
 very little boy, some wicked people put his 
 mother and himself into a chest, and set them 
 afloat upon the sea. The wind blew freshly, 
 and drove the chest away from the shore, and 
 the uneasy billows tossed it up and down ; while 
 Danae clasped her child closely to her bosom, 
 and dreaded that some big wave would dash 
 its foamy crest over them both. The chest 
 sailed on, however, and neither sank nor was 
 upset; until, when night was coming, it floated 
 so near an island that it got entangled in a 
 fisherman's nets, and was drawn out high and 
 dry upon the sand. The island was called 
 Seriphus, and it was reigned over by King Poly- 
 dectes, who happened to be the fisherman's 
 brother. 
 
 This fisherman, I am glad to tell you, was an 
 exceedingly humane and upright man. He 
 showed great kindness to Danae and her little 
 boy; and continued to befriend them, until 
 Perseus had grown to be a handsome youth, 
 very strong and active, and skilful in the use of 
 
 18 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 19 
 
 arms. Long before this time, King Polydectes 
 had seen the two strangers — the mother and her 
 child — who had come to his dominions in a 
 floating chest. As he was not good and kind, 
 like his brother the fisherman, but extremely 
 wicked, he resolved to send Perseus on a dan- 
 gerous enterprise, in which he would probably 
 be killed, and then to do some great mischief 
 to Danae herself. So this bad-hearted king 
 spent a long while in considering what was the 
 most dangerous thing that a young man could 
 possibly undertake to perform. At last, having 
 hit upon an enterprise that promised to turn 
 out as fatally as he desired, he sent for the 
 youthful Perseus. 
 
 The young man came to the palace, and 
 found the king sitting upon his throne. 
 
 "Perseus," said King Polydectes, smiling 
 craftily upon him, "you are grown up a fine 
 young man. You and your good mother have 
 received a great deal of kindness from myself 
 as well as from my worthy brother the fisher- 
 man, and I suppose you would not be sorry to 
 repay some of it." 
 
 "Please your Majesty," answered Perseus, 
 " I would willingly risk my life to do so." 
 
 "Well, then," continued the king, still with 
 a cunning smile on his lips, " I have a little 
 adventure to propose to you; and, as you are a 
 brave and enterprising youth, you will doubt- 
 
20 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 less look upon it as a great piece of good luck 
 to have so rare an opportunity of distinguishing 
 yourself. You must know, my good Perseus, 
 I think of getting married to the beautiful 
 Princess Hippodamia; and it is customary, on 
 these occasions, to make the bride a present of 
 some far-fetched and elegant curiosity. I have 
 been a little perplexed, I must honestly confess, 
 where to obtain anything likely to please a 
 princess of her exquisite taste. But, this morn- 
 ing, I natter myself, I have thought of precisely 
 the article." 
 
 " And can I assist your Majesty in obtaining 
 it?" cried Perseus, eagerly. 
 
 " You can, if you are as brave a youth as I 
 believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, 
 with the utmost graciousness of manner. " The 
 bridal gift which I have set my heart on pre- 
 senting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head 
 of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; 
 and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring 
 it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs 
 with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of 
 the Gorgon, the better I shall be pleased." 
 
 " I will set out to-morrow morning," answered 
 Perseus. 
 
 " Pray do so, my gallant youth," rejoined the 
 king. " And, Perseus, in cutting off the Gorgon's 
 head, be careful to make a clean stroke, so as 
 not to injure its appearance. You must bring 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 21 
 
 it home in the very best condition, in order 
 to suit the exquisite taste of the beautiful 
 Princess Hippodamia." 
 
 Perseus left the palace, but was scarcely out 
 of hearing belore Polydectes burst into a laugh ; 
 being greatly amused, wicked king that he was, 
 to find how readily the young man fell into the 
 snare. The news quickly spread abroad that 
 Perseus had undertaken to cut off the head of 
 Medusa with the snaky locks. Everybody was 
 rejoiced; for most of the inhabitants of the 
 island were as wicked as the king himself, and 
 would have liked nothing better than to see 
 some enormous mischief happen to Danae and 
 her son. The only good man in this unfortunate 
 island of Seriphus appears to have been the 
 fisherman. As Perseus walked along, therefore, 
 the people pointed after him, and made mouths, 
 and winked to one another, and ridiculed him as 
 loudly as they dared. 
 
 "Ho, ho!" cried they; "Medusa's snakes 
 will sting him soundly." 
 
 Now, there were three Gorgons alive at that 
 period; and they were the most strange and 
 terrible monsters that had ever been seen since 
 the world was made, or that have been seen in 
 after days, or that are likely to be seen in all 
 time to come. I hardly know what sort of 
 creature or hobgoblin to call them. They were 
 three sisters, and seem to have borne some dis- 
 
22 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tant resemblance to women, but were really a 
 very frightful and mischievous species of dragon. 
 It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous 
 beings these three sisters were. Why, instead 
 of locks of hair, if you can believe me, they had 
 each of them a hundred enormous snakes, grow- 
 ing on their heads, all alive, twisting, wriggling, 
 curling, and thrusting out their venomous 
 tongues, with forked stings at the end! The 
 teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks; 
 their hands were made of brass; and their 
 bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, 
 were something as hard and impenetrable. They 
 had wings, too, and exceedingly splendid ones, 
 I can assure you ; for every feather in them was 
 pure, bright, glittering, burnished gold, and 
 they looked very dazzlingly, no doubt, when the 
 Gorgons were flying about in the sunshine. 
 
 But when people happened to catch a 
 glimpse of their glittering brightness, aloft in 
 the air, they seldom stopped to gaze, but ran 
 and hid themselves as speedily as they could. 
 You will think, perhaps, that they were afraid 
 of being stung by the serpents that served the 
 Gorgons instead of hair, — or of having their 
 heads bitten off by their ugly tusks, — or of being 
 torn all to pieces by their brazen claws. Well, 
 to be sure, these were some of the dangers, but 
 by no means the greatest, nor the most difficult 
 to avoid. For the worst thing about these 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 23 
 
 abominable Gorgons was, that, if once a poor 
 mortal fixed his eyes full upon one of their faces, 
 he was certain, that very instant, to be changed 
 from warm flesh and blood into cold and lifeless 
 stone ! 
 
 Thus, as you will easily perceive, it was a very 
 dangerous adventure that the wicked King 
 Polydectes had contrived for this innocent 
 young man. Perseus himself, when he had 
 thought over the matter, could not help seeing 
 that he had very little chance of coming safely 
 through it, and that he was far more likely to 
 become a stone image than to bring back the 
 head of Medusa with the snaky locks. For 
 not to speak of other difficulties, there was one 
 which it would have puzzled an older man than 
 Perseus to get over. Not only must he fight 
 with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, 
 long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired mon- 
 ster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, 
 at least, without so much as a glance at the 
 enemy with whom he was contending. Else, 
 while his arm was lifted to strike, he would 
 stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted 
 arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and 
 weather, should crumble him quite away. This 
 would be a very sad thing to befall a young man 
 who wanted to perform a great many brave 
 deeds, and to enjoy a great deal of happiness, in 
 this bright and beautiful world. 
 
24 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 So disconsolate did these thoughts make him, 
 that Perseus could not bear to tell his mother 
 what he had undertaken to do. He therefore 
 took his shield, girded on his sword, and crossed 
 over from the island to the mainland, where he 
 sat down in a solitary place, and hardly refrained 
 from shedding tears. 
 
 But, while he was in this sorrowful mood, he 
 heard a voice close behind him. 
 
 " Perseus," said the voice, " why are you sad?'' 
 
 He lifted his head from his hands, in which 
 he had hidden it, and, behold! all alone as 
 Perseus had supposed himself to be, there was 
 a stranger in the solitary place. It was a brisk, 
 intelligent, and remarkably shrewd-looking 
 young man, with a cloak over his shoulders, 
 an odd sort of cap on his head, a strangely 
 twisted staff in his hand, and a short and very 
 crooked sword hanging by his side. He was 
 exceedingly light and active in his figure, like a 
 person much accustomed to gymnastic exer- 
 cises, and well able to leap or run. Above all, 
 the stranger had such a cheerful, knowing, and 
 helpful aspect (though it was certainly a little 
 mischievous, into the bargain), that Perseus 
 could not help feeling his spirits grow livelier 
 as he gazed at him. Besides, being really a 
 courageous youth, he felt greatly ashamed that 
 anybody should have found him with tears in 
 his eyes, like a timid little school-boy, when, 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 25 
 
 after all, there might be no occasion for despair. 
 So Perseus wiped his eyes, and answered the 
 stranger pretty briskly, putting on as brave a 
 look as he could. 
 
 "I am not so very sad," said he, ''only 
 thoughtful about an adventure that I have 
 undertaken." 
 
 "Oho!" answered the stranger. "Well, 
 tell me all about it, and possibly I may be of 
 service to you. I have helped a good many 
 young men through adventures that looked 
 difficult enough beforehand. Perhaps you may 
 have heard of me. I have more names than 
 one; but the name of Quicksilver suits me as 
 well as any other. Tell me what the trouble is, 
 and we will talk the matter over, and see what 
 can be done." 
 
 The stranger's words and manner put Perseus 
 into quite a different mood from his former one. 
 He resolved to tell Quicksilver all his difficulties, 
 since he could not easily be worse off than he 
 already was, and, very possibly, his new friend 
 might give him some advice that would turn 
 out well in the end. So he let the stranger know, 
 in few words, precisely what the case was, — 
 how that King Polydectes wanted the head of 
 Medusa with the snaky locks as a bridal gift for 
 the beautiful Princess Hippodamia, and how 
 that he had undertaken to get it for him, but 
 was afraid of being turned into stone. 
 
26 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 " And that would be a great pity," said Quick- 
 silver, with his mischievous smile. " You would 
 make a very handsome marble statue, it is true, 
 and it would be a considerable number of cen- 
 turies before you crumbled away; but, on the 
 whole, one would rather be a young man for a 
 few years, than a stone image for a great many." 
 
 "Oh, far rather!" exclaimed Perseus, with 
 the tears again standing in his eyes. "And, 
 besides, what would my dear mother do, if her 
 beloved son were turned into a stone ? ' ' 
 
 "Well, well, let us hope that the affair will 
 not turn out so very badly," replied Quicksilver, 
 in an encouraging tone. " I am the very person 
 to help you if anybody can. My sister and 
 myself will do our utmost to bring you safe 
 through the adventure, ugly as it now looks." 
 
 "Your sister?" repeated Perseus. 
 
 "Yes, my sister," said the stranger. "She 
 is very wise, I promise you; and as for myself, 
 I generally have all my wits about me, such as 
 they are. If you show yourself bold and cau- 
 tious, and follow our advice, you need not fear 
 being a stone image yet awhile. But, first of 
 all, you must polish your shield, till you can 
 see your face in it as distinctly as in a mirror." 
 
 This seemed to Perseus rather an odd begin- 
 ning of the adventure ; for he thought it of far 
 more consequence that the shield should be 
 strong enough to defend him from the Gorgon's 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 27 
 
 brazen claws, than that it should be bright 
 enough to show him the reflection of his face. 
 However, concluding that Quicksilver knew 
 better than himself, he immediately set to work 
 and scrubbed the shield with so much diligence 
 and good- will, that it very quickly shone like 
 the moon at harvest-time. Quicksilver looked 
 at it with a smile, and nodded his approbation. 
 Then, taking off his own short and crooked 
 sword, he girded it about Perseus, instead of 
 the one which he had before worn. 
 
 "No sword but mine will answer your pur- 
 pose," observed he; "the blade has a most 
 excellent temper, and will cut through iron 
 and brass as easily as through the slenderest 
 twig. And now we will set out. The next 
 thing is to find the Three Gray Women, who 
 will tell us where to find the Nymphs." 
 
 "The Three Gray Women!" cried Perseus, 
 to whom this seemed only a new difficulty in 
 the path of his adventure; "pray who may the 
 Three Gray Women be ? I never heard of them 
 before." 
 
 " They are three very strange old ladies," said 
 Quicksilver, laughing. "They have but one 
 eye among them, and only one tooth. More- 
 over, you must find them out by starlight, or 
 in the dusk of the evening; for they never show 
 themselves by the light either of the sun or 
 moon." 
 
28 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "But," said Perseus, "why should I waste 
 my time with these Three Gray Women? 
 Would it not be better to set out at once in 
 search of the terrible Gorgons?" 
 
 "No, no," answered his friend. "There are 
 other things to be done, before you can find 
 your way to the Gorgons. There is nothing 
 for it but to hunt up these old ladies ; and when 
 we meet with them, you may be sure that the 
 Gorgons are not a great way off. Come, let us 
 be stirring?" 
 
 Perseus, by this time, felt so much confidence 
 in his companion's sagacity, that he made no 
 more objections, and professed himself ready to 
 begin the adventure immediately. They accord- 
 ingly set out, and walked at a pretty brisk pace ; 
 so brisk, indeed, that Perseus found it rather 
 difficult to keep up with his nimble friend Quick- 
 silver. To say the truth, he had a singular idea 
 that Quicksilver was furnished with a pair of 
 winged shoes, which, of course, helped him along 
 marvellously. And then, too, when Perseus 
 looked sideways at him, out of the corner of his 
 eyes, he seemed to see wings on the side of his 
 head; although, if he turned a full gaze, there 
 were no such things to be perceived, but only 
 an odd kind of cap. But, at all events, 
 the twisted staff was evidently a great 
 convenience to Quicksilver, and enabled him 
 to proceed so fast, that Perseus, though a 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 29 
 
 remarkably active young man, began to be out 
 of breath. 
 
 ''Here!" cried Quicksilver, at last, — for he 
 knew well enough, rogue that he was, how hard 
 Perseus found it to keep pace with him, — " take 
 you the staff, for you need it a great deal more 
 than I. Are there no better walkers than your- 
 self in the island of Seriphus?" 
 
 " I could walk pretty well," said Perseus, 
 glancing slyly at his companion's feet, " if I had 
 only a pair of winged shoes." 
 
 "We must see about getting you a pair," 
 answered Quicksilver. 
 
 But the staff helped Perseus along so bravely, 
 that he no longer felt the slightest weariness. 
 In fact, the stick seemed to be alive in his hand, 
 and to lend some of its life to Perseus. He and 
 Quicksilver now walked onward at their ease, 
 talking very sociably together; and Quicksilver 
 told so many pleasant stories about his former 
 adventures, and how well his wits had served 
 him on various occasions, that Perseus began 
 to think him a very wonderful person. He 
 evidently knew the world; and nobody is so 
 charming to a young man as a friend who has 
 that kind of knowledge. Perseus listened the 
 more eagerly, in the hope of brightening his own 
 wits by what he heard. 
 
 At last, he happened to recollect that Quick- 
 silver had spoken of a sister, who was to lend 
 
30 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 her assistance in the adventure which they were 
 now bound upon. 
 
 "Where is she?" he inquired. "Shall we 
 not meet her soon?" 
 
 " All at the proper time," said his companion. 
 " But this sister of mine, you must understand, 
 is quite a different sort of character from myself. 
 She is very grave and prudent, seldom smiles, 
 never laughs, and makes it a rule not to utter 
 a word unless she has something particularly 
 profound to say. Neither will she listen to any 
 but the wisest conversation." 
 
 "Dear me!" ejaculated Perseus; "I shall be 
 afraid to say a syllable." 
 
 " She is a very accomplished person, I assure 
 you," continued Quicksilver, "and has all the 
 arts and sciences at her fingers' ends. In short, 
 she is so immoderately wise, that many people 
 call her wisdom personified. But, to tell you 
 the truth, she has hardly vivacity enough for my 
 taste; and I think you would scarcely find her 
 so pleasant a travelling companion as myself. 
 She has her good points, nevertheless; and you 
 will find the benefit of them, in your encounter 
 with the Gorgons." 
 
 By this time it had grown quite dusk. They 
 were now come to a very wild and desert place, 
 overgrown with shaggy bushes, and so silent and 
 solitary that nobody seemed ever to have dwelt 
 or journeyed there. All was waste and desolate, 
 
Give us our eye!" 
 
 Page ,-• 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 31 
 
 in the gray twilight, which grew every moment 
 more obscure. Perseus looked about him, 
 rather disconsolately, and asked Quicksilver 
 whether they had a great deal farther to go. 
 
 "Hist! hist!" whispered his companion. 
 "Make no noise! This is just the time and 
 place to meet the Three Gray Women. Be 
 careful that they do not see you before you see 
 them; for, though they have but a single eye 
 among the three, it is as sharp-sighted as half a 
 dozen common eyes." 
 
 " But what must I do," asked Perseus, "when 
 we meet them?" 
 
 Quicksilver explained to Perseus how the 
 Three Gray Women managed with their one 
 eye. They were in the habit, it seems, of chang- 
 ing it from one to another, as if it had been a 
 pair of spectacles, or — which would have suited 
 them better — a quizzing-glass. When one of 
 the three had kept the eye a certain time, she 
 took it out of the socket and passed it to one of 
 her sisters, whose turn it might happen to be, 
 and who immediately clapped it into her own 
 head, and enjoyed a peep at the visible world. 
 Thus it will be easily understood that only one 
 of the Three Gray Women could see, while the 
 other two were in utter darkness; and, more- 
 over, at the instant when the eye was passing 
 from hand to hand, neither of the poor old ladies 
 was able to see a wink. I have heard of a great 
 3 
 
32 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 many strange things in my day, and have wit- 
 nessed not a few; but none, it seems to me, that 
 can compare with the oddity of these Three 
 Gray Women, all peeping through a single eye. 
 
 So thought Perseus, likewise, and was so 
 astonished that he almost fancied his companion 
 was joking with him, and that there were no 
 such old women in the world. 
 
 "You will soon find whether I tell the truth 
 or no," observed Quicksilver. "Hark! hush 
 hist! hist! There they come, now!" 
 
 Perseus looked earnestly through the dusk of 
 the evening, and there, sure enough, at no great 
 distance off, he descried the Three Gray 
 Women. The light being so faint, he could not 
 well make out what sort of figures they were; 
 only he discovered that they had long gray hair ; 
 and, as they came nearer, he saw that two of 
 them had but the empty socket of an eye in the 
 middle of their foreheads. But, in the middle 
 of the third sister's forehead, there was a very 
 large, bright, and piercing eye, which sparkled 
 like a great diamond in a ring; and so penetrat- 
 ing did it seem to be, that Perseus could not 
 help thinking it must possess the gift of seeing 
 in the darkest midnight just as perfectly as at 
 noonday. The sight of three persons' eyes was 
 melted and collected into that single one. 
 
 Thus the three old dames got along about as 
 comfortably, upon the whole, as if they could 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 33 
 
 all see at once. She who chanced to have the 
 eye in her forehead led the other two by the 
 hands, peeping sharply about her all the while; 
 insomuch that Perseus dreaded lest she should 
 see right through the thick clump of bushes 
 behind which he and Quicksilver had hidden 
 themselves. My stars ! it was positively terrible 
 to be within reach of so very sharp an eye ! 
 
 But, before they reached the clump of bushes, 
 one of the Three Gray Women spoke. 
 
 "Sister! Sister Scarecrow!" cried she, "you 
 have had the eye long enough. It is my turn 
 now!" 
 
 " Let me keep it a moment longer, Sister 
 Nightmare," answered Scarecrow. "I thought 
 I had a glimpse of something behind that thick 
 bush." 
 
 "Well, and what of that?" retorted Night- 
 mare peevishly. " Can't I see into a thick bush 
 as easily as yourself? The eye is mine as well 
 as yours ; and I know the use of it as well as you, 
 or may be a little better. I insist upon taking a 
 peep immediately!" 
 
 But here the third sister, whose name was 
 Shakejoint, began to complain, and said that 
 it was her turn to have the eye, and that Scare- 
 crow and Nightmare wanted to keep it all to 
 themselves. To end the dispute, old Dame 
 Scarecrow took the eye out of her forehead, and 
 held it forth in her hand. 
 
34 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Take it, one of you," cried she, "and quit 
 this foolish quarrelling. For my part, I shall 
 be glad of a little thick darkness. Take it 
 quickly, however, or I must clap it into my own 
 head again ! ' ' 
 
 Accordingly, both Nightmare and Shakejoint 
 put out their hands, groping eagerly to snatch 
 the eye out of the hand of Scarecrow. But 
 being both alike blind, they could not easily find 
 where Scarecrow's hand was; and Scarecrow, 
 being just now as much in the dark as Shake- 
 joint and Nightmare, could not at once meet 
 either of their hands, in order to put the eye 
 into it. Thus (as you will see, with half an eye, 
 my wise little auditors), these good old dames 
 had fallen into a strange perplexity. For, 
 though the eye shone and glistened like a star, 
 as Scarecrow held it out, yet the Gray Women 
 caught not the least glimpse of its light, and 
 were all three in utter darkness, from too 
 impatient a desire to see. 
 
 Quicksilver was so much tickled at beholding 
 Shakejoint and Nightmare both groping for 
 the eye, and each finding fault with Scarecrow 
 and one another, that he could scarcely help 
 laughing aloud. "Now is your time!" he 
 whispered to Perseus. "Quick, quick! before 
 they can clap the eye into either of their heads. 
 Rush out upon the old ladies, and snatch it 
 from Scarecrow's hand!" 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 35 
 
 In an instant, while the Three Gray Women 
 were still scolding each other, Perseus leaped 
 from behind the clump of bushes, and made 
 himself master of the prize. The marvellous 
 eye, as he held it in his hand, shone very brightly, 
 and seemed to look up into his face with a know- 
 ing air, and an expression as if it would have 
 winked, had it been provided with a pair of 
 eyelids for that purpose. But the Gray Women 
 knew nothing of what had happened; and, each 
 supposing that one of her sisters was in pos- 
 session of the eye, they began their quarrel anew. 
 At last, as Perseus did not wish to put these 
 respectable dames to greater inconvenience than 
 was really necessary, he thought it right to 
 explain the matter. 
 
 "My good ladies," said he, "pray do not be 
 angry with one another. If anybody is in fault, 
 it is myself; for I have the honor to hold your 
 very brilliant and excellent eye in my own hand !' 
 
 "You! you have our eye! And who are 
 you?" screamed the Three Gray Women, all 
 in a breath; for they were terribly frightened, 
 of course, at hearing a strange voice, and dis- 
 covering that their eyesight had got into the 
 hands of they could not guess whom. "Oh, 
 what shall we do, sisters? what shall we do? 
 We are all in the dark ! Give us our eye ! Give 
 us our one, precious, solitary eye! You have 
 two of your own ! Give us our eye ! " 
 
36 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Tell them," whispered Quicksilver to Per- 
 seus, "that they shall have back the eye as 
 soon as they direct you where to find the 
 Nymphs who have the flying slippers, the magic 
 wallet, and the helmet of darkness." 
 
 "My dear, good, admirable old ladies," said 
 Perseus, addressing the Gray Women, "there 
 is no occasion for putting yourselves into such 
 a fright. I am by no means a bad young man. 
 You shall have back your eye, safe and sound, 
 and as bright as ever, the moment you tell me 
 where to find the Nymphs." 
 
 "The Nymphs! Goodness me! sisters, what 
 Nymphs does he mean?" screamed Scarecrow. 
 "There are a great many Nymphs, people say; 
 some that go a-hunting in the woods, and some 
 that live inside of trees, and some that have a 
 comfortable home in fountains of water. We 
 know nothing at all about them. We are three 
 unfortunate old souls, that go wandering about 
 in the dusk, and never had but one eye amongst 
 us, and that one you have stolen away. Oh, 
 give it back, good stranger! — whoever you are, 
 give it back ! ' ' 
 
 All this while the Three Gray Women were 
 groping with their outstretched hands, and 
 trying their utmost to get hold of Perseus. But 
 he took good care to keep out of their reach. 
 
 "My respectable dames!" said he, — for his 
 mother had taught him to use always the 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 37 
 
 greatest civility, — " I hold your eye fast in my 
 hand, and shall keep it safely for you, until you 
 please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. 
 The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted 
 wallet, the flying slippers, and the what is it? — 
 the helmet of invisibility ! ' ' 
 
 " Mercy on us, sisters! what is the young man 
 talking about?" exclaimed Scarecrow, Night- 
 mare, and Shakejoint, one to another, with great 
 appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying 
 slippers, quoth he! His heels would quickly 
 fly higher than his head, if he were silly enough 
 to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! 
 How could a helmet make him invisible, unless 
 it were big enough for him to hide under it? 
 And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a 
 contrivance may that be, I wonder? No, no, 
 good stranger! we can tell you nothing of these 
 marvellous things. You have two eyes of your 
 own, and we have but a single one amongst us 
 three. You can find out such wonders better 
 than three blind old creatures, like us." 
 
 Perseus, hearing them talk in this way, began 
 really to think that the Gray Women knew 
 nothing of the matter; and, as it grieved him to 
 have put them to so much trouble, he was just 
 on the point of restoring their eye, and asking 
 pardon for his rudeness in snatching it away. 
 But Quicksilver caught his hand. 
 
 "Don't let them make a fool of you!" said 
 
38 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 he. "These Three Gray Women are the only 
 persons in the world that can tell you where to 
 find the Nymphs; and, unless you get that 
 information, you will never succeed in cutting 
 off the head of Medusa with the snaky locks. 
 Keep fast hold of the eye, and all will go well." 
 
 As it turned out, Quicksilver was in the right. 
 There are but few things that people prize so 
 much as they do their eyesight; and the Gray 
 Women valued their single eye as highly as if 
 it had been half a dozen, which was the number 
 they ought to have had. Finding that there 
 was no other way of recovering it, they at last 
 told Perseus what he wanted to know. No 
 sooner had they done so, than he immediately, 
 and with the utmost respect, clapped the eye 
 into the vacant socket in one of their foreheads, 
 thanked them for their kindness, and bade them 
 farewell. Before the young man was out of 
 hearing, however, they had got into a new dis- 
 pute, because he happened to have given the 
 eye to Scarecrow, who had already taken her 
 turn of it when their trouble with Perseus com- 
 menced. 
 
 It is greatly to be feared that the Three Gray 
 Women were very much in the habit of dis- 
 turbing their mutual harmony by bickerings of 
 this sort; which was the more pity, as they 
 could not conveniently do without one another, 
 and were evidently intended to be inseparable 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 39 
 
 companions. As a general rule, I would advise 
 all people, whether sisters or brothers, old or 
 young, who chance to have but one eye amongst 
 them, to cultivate forbearance, and not all insist 
 upon peeping through it at once. 
 
 Quicksilver and Perseus, in the meantime, 
 were making the best of their way in quest of 
 the Nymphs. The old dames had given them 
 such particular directions, that they were not 
 long in finding them out. They proved to be 
 very different persons from Nightmare, Shake- 
 joint, and Scarecrow; for, instead of being old, 
 they were young and beautiful; and instead of 
 one eye amongst the sisterhood, each Nymph 
 had two exceedingly bright eyes of her own, 
 with which she looked very kindly at Perseus. 
 They seemed to be acquainted with Quicksilver; 
 and, when he told them the adventure which 
 Perseus had undertaken, they made no difficulty 
 about giving him the valuable articles that were 
 in their custody. In the first place, they 
 brought out what appeared to be a small purse, 
 made of deer skin, and curiously embroidered, 
 and bade him be sure and keep it safe. This 
 was the magic wallet. The Nymphs next pro- 
 duced a pair of shoes, or slippers, or sandals, 
 with a nice little pair of wings at the heel of 
 each. 
 
 "Put them on, Perseus," said Quicksilver. 
 "You will find yourself as light-heeled as you 
 
4 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 can desire for the remainder of our jour- 
 ney." 
 
 So Perseus proceeded to put one of the slippers 
 on, while he laid the other on the ground by his 
 side. Unexpectedly, however, this other slip- 
 per spread its wings, fluttered off the ground, 
 and would probably have flown away, if Quick- 
 silver had not made a leap, and luckily caught 
 it in the air. 
 
 " Be more careful," said he, as he gave it back 
 to Perseus. "It would frighten the birds up 
 aloft, if they should see a flying slipper amongst 
 them." 
 
 When Perseus had got on both of these won- 
 derful slippers, he was altogether too buoyant 
 to tread on earth. Making a step or two, lo and 
 behold! upward he popped into the air, high 
 above the heads of Quicksilver and the Nymphs, 
 and found it very difficult to clamber down 
 again. Winged slippers, and all such high- 
 flying contrivances, are seldom quite easy to 
 manage until one grows a little accustomed to 
 them. Quicksilver laughed at his companion's 
 involuntary activity, and told him that he must 
 not be in so desperate a hurry, but must wait 
 for the invisible helmet. 
 
 The good-natured Nymphs had the helmet, 
 with its dark tuft of waiving plumes, all in readi- 
 ness to put upon his head. And now there 
 happened about as wonderful an incident as 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 41 
 
 anything that I have yet told you. The instant 
 before the helmet was put on, there stood 
 Perseus, a beautiful young man, with golden 
 ringlets and rosy cheeks, the crooked sword by 
 his side, and the brightly polished shield upon 
 his arm, — a figure that seemed all made up of 
 courage, sprightliness, and glorious light. But 
 when the helmet had descended over his white 
 brow, there was no longer any Perseus to be 
 seen! Nothing but empty air! Even the hel- 
 met, that covered him with its invisibility, had 
 vanished ! 
 
 "Where are you, Perseus?" asked Quick- 
 silver. 
 
 "Why, here, to be sure!" answered Perseus, 
 very quietly, although his voice seemed to come 
 out of the transparent atmosphere. "Just 
 where I was a moment ago. Don't you see 
 me?" 
 
 "No, indeed!" answered his friend. "You 
 are hidden under the helmet. But, if I cannot 
 see you, neither can the Gorgons. Follow me, 
 therefore, and we will try your dexterity in 
 using the winged slippers." 
 
 With these words, Quicksilver's cap spread 
 its wings, as if his head were about to fly away 
 from his shoulders; but his whole figure rose 
 lightly into the air, and Perseus followed. By 
 the time they had ascended a few hundred feet, 
 the young man began to feel what a delightful 
 
42 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 thing it was to leave the dull earth so far beneath 
 him, and to be able to flit about like a 
 bird. 
 
 It was now deep night. Perseus looked 
 
 upward, and saw the round, bright, silvery moon, 
 and thought that he should desire nothing better 
 than to soar up thither, and spend his life there. 
 Then he looked downward again, and saw the 
 earth, with its seas and lakes, and the silver 
 courses of its rivers, and its snowy mountain- 
 peaks, and the breadth of its fields, and the 
 dark cluster of its woods, and its cities of white 
 marble; and, with the moonshine sleeping over 
 the whole scene, it was as beautiful as the moon 
 or any star could be. And, among other objects, 
 he saw the island of Seriphus, where his dear 
 mother was. Sometimes he and Quicksilver 
 approached a cloud, that, at a distance, looked 
 as if it were made of fleecy silver; although, when 
 they plunged into it, they found themselves 
 chilled and moistened with gray mist. So swift 
 was their flight, however, that, in an instant, 
 they emerged from the cloud into the moon- 
 light again. Once, a high-soaring eagle flew 
 right against the invisible Perseus. The bravest 
 sights were the meteors, that gleamed suddenly 
 out, as if a bonfire had been kindled in the 
 sky, and made the moonshine pale for as much 
 as a hundred miles around them. 
 
 As the two companions flew onward, Perseus 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 43 
 
 fancied that he could hear the rustle of a gar- 
 ment close by his side; and it was on the side 
 opposite to the one where he beheld Quicksilver, 
 yet only Quicksilver was visible. 
 
 "Whose garment is this," inquired Perseus, 
 " that keeps rustling close beside me in the 
 breeze?" 
 
 "Oh, it is my sister's!" answered Quick- 
 silver. " She is coming along with us, as I told 
 you she would. We could do nothing without 
 the help of my sister. You have no idea how 
 wise she is. She has such eyes, too! Why, 
 she can see you, at this moment, just as dis- 
 tinctly as if you were not invisible; and I'll 
 venture to say, she will be the first to discover 
 the Gorgons." 
 
 By this time, in their swift voyage through 
 the air, they had come within sight of the great 
 ocean, and were soon flying over it. Far beneath 
 them, the waves tossed themselves tumultuously 
 in mid-sea, or rolled a white surf-line upon the 
 long beaches, or foamed against the rocky cliffs, 
 with a roar that was thunderous, in the lower 
 world; although it became a gentle murmur, 
 like the voice of a baby half asleep, before it 
 reached the ears of Perseus. Just then a voice 
 spoke in the air close by him. It seemed to be 
 a woman's voice, and was melodious, though 
 not exactly what might be called sweet, but 
 grave and mild. 
 
44 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Perseus," said the voice, "there are the 
 Gorgons." 
 
 "Where?" exclaimed Perseus. "I cannot 
 see them." 
 
 "On the shore of that island beneath you," 
 replied the voice. " A pebble, dropped from 
 your hand, would strike in the midst of them." 
 
 " I told you she would be the first to discover 
 them," said Quicksilver to Perseus. "And 
 there they are!" 
 
 Straight downward, two or three thousand 
 feet below him, Perseus perceived a small island, 
 with the sea breaking into white foam all around 
 its rocky shore, except on one side, where there 
 was a beach of snowy sand. Pie descended 
 towards it, and, looking earnestly at a cluster 
 or heap of brightness, at the foot of a precipice 
 of black rocks, behold, there were the terrible 
 Gorgons! They lay fast asleep, soothed by the 
 thunder of the sea ; for it required a tumult that 
 would have deafened everybody else to lull 
 such fierce creatures into slumber. The moon- 
 light glistened on their steely scales, and on 
 their golden wings, which drooped idly over 
 the sand. Their brazen claws, horrible to look 
 at, were thrust out, and clutched the wave- 
 beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping 
 Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal 
 all to pieces. The snakes that served them 
 instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep; 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 45 
 
 although, now and then, one would writhe, and 
 lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, 
 emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself sub- 
 side among its sister snakes. 
 
 The Gorgons were more like an awful, gigantic 
 kind of insect, — immense, golden- winged 
 beetles, or dragon-flies, or things of that sort, 
 ■ — at once ugly and beautiful, — than like any- 
 thing else; only that they were a thousand and 
 a million times as big. And, with all this, there 
 was something partly human about them, too. 
 Luckily for Perseus, their faces were completely 
 hidden from him by the posture in which they 
 lay ; for, had he but looked one instant at them, 
 he would have fallen heavily out of the air, an 
 image of senseless stone. 
 
 "Now," whispered Quicksilver, as he hovered 
 by the side of Perseus, — "now is your time to 
 do the deed! Be quick; for, if one of the Gor- 
 gons should awake, you are too late!" 
 
 "Which shall I strike at?" asked Perseus > 
 drawing his sword and descending a little 
 lower. "They all three look alike. All three 
 have snaky locks. Which of the three is 
 Medusa?" 
 
 It must be understood that Medusa was the 
 only one of these dragon-monsters whose head 
 Perseus could possibly cut off. As for the other 
 two, let him have the sharpest sword that ever 
 was forged, and he might have hacked away by 
 
46 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 the hour together, without doing them the 
 least harm. 
 
 " Be cautious," said the calm voice which had 
 before spoken to him. " One of the Gorgons 
 is stirring in her sleep, and is just about to turn 
 over. That is Medusa. Do not look at her! 
 The sight would turn you to stone! Look at 
 the reflection of her face and figure in the bright 
 mirror of your shield." 
 
 Perseus now understood Quicksilver's motive 
 for so earnestly exhorting him to polish his 
 shield. In its surface he could safely look at 
 the reflection of the Gorgon's face. And there 
 it was, — that terrible countenance, — mirrored 
 in the brightness of the shield, with the moon- 
 light falling over it, and displaying all its horror. 
 The snakes, whose venomous natures could 
 not altogether sleep, kept twisting themselves 
 over the forehead. It was the fiercest and most 
 horrible face that ever was seen or imagined, 
 and yet with a strange, fearful, and savage kind 
 of beauty in it. The eyes were closed, and the 
 Gorgon was still in a deep slumber; but there 
 was an unquiet expression disturbing her fea- 
 tures, as if the monster was troubled with an 
 ugly dream. She gnashed her white tusks, and 
 dug into the sand with her brazen claws. 
 
 The snakes, too, seemed to feel Medusa's 
 dream, and to be made more restless by it. They 
 twined themselves into tumultuous knots, 
 
The small, embroidered wallet . . . grew fill al once large enough ge ''' 
 
 to contain Medusa's head 
 
/ 
 
 THE GORGON'S HEAD. 47 
 
 writhed fiercely, and uplifted a hundred hissing 
 heads, without opening their eyes. 
 
 "Now, now!" whispered Quicksilver, who 
 was growing impatient. " Make a dash at the 
 monster ! ' ' 
 
 "But be calm," said the grave, melodious 
 voice, at the young man's side. " Look in your 
 shield, as you fly downward, and take care that 
 you do not miss your first stroke." 
 
 Perseus flew cautiously downward, still keep- 
 ing his eyes on Medusa's face, as reflected in his 
 shield. The nearer he came, the more terrible 
 did the snaky visage and metallic body of the 
 monster grow. At last, when he found himself 
 hovering over her within arm's length, Perseus 
 uplifted his sword, while at the same instant, 
 each separate snake upon the Gorgon's head 
 stretched threateningly upward, and Medusa 
 unclosed her eyes. But she awoke too late. 
 The sword was sharp; the stroke fell like a 
 lightning-flash; and the head of the wicked 
 Medusa tumbled from her body. 
 
 ' ' Admirably done ! ' ' cried Quicksilver. ' ' Make 
 haste, and clap the head into your magic 
 wallet." 
 
 To the astonishment of Perseus, the small, 
 embroidered wallet, which he had hung about 
 his neck, and which had hitherto been no bigger 
 than a purse, grew all at once large enough to 
 contain Medusa's head. As quick as thought, 
 4 
 
48 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 he snatched it up, with the snakes still writhing 
 upon it, and thrust it in. 
 
 "Your task is done," said the calm voice. 
 " Now fly ; for the other Gorgons will do their 
 utmost to take vengeance for Medusa's death." 
 
 It was, indeed, necessary to take flight; for 
 Perseus had not done the deed so quietly but 
 that the clash of his sword, and the hissing of 
 the snakes, and the thump of Medusa's head 
 as it tumbled upon the sea-beaten sand, awoke 
 the other two monsters. There they sat, for 
 an instant, sleepily rubbing their eyes with their 
 brazen fingers, while all the snakes on their 
 heads reared themselves on end with surprise, 
 and with venomous malice against they knew 
 not what. But when the Gorgons saw the 
 scaly carcass of Medusa, headless, and her golden 
 wings all ruffled, and half spread out on the 
 sand, it was really awful to hear what yells and 
 screeches they set up. And then the snakes! 
 They sent forth a hundred-fold hiss, with one 
 consent, and Medusa's snakes answered them 
 out of the magic wallet. 
 
 No sooner were the Gorgons broad awake than 
 they hurtled upward into the air, brandishing 
 their brass talons, gnashing their horrible tusks, 
 and flapping their huge wings so wildly, that 
 some of the golden feathers were shaken out, 
 and floated down upon the shore. And there, 
 perhaps, those very feathers lie scattered, till 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 49 
 
 this day. Up rose the Gorgons, as I tell you, 
 staring horribly about, in hopes of turning 
 somebody to stone. Had Perseus looked them 
 in the face, or had he fallen into their clutches, 
 his poor mother would never have kissed her 
 boy again! But he took good care to turn his 
 eyes another way; and, as he wore the helmet 
 of invisibility, the Gorgons knew not in what 
 direction to follow him ; nor did he fail to make 
 the best use of the winged slippers, by soaring 
 upward a perpendicular mile or so. At that 
 height, when the screams of those abominable 
 creatures sounded faintly beneath him, he made 
 a straight course for the island of Seriphus, 
 in order to carry Medusa's head to King Poly- 
 dectes. 
 
 I have no time to tell you of several marvel- 
 lous things that befell Perseus, on his way 
 homeward; such as his killing a hideous sea- 
 monster, just as it was on the point of devouring 
 a beautiful maiden; nor how he changed an 
 enormous giant into a mountain of stone, merely 
 by showing him the head of the Gorgon. If 
 you doubt this latter story, you may make a 
 voyage to Africa, some day or other, and see the 
 very mountain, which is still known by the 
 ancient giant's name. 
 
 Finally our brave Perseus arrived at the 
 island, where he expected to see his dear mother, 
 But, during his absence, the wicked king had 
 
5 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 treated Danae so very ill that she was compelled 
 to make her escape, and had taken refuge in a 
 temple, where some good old priests were 
 extremely kind to her. These praiseworthy 
 priests, and the kind-hearted fisherman, who 
 had first shown hospitality to Danae and little 
 Perseus when he found them afloat in the chest, 
 seem to have been the only persons on the 
 island who cared about doing right. All the rest 
 of the people, as well as King Polydectes him- 
 self, were remarkably ill-behaved, and deserved 
 no better destiny than that which was now to 
 happen. 
 
 Not finding his mother at home, Perseus went 
 straight to the palace, and was immediately 
 ushered into the presence of the King. Poly- 
 dectes was by no means rejoiced to see him; 
 for he had felt almost certain in his own evil 
 mind, that the Gorgons would have torn the 
 poor young man to pieces, and have eaten him 
 up, out of the way. However, seeing him safely 
 returned, he put the best face he could upon the 
 matter and asked Perseus how he had succeeded. 
 
 "Have you performed your promise?" 
 inquired he. " Have you brought me the head 
 of Medusa with the snaky locks? If not, young 
 man, it will cost you dear; for I must have a 
 bridal present for the beautiful Princess Hippo- 
 damia. and there is nothing else that she would 
 admire so mucn. 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 51 
 
 "Yes, please your Majesty," answered Per- 
 seus, in a quiet way, as if it were no very wonder- 
 ful deed for such a young man as he to perform. 
 " I have brought you the Gorgon's head, snaky 
 locks and all ! " 
 
 "Indeed! Pray let me see it," quoth King 
 Polydectes. " It must be a very curious spec- 
 tacle, if all that travellers tell about it be true!" 
 
 "Your Majesty is in the right," replied 
 Perseus. "It is really an object that will be 
 pretty certain to fix the regards of all who look 
 at it. And, if your Majesty think fit, I would 
 suggest that a holiday be proclaimed, and that 
 all your Majesty's subjects be summoned to 
 behold this wonderful curiosity. Few of them, 
 I imagine, have seen a Gorgon's head before, 
 and perhaps never may again!" 
 
 The king well knew that his subjects were an 
 idle set of reprobates, and very fond of sight- 
 seeing, as idle persons usually are. So he took 
 the young man's advice, and sent out heralds 
 and messengers, in all directions, to blow the 
 trumpet at the street corners, and in the market- 
 places, and wherever two roads met, and 
 summon everybody to court. Thither, accord- 
 ingly, came a great multitude of good-for- 
 nothing vagabonds, all of whom, out of pure 
 love of mischief, would have been glad if Perseus 
 had met with some ill-hap in his encounter with 
 the Gorgons. If there were any better people 
 
52 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 in the island (as I really hope there may have 
 been, although the story tells nothing about any 
 such), they stayed quietly at home, minding 
 their business, and taking care of their little 
 children. Most of the inhabitants, at all events, 
 ran as fast as they could to the palace, and 
 shoved, and pushed, and elbowed one another, 
 in their eagerness to get near a balcony, on 
 which Perseus showed himself, holding the 
 embroidered wallet in his hand. 
 
 On a platform, within full view of the balcony , 
 sat the mighty King Polydectes, amid his evil 
 counsellors, and with his flattering courtiers in 
 a semicircle round about him. Monarch, coun- 
 sellors, courtiers, and subjects, all gazed eagerly 
 towards Perseus. 
 
 "Show us the head! Show us the head!" 
 shouted the people; and there was a fierceness 
 in their cry as if they would tear Perseus to 
 pieces, unless he should satisfy them with what 
 he had to show. " Show us the head of Medusa 
 with the snaky locks ! ' ' 
 
 A feeling of sorrow and pity came over the 
 youthful Perseus. 
 
 "O King Polydectes," cried he, "and ye 
 many people, I am very loath to show you the 
 Gorgon's head!" 
 
 "Ah, the villian and coward!" yelled the 
 people more fiercely than before. " He is 
 making game of us! He has no Gorgon's head! 
 
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 53 
 
 Show us the head, if you have it, or we will take 
 your own head for a football ! ' ' 
 
 The evil counsellors whispered bad advice in 
 the king's ear; the courtiers murmured, with 
 one consent, that Perseus had shown disrespect 
 to their royal lord and master; and the great 
 King Polydectes himself waived his hand, and 
 ordered him, with the stern, deep voice of 
 authority, on his peril, to produce the head. 
 
 " Show me the Gorgon's head, or I will cut 
 off your own!" 
 
 And Perseus sighed. 
 
 "This instant," repeated Polydectes, "or 
 you die!" 
 
 "Behold it, then!" cried Perseus, in a voice 
 like the blast of a trumpet. 
 
 And suddenly, holding up the head, not an 
 eyelid had time to wink before the wicked King 
 Polydectes, his evil counsellors, and all his fierce 
 subjects were no longer anything but the mere 
 images of a monarch and his people. They were 
 all fixed forever, in the look and attitude of that 
 moment! At the first glimpse of the terrible 
 head of Medusa, they whitened into marble! 
 And Perseus thrust the head back into his 
 wallet, and went to tell his dear mother that she 
 need no longer be afraid of the wicked King 
 Polydectes. 
 
TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 "Was not that a very fine story?" asked 
 Eustace. 
 
 "Oh yes, yes!" cried Cowslip, clapping her 
 hands. "And those funny old women, with 
 only one eye amongst them! I never heard of 
 anything so strange." 
 
 "As to their one tooth, which they shifted 
 about," observed Primrose, "there was nothing 
 so very wonderful in that. I suppose it was a 
 false tooth. But think of your turning Mercury 
 into Quicksilver, and talking about his sister. 
 You are too ridiculous ! ' ' 
 
 "And was she not his sister?" asked Eustace 
 Bright. " If I had thought of it sooner, I would 
 have described her as a maiden lady, who kept 
 a pet owl!" 
 
 "Well, at any rate," said Primrose, "your 
 story seems to have driven away the mist." 
 
 And, indeed, while the tale was going forward, 
 the vapors had been quite exhaled from the 
 landscape. A scene was now disclosed which 
 the spectators might almost fancy as having 
 been created since they had last looked in the 
 
 54 
 
TANGLEWOOD PORCH. 55 
 
 direction where it lay. About half a mile dis- 
 tant, in the lap of the valley, now appeared a 
 beautiful lake, which reflected a perfect image 
 of its own wooded banks, and of the summits of 
 the more distant hills. It gleamed in glassy 
 tranquillity, without the trace of a winged breeze 
 on any part of its bosom. Beyond its farther 
 shore was Monument Mountain, in a recumbent 
 position, stretching almost across the valley. 
 Eustace Bright compared it to a huge, headless 
 Sphinx, wrapped in a Persian shawl ; and, indeed, 
 so rich and diversified was the autumnal foliage 
 of its woods, that the simile of the shawl was 
 by no means too high-colored for the reality. 
 In the lower ground, between Tanglewood 
 and the lake, the clumps of trees and 
 borders of woodland were chiefly golden- 
 leaved or dusky brown, as having suffered 
 more from frost than the foliage on the hill- 
 sides. 
 
 Over all this scene there was a genial sunshine, 
 intermingled with a slight haze, which made it 
 unspeakably soft and tender. Oh, what a day 
 of Indian summer was it going to be! The 
 children snatched their baskets, and set forth, 
 with hop, skip, and jump, and all sorts of frisks 
 and gambols; while Cousin Eustace proved his 
 fitness to preside over the party by outdoing all 
 their antics, and performing several new capers, 
 which none of them could ever hope to imitate. 
 
56 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Behind went a good old dog, whose name was 
 Ben. He was one of the most respectable and 
 kind-hearted of quadrupeds, and probably felt 
 it to be his duty not to trust the children away 
 from their parents without some better guardian 
 than this feather-brained Eustace Bright. 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 
 
SHADOW BROOK. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO "THE GOLDEN TOUCH." 
 
 At noon, our juvenile party assembled in a 
 dell, through the depths of which ran a little 
 brook. The dell was narrow, and its steep sides, 
 from the margin of the stream upward, were 
 thickly set with trees, chiefly walnuts and chest- 
 nuts, among which grew a few oaks and maples. 
 In the summer time, the shade of so many clus- 
 tering branches, meeting and intermingling 
 across the rivulet, was deep enough to produce a 
 noontide twilight. Hence came the name of 
 Shadow Brook. But now, ever since autumn 
 had crept into this secluded place, all the dark 
 verdure was changed to gold, so that it really 
 kindled up the dell, instead of shading it. The 
 bright yellow leaves, even had it been a cloudy 
 day, would have seemed to keep the sunlight 
 among them; and enough of them had fallen to 
 strew all the bed and margin of the brook with 
 sunlight, too. Thus the shady nook, where 
 summer had cooled herself, was now the sunniest 
 spot anywhere to be found. 
 
 The little brook ran along over its pathway of 
 gold, here pausing to form a pool, in which 
 
 59 
 
60 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 minnows were darting to and fro; and then it 
 hurried onward at a swifter pace, as if in haste 
 to reach the lake ; and, forgetting to look whither 
 it went, it tumbled over the root of a tree, which 
 stretched quite across its current. You would 
 have laughed to hear how noisily it babbled 
 about this accident. And even after it had run 
 onward, the brook still kept talking to itself, 
 as if it were in a maze. It was wonder-smitten, 
 I suppose, at finding its dark dell so illuminated, 
 and at hearing the prattle and merriment of so 
 many children. So it stole away as quickly as 
 it could, and hid itself in the lake. 
 
 In the dell of Shadow Brook, Eustace Bright 
 and his little friends had eaten their dinner. 
 They had brought plenty of good things from 
 Tanglewood, in their baskets, and had spread 
 them out on the stumps of trees, and on mossy 
 trunks, and had feasted merrily, and made a 
 very nice dinner indeed. After it was over, 
 nobody felt like stirring. 
 
 "We will rest ourselves here," said several of 
 the children, "while Cousin Eustace tells us 
 another of his pretty stories." 
 
 Cousin Eustace had a good right to be tired, 
 as well as the children, for he had performed 
 great feats on that memorable forenoon. Dan- 
 delion, Clover, Cowslip, and Buttercup were 
 almost persuaded that he had winged slippers, 
 like those which the Nymphs gave Perseus; 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 61 
 
 so often had the student shown himself at the 
 tiptop of a nut-tree, when only a moment before 
 he had been standing on the ground. And then, 
 what showers of walnuts had he sent rattling 
 down upon their heads, for their busy little 
 hands to gather into the baskets! In short, 
 he had been as active as a squirrel or a monkey, 
 and now, flinging himself down on the 
 yellow leaves, seemed inclined to take a little 
 rest. 
 
 But children have no mercy nor consideration 
 for anybody's weariness; and if you had but a 
 single breath left, they would ask you to spend 
 it in telling them a story. 
 
 "Cousin Eustace," said Cowslip, "that was a 
 very nice story of the Gorgon's Head. Do you 
 think you could tell us another as good?" 
 
 "Yes, child," said Eustace, pulling the brim 
 of his cap over his eyes, as if preparing for a nap. 
 " I can tell you a dozen, as good or better, if I 
 choose." 
 
 " O Primrose and Periwinkle, do you hear 
 what he says?" cried Cowslip, dancing with 
 delight. " Cousin Eustace is going to tell us a 
 dozen better stories than that about the Gorgon's 
 Head!" 
 
 " I did not promise you even one, you foolish 
 
 little Cowslip!" said Eustace, half pettishly. 
 
 ' However, I suppose you must have it. This 
 
 is the consequence of having earned a reputa- 
 
62 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tion! I wish I were a great deal duller than 
 I am, or that I had never shown half the bright 
 qualities with which nature has endowed me; 
 and then I might have my nap out, in peace and 
 comfort!" 
 
 But Cousin Eustace, as I think I have hinted 
 before, was as fond of telling his stories as the 
 children of hearing them. His mind was in a 
 free and happy state, and took delight in its own 
 activity, and scarcely required any external 
 impulse to set it at work. 
 
 How different is this spontaneous play of the 
 intellect from the trained diligence of maturer 
 years, when toil has perhaps grown easy by long 
 habit, and the day's work may have become 
 essential to the day's comfort, although the 
 rest of the matter has bubbled away! This 
 remark, however, is not meant for the children 
 to hear. 
 
 Without further solicitation, Eustace Bright 
 proceeded to tell the following really splendid 
 story. It had come into his mind as he lay 
 looking upward into the depths of a tree, and 
 observing how the touch of autumn had trans- 
 muted every one of its green leaves into what 
 resembled the purest gold. And this change, 
 which we have all of us witnessed, is as wonder- 
 ful as anything that Eustace told about in the 
 story of Midas. 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 
 
 Once upon a time, there lived a very rich man, 
 and a king besides, whose name was Midas; 
 and he had a little daughter, whom nobody but 
 myself ever heard of, and whose name I either 
 never knew, or have entirely forgotten. So 
 because I love odd names for little girl 5, I choose 
 to call her Marygold. 
 
 This King Midas was fonder of gold than of 
 anything else in the world. He valued his royal 
 crown chiefly because it was composed of that 
 precious metal. If he loved anything better, 
 or half so well, it was the one little maiden who 
 played so merrily around her father's footstool. 
 But the more Midas loved his daughter, the 
 more did he desire and seek for wealth. He 
 thought, foolish man! that the best thing he 
 could possibly do for this dear child would be to 
 bequeath her the immensest pile of yellow, 
 glistening coin, that had ever been heaped 
 together since the world was made. Thus, he 
 gave all his thoughts and all his time to this one 
 purpose. If ever he happened to gaze for an 
 
 5 63 
 
64 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 instant at the gold-tinted clouds of sunset, he 
 wished that they were real gold, and that they 
 could be squeezed safely into his strong box. 
 When little Marygold ran to meet him, with a 
 bunch of buttercups and dandelions, he used to 
 say, " Poh, poh, child! If these flowers were 
 as golden as they look, they would be worth the 
 plucking!" 
 
 And yet, in his earlier days, before he was so 
 entirely possessed of this insane desire for riches, 
 King Midas had shown a great taste for flowers. 
 He had planted a garden, in which grew the 
 biggest and beautifullest and sweetest roses 
 that any mortal ever saw or smelt. These 
 roses were still growing in the garden, as large, 
 as lovely, and as fragrant, as when Midas used 
 to pass whole hours in gazing at them, and inhal- 
 ing their perfume. But now, if he looked a 
 them at all, it was only to calculate how much 
 the garden would be worth if each of the innu- 
 merable rose-petals were a thin plate of gold. 
 And though he once was fond of music (in spite 
 of an idle story about his ears, which were said 
 to resemble those of an ass), the only music for 
 poor Midas, now, was the chink of one coin 
 against another. 
 
 At length (as people always grow more and 
 more foolish, unless they take care to grow wiser 
 and wiser), Midas had got to be so exceedingly 
 unreasonable, that he could scarcely bear to see 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 65 
 
 or touch any object that was not gold. He 
 made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large 
 portion of every day in a dark and dreary apart- 
 ment, under ground, at the basement of his 
 palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. 
 To this dismal hole — for it was little better than 
 a dungeon — Midas betook himself, whenever 
 he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, 
 after carefully locking the door, he would take a 
 bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big as a wash- 
 bowl, or a heavy golden bar, or a peck-measure 
 of gold-dust, and bring them from the obscure 
 corners of the room into the one bright and 
 narrow sunbeam that fell from the dungeon-like 
 window. He valued the sunbeam for no other 
 reason but that his treasure would not shine 
 without its help. And then would he reckon 
 over the coins in the bag; toss up the bar, and 
 catch it as it came down; sift the gold-dust 
 through his fingers; look at the funny image 
 of his own face, as reflected in the burnished 
 circumference of the cup; and whisper to him- 
 self, " O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy 
 man art thou!" But it was laughable to see 
 how the image of his face kept grinning at him, 
 out of the polished surface of the cup. It 
 seemed to be aware of his foolish behavior, and 
 to have a naughty inclination to make fun of 
 him. 
 
 Midas called himself a happy man but felt 
 
66 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 that he was not yet quite so happy as he might 
 be. The very tiptop of enjoyment would never 
 be reached, unless the whole world were to 
 become his treasure-room, and be filled with 
 yellow metal which should be all his own. 
 
 Now, I need hardly remind such wise little 
 people as you are, that in the old, old times, 
 when King Midas was alive, a great many things 
 came to pass, which we should consider won- 
 derful if they were to happen in our own day 
 and country. And, on the other hand, a great 
 many things take place nowadays, which seem 
 not only wonderful to us, but at which the people j 
 of old times would have stared their eyes out. 
 On the whole, I regard our own times as the 
 strangest of the two; but, however that may be, 
 I must go on with my story. 
 
 Midas was enjoying himself in his treasure- 
 room, one day, as usual, when he perceived a 
 shadow fall over the heaps of gold; and, looking 
 suddenly up, what should he behold but the 
 figure of a stranger, standing in the bright and 
 narrow sunbeam! It was a young man, with a 
 cheerful and ruddy face. Whether it was that 
 the imagination of King Midas threw a yellow 
 tinge over everything, or whatever the cause 
 might be, he could not help fancying that the 
 smile with which the stranger regarded him had 
 a kind of golden radiance in it. Certainly, 
 although his figure intercepted the sunshine, 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 67 
 
 there was now a brighter gleam upon all the 
 piled-up treasures than before. Even the remot- 
 est corners had their share of it, and were 
 lighted up, when the stranger smiled, as with 
 tips of flame and sparkles of fire. 
 
 As Midas knew that he had carefully turned 
 the key in the lock, and that no mortal strength 
 could possibly break into his treasure-room, he, 
 of course, concluded that his visitor must be 
 something more than mortal. It is no matter 
 about telling you who he was. In those days 
 when the earth was comparatively a new affair, 
 it was supposed to be often the resort of beings 
 endowed with supernatural power, and who 
 used to interest themselves in the joys and 
 sorrows of men, women, and children, half 
 playfully, and half seriously. Midas had met 
 such beings before now, and was not sorry to 
 meet one of them again. The stranger's aspect, 
 indeed, was so good-humored and kindly, if not 
 beneficent, that it would have been unreason- 
 able to suspect him of intending any mischief. 
 It was far more probable that he came to do 
 Midas a favor. And what could that favor be, 
 unless to multiply his heaps of treasure ? 
 
 The stranger gazed about the room; and 
 when his lustrous smile had glistened upon all 
 the golden objects that were there, he turned 
 again to Midas. 
 
 "You are a wealthy man, friend Midas!" he 
 
68 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 observed. " I doubt whether any other four 
 walls, on earth, contain so much gold as you 
 have contrived to pile up in this room." 
 
 "I have done pretty well, — pretty well,*' 
 answered Midas, in a discontented tone. " But, 
 after all, it is but a trifle, when you consider that 
 it has taken me my whole life to get it together. 
 If one could live a thousand years, he might 
 have time to grow rich!" 
 
 "What!" exclaimed the stranger. "Then 
 you are not satisfied?" 
 
 Midas shook his head. 
 
 "And pray what would satisfy you?" asked 
 the stranger. " Merely for the curiosity of the 
 thing, I should be glad to know." 
 
 Midas paused and meditated. He felt a pre- 
 sentiment that this stranger, with such a golden 
 lustre in his good-humored smile, had come 
 hither with both the power and the purpose of 
 gratifying his utmost wishes. Now, therefore, 
 was the fortunate moment, when he had but 
 to speak, and obtain whatever possible, or 
 seemingly impossible thing, it might come into 
 his head to ask. So he thought, and thought, 
 and thought, and heaped up one golden moun- 
 tain upon another, in his imagination, without 
 being able to imagine them big enough. At last 
 a bright idea occurred to King Midas. It seemed 
 really as bright as the glistening metal which he 
 loved so much. 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 69 
 
 Raising his head, he looked the illustrious 
 stranger in the face. 
 
 "Well, Midas," observed his visitor, "I see 
 that you have at length hit upon something 
 that will satisfy you. Tell me your wish." 
 
 "It is only this," replied Midas. "I am 
 weary of collecting my treasures with so much 
 trouble, and beholding the heap so diminutive, 
 after I have done my best. I wish everything 
 that I touch to be changed to gold!" 
 
 The stranger's smile grew so very broad, that 
 it seemed to fill the room like an outburst of 
 the sun, gleaming into a shadowy dell, where 
 the yellow autumnal leaves — for so looked the 
 lumps and particles of gold — lie strewn in the 
 glow of light. 
 
 "The Golden Touch!" exclaimed he. "You 
 certainly deserve credit, friend Midas, for strik- 
 ing out so brilliant a conception. But are you 
 quite sure that this will satisfy you?" 
 
 " How could it fail?" said Midas. 
 
 " And will you never regret the possession of 
 it?" 
 
 "What could induce me?" asked Midas. "I 
 ask nothing else, to render me perfectly happy." 
 
 "Be it as you wish, then," replied the stran- 
 ger, waving his hand in token of farewell. 
 " To-morrow, at sunrise, you will find yourself 
 gifted with the Golden Touch." 
 
 The figure of the stranger then became exceed- 
 
70 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 ingly bright, and Midas involuntarily closed 
 his eyes. On opening them again, he beheld 
 only one yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all 
 around him, the glistening of the precious metal 
 which he had spent his life in hoarding up. 
 
 Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the 
 story does not say. Asleep or awake, however, 
 his mind was probably in the state of a child's, 
 to whom a beautiful new plaything has been 
 promised in the morning. At any rate, day 
 had hardly peeped over the hills, when King 
 Midas was broad awake, and, stretching his 
 arms out of bed, began to touch the objects that 
 were within reach. He was anxious to prove 
 whether the Golden Touch had really come, 
 according to the stranger's promise. So he 
 laid his finger on a chair by the bedside, and on 
 various other things, but was grievously dis- 
 appointed to perceive that they remained of 
 exactly the same substance as before. Indeed, 
 he felt very much afraid that he had only 
 dreamed about the lustrous stranger, or else 
 that the latter had been making game of him. 
 And what a miserable affair would it be, if, after 
 all his hopes, Midas must content himself with 
 what little gold he could scrape together by 
 ordinary means, instead of creating it by a 
 touch ! 
 
 All this while, it was only the gray of the 
 morning, with but a streak of brightness along 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 71 
 
 the edge of the sky, where Midas could not see it. 
 He lay in a very disconsolate mood, regretting 
 the downfall of his hopes, and kept growing 
 sadder and sadder, -until the earliest sunbeam 
 shone through the window, and gilded the 
 ceiling over his head. It seemed to Midas that 
 this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in 
 rather a singular way on the white covering of 
 the bed. Looking more closely, what was his 
 astonishment and delight, when he found that 
 this linen fabric had been transmuted to what 
 seemed a woven texture of the purest and 
 brightest gold! The Golden Touch had come 
 to him with the first sunbeam! 
 
 Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, 
 and ran about the room, grasping at everything 
 that happened to be in his way. He seized one 
 of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a 
 fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window 
 curtain, in order to admit a clear spectacle of 
 the wonders which he was performing; and the 
 tassel grew heavy in his hand, — a mass of gold. 
 He took up a book from the table. At his first 
 touch, it assumed the appearance of such a 
 splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume as one 
 often meets with, nowadays; but, on running 
 his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a 
 bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the 
 wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He 
 hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enrap- 
 
72 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold 
 cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, 
 although it burdened him a little with its weight. 
 He drew out his handkerchief, which little Mary- 
 gold had hemmed for him. That was likewise 
 gold, with the dear child's neat and pretty stitches 
 running all along the border, in gold thread! 
 
 Somehow or other, this last transformation 
 did not quite please King Midas. He would 
 rather that his little daughter's handiwork 
 should have remained just the same as when she 
 climbed his knee and put it into his hand. 
 
 But it was not worth while to vex himself 
 about a trifle. Midas now took his spectacles 
 from his pocket, and put them on his nose, in 
 order that he might see more distinctly what 
 he was about. In those days, spectacles for 
 common people had not been invented, but 
 were already worn by kings; else, how could 
 Midas have had any? To his great perplexity, 
 however, excellent as the glasses were, he dis- 
 covered that he could not possibly see through 
 them. But this was the most natural thing in 
 the world; for, on taking them off, the trans- 
 parent crystals turned out to be plates of yellow 
 metal, and, of course, were worthless as spec- 
 tacles, though valuable as gold. It struck 
 Midas, as rather inconvenient that, with all his 
 wealth, he could never again be rich enough to 
 own a pair of serviceable spectacles. 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 73 
 
 "It is no great matter, nevertheless," said he 
 to himself, very philosophically. "We cannot 
 expect any great good, without its being accom- 
 panied with some small inconvenience. The 
 Golden Touch is worth the sacrifice of a pair of 
 spectacles, at least, if not of one's very eyesight. 
 My own eyes will serve for ordinary purposes, 
 and little Marygold will soon be old enough to 
 read to me." 
 
 Wise King Midas was so exalted by his good 
 fortune, that the palace seemed not sufficiently 
 spacious to contain him. He therefore went 
 downstairs, and smiled, on observing that the 
 balustrade of the staircase became a bar of bur- 
 nished gold, as his hand passed over it, in his de- 
 scent. He lifted the door-latch (it was brass only 
 a moment ago, but golden when his fingers 
 quitted it), and emerged into the garden. Here, 
 as it happened, he found a great number of beau- 
 tiful roses in full bloom, and others in all the 
 stages of lovely bud and blossom. Very deli- 
 cious was their fragrance in the morning breeze. 
 Their delicate blush was one of the fairest sights 
 in the world; so gentle, so modest, and so full of 
 sweet tranquility, did these roses seem to be. 
 
 But Midas knew a way to make them far 
 more precious, according to his way of thinking, 
 than roses had ever been before. So he took 
 great pains in going from bush to bush, and 
 exercised his magic touch most indefatigably; 
 
74 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 until every individual flower and bud, and even 
 the worms at the heart of some of them, were 
 changed to gold. By the time this good work 
 was completed, King Midas was summoned to 
 breakfast ; and as the morning air had given him 
 an excellent appetite, he made haste back to 
 the palace. 
 
 What was usually a king's breakfast in the 
 days of Midas, I really do not know, and cannot 
 stop now to investigate. To the best of my 
 belief, however, on this particular morning, the 
 breakfast consisted of hot cakes, some nice little 
 brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh boiled eggs, 
 and coffee, for King Midas himself, and a bowl 
 of bread and milk for his daughter Marygold. 
 At all events, this is a breakfast to set before 
 a king; and, whether he had it or not, King 
 Midas could not have had a better. 
 
 Little Marygold had not yet made her appear- 
 ance. Her father ordered her to be called, and, 
 seating himself at table, awaited the child's 
 coming, in order to begin his own breakfast. 
 To do Midas justice, he really loved his daughter, 
 and loved her so much the more this morning 
 on account of the good fortune which had befall- 
 en him. It was not a great while before he 
 heard her coming along the passageway crying 
 bitterly. This circumstance surprised him, 
 because Marygold was one of the cheerfullest 
 little people whom you would see in a summer's 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 75 
 
 day, and hardly shed a thimbleful of tears in 
 a twelvemonth. When Midas heard her sobs, 
 he determined to put little Marygold into better 
 spirits, by an agreeable surprise; so, leaning 
 across the table, he touched his daughter's bowl 
 (which was a China one, with pretty figures 
 all around it), and transmuted it to gleaming 
 gold. 
 
 Meanwhile, Marygold slowly and disconso- 
 lately opened the door, and showed herself with 
 her apron at her eyes, still sobbing as if her heart 
 would break. 
 
 "How now, my little lady!" cried Midas. 
 " Pray what is the matter with you this bright 
 morning ? ' ' 
 
 Marygold, without taking the apron from 
 her eyes, held out her hand, in which was one 
 of the roses which Midas had so recently trans- 
 muted. 
 
 "Beautiful!" exclaimed her father. "And 
 what is there in this magnificent golden rose to 
 make you cry?" 
 
 "Ah, dear father!" answered the child, as 
 well as her sobs would let her; " it is not beauti- 
 ful, but the ugliest flower that ever grew! As 
 soon as I was dressed I ran into the garden to 
 gather some roses for you; because I know you 
 like them, and like them the better when 
 gathered by your little daughter. But, oh dear, 
 dear me! What do you think has happened? 
 
76 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Such a misfortune! All the beautiful roses, 
 that smelled so sweetly and had so many lovely 
 blushes, are blighted and spoilt! They are 
 grown quite yellow, as you see this one, and 
 have no longer any fragrance! What can have 
 been the matter with them?" 
 
 "Poh, my dear little girl, — pray don't cry 
 about it!" said Midas, who was ashamed to 
 confess that he himself had wrought the change 
 which so greatly afflicted her. " Sit down and 
 eat your bread and milk! You will find it easy 
 enough to exchange a golden rose like that 
 (which will last hundreds of years) for an ordin- 
 ary one which would wither in a day." 
 
 "I don't care for such roses as this!" cried 
 Marygold, tossing it contemptuously away. 
 "It has no smell, and the hard petals prick my 
 nose!" 
 
 The child now sat down to table, but was so 
 occupied with her grief for the blighted roses 
 that she did not even notice the wonderful 
 transmutation of her China bowl. Perhaps this 
 was all the better ; for Marygold was accustomed 
 to take pleasure in looking at the queer figures, 
 and strange trees and houses, that were painted 
 on the circumference of the bowl; and these 
 ornaments were now entirely lost in the yellow 
 hue of the metal. 
 
 Midas, meanwhile, had poured out a cup of 
 coffee, and, as a matter of course, the coffee-pot, 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 77 
 
 whatever metal it may have been when he took 
 it up, was gold when he set it down. He thought 
 to himself, that it was rather an extravagant 
 style of splendour, in a king of his simple habits, 
 to breakfast off a service of gold, and began 
 to be puzzled with the difficulty of keeping his 
 treasures safe. The cupboard and the kitchen 
 would no longer be a secure place of deposit for 
 articles so valuable as golden bowls and coffee- 
 pots. 
 
 Amid these thoughts, he lifted a spoonful of 
 coffee to his lips, and, sipping it, was astonished 
 to perceive that, the instant his lips touched 
 the liquid, it became molten gold, and, the next 
 mom3nt, hardened into a lump! 
 
 " Ha!" exclaimed Midas, rather aghast. 
 
 "What is the matter, father?" asked little 
 Marygold, gazing at him, with the tears still 
 standing in her eyes. 
 
 " Nothing, child, nothing! " said Midas. " Eat 
 your milk, before it gets quite cold." 
 
 He took one of the nice little trouts on his 
 plate, and, by way of experiment, touched its 
 tail with his finger. To his horror, it was imme- 
 diately transmuted from an admirably fried 
 brook-trout into a gold-fish, though not one of 
 those gold-fishes which people often keep in 
 glass globes, as ornaments for the parlor. No; 
 but it was really a metallic fish, and looked as 
 if it had been very cunningly made by the nicest 
 
78 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 goldsmith in the world. Its little bones were 
 now golden wires; its fins and tail were thin 
 plates of gold; and there were the marks of the 
 fork in it, and all the delicate, frothy appearance 
 of a nicely fried fish, exactly imitated in metal. 
 A very pretty piece of work, as you may sup- 
 pose; only King Midas, just at that moment, 
 would much rather have had a real trout in his 
 dish than this elaborate and valuable imitation 
 of one. 
 
 "I don't quite see," thought he himself, "how 
 I am to get any breakfast!" 
 
 He took one of the smoking hot cakes, and 
 had scarcely broken it, when, to his cruel morti- 
 fication, though a moment before, it had been 
 of the whitest wheat, it assumed the yellow hue 
 of Indian meal. To say the truth, if it had 
 really been a hot Indian cake, Midas would have 
 prized it a good deal more than he now did, 
 when its solidity and increased weight made him 
 too bitterly sensible that it was gold. Almost 
 in despair, he helped himself to a boiled egg, 
 which immediately underwent a change similar 
 to those of the trout and cake. The egg, indeed, 
 might have been mistaken for one of those 
 which the famous goose, in the story-book was 
 in the habit of laying ; but King Midas was the 
 only goose that had had anything to do with the 
 matter. 
 
 "Well, this is a quandary!" thought he, 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 79 
 
 leaning back in his chair, and looking quite 
 enviously at little Marygold, who was now eating 
 her bread and milk with great satisfaction. 
 " Such a costly breakfast before me, and nothing 
 that can be eaten!" 
 
 Hoping that, by dint of great dispatch, he 
 might avoid what he now felt to be a consider- 
 able inconvenience, King Midas next snatched 
 a hot potato, and attempted to cram it into his 
 mouth, and swallow it in a hurry. But the 
 Golden Touch was too nimble for him. He 
 found his mouth full, not of mealy potato, but 
 of solid metal, which so burnt his tongue that he 
 roared aloud, and, jumping up from the table, 
 began to dance and stamp about the room, both 
 with pain and affright. 
 
 "Father, dear father!" cried little Marygold, 
 who was a very affectionate child, "pray what 
 is the matter? Have you burnt your mouth?" 
 
 "Ah, dear child," groaned Midas, dolefully, 
 " I don't know what is to become of your poor 
 father!" 
 
 And, truly, my dear little folks, did you ever 
 hear of such a pitiable case in all your lives? 
 Here was literally the richest breakfast that 
 could be set before a king, and its very richness 
 made it absolutely good for nothing. The 
 poorest labourer, sitting down to his crust of 
 bread and cup of water, was far better off than 
 King Midas, whose delicate food was really 
 
 6 
 
8o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 worth its weight in gold. And what was to be 
 done? Already, at breakfast, Midas was excess- 
 ively hungry. Would he be less so by dinner- 
 time ? And how ravenous would be his appetite 
 for supper, which must undoubtedly consist 
 of the same sort of indigestible dishes as those 
 now before him! How many days, think you, 
 would he survive a continuance of this rich 
 fare? 
 
 These reflections so troubled wise King Midas, 
 that he began to doubt whether, after all, 
 riches are the one desirable thing in the world, 
 or even the most desirable. But this was only 
 a passing thought. So fascinated was Midas 
 with the glitter of the yellow metal, that he 
 would still have refused to give up the Golden 
 Touch for so paltry a consideration as a break- 
 fast. Just imagine what a price for one meal's 
 victuals! It would have been the same as 
 paying millions and millions of money (and as 
 many millions more as would take forever to 
 reckon up) for some fried trout, an egg, a potato, 
 a hot cake, and a cup of coffee ! 
 
 " It would be quite too dear," thought Midas. 
 
 Nevertheless, so great was his hunger, and 
 the perplexity of his situation, that he again 
 groaned aloud, and very grievously too. Our 
 pretty Marygold could endure it no longer. 
 She sat a moment, gazing at her father, and 
 trying, with all the might of her little wits, to 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 81 
 
 find out what was the matter with him. Then, 
 with a sweet and sorrowful impulse to comfort 
 him, she started from her chair, and, running 
 to Midas, threw her arms affectionately about 
 his knees. He bent down and kissed her. He 
 felt that his little daughter's love was worth a 
 thousand times more than he had gained by the 
 Golden Touch. 
 
 "My precious, precious Marygold!" cried he. 
 
 But Marygold made no answer. 
 
 Alas, what had he done? How fatal was 
 the gift which the stranger bestowed! The 
 moment the lips of Midas touched Marygold's 
 forehead, a change had taken place. Her sweet, 
 rosy face, so full of affection as it had been, 
 assumed a glittering yellow color, with yellow 
 tear-drops congealing on her cheeks. Her beau- 
 tiful brown ringlets look the same tint. 
 Her soft and tender little form grew hard and 
 inflexible within her father's encircling arms. 
 Oh, terrible misfortune! The victim of his 
 insatiable desire for wealth, little Marygold was 
 a human child no longer, but a golden statue! 
 
 Yes, there she was, with the questioning look 
 of love, grief, and pity, hardened into her face. 
 It was the prettiest and most woful sight that 
 ever mortal saw. All the features and tokens 
 of Marygold were there; even the beloved little 
 dimple remained in her golden chin. But, the 
 more perfect was the resemblance, the greater 
 
82 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 was the father's agony at beholding this golden 
 image, which was all that was left him of a 
 daughter. It had been a favorite phrase of 
 Midas, whenever he felt particularly fond of 
 the child, to say that she was worth her weight 
 in gold. And now the phrase had become 
 literally true. And now, at last, when it was 
 too late, he felt how infinitely a warm and 
 tender heart, that loved him, exceeded in value 
 all the wealth that could be piled up betwixt 
 the earth and sky! 
 
 It would be too sad a story, if I were to tell 
 you how Midas, in the fullness of all his gratified 
 desires, began to wring his hands and bemoan 
 himself; and how he could neither bear to look 
 at Marygold nor yet to look away from her. 
 Except when his eyes were fixed on the image, 
 he could not possibly believe that she was 
 changed to gold. But, stealing another glance, 
 there was the precious little figure, with a yellow 
 tear-drop on its yellow cheek, and a look so 
 piteous and tender, that it seemed as if that 
 very expression must needs soften the gold, 
 and make it flesh again. This, however, could 
 not be. So Midas had only to wring his hands, 
 and to wish that he were the poorest man in the 
 wide world, if the loss of all his wealth might 
 bring back the faintest rose-color to his dear 
 child's face. 
 
 While he was in this tumult of despair, he 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 83 
 
 suddenly beheld a stranger standing near the 
 door. Midas bent down his head, without 
 speaking; for he recognised the same figure 
 which had appeared to him the day before, in 
 the treasure-room, and had bestowed on him this 
 disastrous faculty of the Golden Touch. The 
 stranger's countenance still wore a smile, which 
 seemed to shed a yellow lustre all about the 
 room, and gleamed on little Marygold's image, 
 and on the other objects that had been trans- 
 muted by the touch of Midas. 
 
 "Well, friend Midas," said the stranger, 
 "pray how do you succeed with the Golden 
 Touch?" 
 
 Midas shook his head. 
 
 " I am very miserable," said he. 
 
 "Very miserable, indeed!" exclaimed the 
 stranger. "And how happens that? Have I 
 not faithfully kept my promise with you? 
 Have you not everything that your heart 
 desired ? ' ' 
 
 "Gold is not everything," answered Midas. 
 " And I have lost all that my heart really cared 
 for." 
 
 "Ah! So you have made a discovery, since 
 yesterday?" observed the stranger. "Let us 
 see, then. Which of these two things do you 
 think is really worth the most, — the gift of 
 the Golden Touch, or one cup of clear cold 
 water?" 
 
84 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "O blessed water!" exclaimed Midas. "It 
 will never moisten my parched throat again!" 
 
 "The Golden Touch," continued the stranger, 
 "or a crust of bread?" 
 
 "A piece of bread," answered Midas, "is 
 worth all the gold on earth!" 
 
 "The Golden Touch," asked the stranger, 
 "or your own little Marygold, warm, soft, and 
 loving as she was an hour ago ? ' ' 
 
 "Oh my child, my dear child!" cried poor 
 Midas, wringing his hands. " I would not have 
 given that one small dimple in her chin for the 
 power of changing this whole big earth into a 
 solid lump of gold ! ' ' 
 
 "You are wiser than you were, King Midas!" 
 said the stranger, looking seriously at him. 
 "Your own heart, I perceive, has not been 
 entirely changed from flesh to gold. Were it 
 so, your case would indeed be desperate. But 
 you appear to be still capable of understanding 
 that the commonest things, such as lie within 
 everybody's grasp, are more valuable than the 
 riches which so many mortals sigh and struggle 
 after. Tell me, now, do you sincerely desire to 
 rid yourself of this Golden Touch? " 
 
 " It is hateful to me!" replied Midas. 
 
 A fly settled on his nose, but fell immediately 
 to the floor; for it too, had become gold. Midas 
 shuddered. 
 
 "Go, then," said the stranger, "and plunge 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 85 
 
 into the river that glides past the bottom of 
 your garden. Take likewise a vase of the same 
 water, and sprinkle it over any object that you 
 may desire to change back again from gold into 
 its former substance. If you do this in earnest- 
 ness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the 
 mischief which your avarice has occasioned." 
 
 King Midas bowed low; and when he lifted 
 his head, the lustrous stranger had vanished. 
 
 You will easily believe that Midas lost no 
 time in snatching up a great earthen pitcher 
 (but, alas, me! it was no longer earthen after 
 he touched it), and hastening to the river-side. 
 As he scampered along, and forced his way 
 through the shrubbery, it was positively mar- 
 vellous to see how the foliage turned yellow 
 behind him, as if the autumn had been there, 
 and nowhere else. On reaching the river's 
 brink, he plunged headlong in, without waiting 
 so much as to pull off his shoes. 
 
 "Poof! poof! poof!" snorted King Midas, 
 as his head emerged out of the water. "Well; 
 this is really a refreshing bath, and I think it 
 must have quite washed away the Golden 
 Touch. And now for filling my pitcher!" 
 
 As he dipped the pitcher into the water, it 
 gladdened his very heart to see it change from 
 gold into the same good, honest earthen vessel 
 which it had been before he touched it. He 
 was conscious, also, of a change within himself. 
 
86 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 A cold, hard, and heavy weight seemed to have 
 gone out of his bosom. No doubt, his heart had 
 been gradually losing its human substance, and 
 transmuting itself into insensible metal, but 
 had now softened back again into flesh. Per- 
 ceiving a violet, that grew on the bank of the 
 river, Midas touched it with his finger, and 
 was overjoyed to find that the delicate flower 
 retained its purple hue, instead of undergo- 
 ing a yellow blight. The curse of the Golden 
 Touch had, therefore, really been removed from 
 him. 
 
 King Midas hastened back to the palace; and 
 I suppose, the servants knew not what to make 
 of it when they saw their royal master so care- 
 fully bringing home an earthen pitcher of water. 
 But that water, which was to undo all the 
 mischief that his folly had wrought, was more 
 precious to Midas than an ocean of molten 
 gold could have been. The first thing he did, 
 as you need hardly be told, was to sprinkle 
 it by handfuls over the golden figure of little 
 Marygold. 
 
 No sooner did it fall on her than you would 
 have laughed to see how the rosy color came 
 back to the dear child's cheek! and how she 
 began to sneeze and sputter! — and how aston- 
 ished she was to find herself dripping wet, and 
 her father still throwing more water over her ! 
 
 "Pray do not, dear father!" cried she. "See 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 87 
 
 how you have wet my nice frock, which I put on 
 only this morning! " 
 
 For Marygold did not know that she had been 
 a little golden statue; nor could she remember 
 anything that had happened since the moment 
 when she ran with outstretched arms to comfort 
 poor King Midas. 
 
 Her father did not think it necessary to tell 
 his beloved child how veiy foolish he had been, 
 but contented himself with showing how much 
 wiser he had now grown. For this purpose, he 
 led little Marygold into the garden, where he 
 sprinkled all the remainder of the water over 
 the rose-bushes, and with such good effect that 
 above five thousand roses recovered their beau- 
 tiful bloom. There were two circumstances, 
 however, which, as long as he lived, used to put 
 King Midas in mind of the Golden Touch. One 
 was, that the sands of the river sparkled like 
 gold; the other, that little Marygold's hair had 
 now a golden tinge, which he had never observed 
 in it before she had been transmuted by the 
 effect of his kiss. This change of hue was really 
 an improvement, and made Marygold's hair 
 richer than in her babyhood. 
 
 When King Midas had grown quite an old 
 man, and used to trot Marygold's children on 
 his knee, he was fond of telling them this mar- 
 vellous story, pretty much as I have now told it 
 to you. And then he would stroke their glossy 
 
88 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 ringlets, and tell them that their hair, likewise, 
 had a rich shade of gold, which they had 
 inherited from their mother. 
 
 " And to tell you the truth, my precious little 
 folks," quoth King Midas, diligently trotting 
 the children all the while, "ever since that 
 morning, I have hated the very sight of all other 
 gold, save this!" 
 
SHADOW BROOK. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 "Well, children," inquired Eustace, who was 
 very fond of eliciting a definite opinion from 
 his auditors, " did you ever, in all your lives, 
 listen to a better story than this of 'the Golden 
 Touch?'" 
 
 'Why, as to the story of King Midas," said 
 saucy Primrose, " it was a famous one thousands 
 of years before Mr. Eustace Bright came into 
 the world, and will continue to be so as long 
 after he quits it. But some people have what 
 we may call 'The Leaden Touch,' and make 
 everything dull and heavy that they lay their 
 fingers upon." 
 
 " You are a smart child, Primrose, to be not 
 yet in your teens," said Eustace, taken rather 
 aback by the piquancy of her criticism. " But 
 you well know, in your naughty little heart, 
 that I have burnished the old gold of Midas all 
 over anew, and have made it shine as it never 
 shone before. And then that figure of Mary- 
 gold! Do you perceive no nice workmanship 
 
 89 
 
go A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 in that? And how finely I have brought out 
 and deepened the moral! What say you, 
 Sweet Fern, Dandelion, Clover, Periwinkle? 
 Would any of you, after hearing this story, be 
 so foolish as to desire the faculty of changing 
 things to gold?" 
 
 " I should like," said Periwinkle, a girl of ten, 
 "to have the power of turning everything to 
 gold with my right forefinger; but, with my 
 left forefinger, I should want the power of 
 changing it back again, if the first change did 
 not please me. And I know what I would do 
 this very afternoon!" 
 
 "Pray tell me," said Eustace. 
 
 "Why," answered Periwinkle, "I would 
 touch every one of these golden leaves on the 
 trees with my left forefinger, and make them 
 all green again; so that we might have the 
 summer back at once, with no ugly winter in 
 the meantime." 
 
 "O Periwinkle!" cried Eustace Bright, 
 "there you are wrong, and would do a great 
 deal of mischief. Were I Midas, I would make 
 nothing else but just such golden days as these 
 over and over again, all the year throughout. 
 My best thoughts always come a little too late. 
 Why did not I tell you how old King Midas 
 came to America, and changed the dusky 
 autumn, such as it is in other countries, into 
 the burnished beauty which it here puts on? 
 
THE GOLDEN TOUCH. 91 
 
 He gilded the leaves of the great volume of 
 Nature." 
 
 "Cousin Eustace," said Sweet Fern, a good 
 little boy, who was always making particular 
 inquiries about the precise height of giants 
 and the littleness of fairies, "how big was 
 Marygold, and how much did she weigh after 
 she was turned to gold?" 
 
 "She was about as tall as you are," replied 
 Eustace, "and, as gold is very heavy, she 
 weighed at least two thousand pounds, and 
 might have been coined into thirty or forty 
 thousand gold dollars. I wish Primrose were 
 worth half as much. Come, little people, let 
 us clamber out of the dell, and look about us." 
 
 They did so. The sun was now an hour or 
 two beyond its noontide mark, and filled the 
 great hollow of the valley with its western 
 radiance, so that it seemed to be brimming with 
 mellow light, and to spill it over the surrounding 
 hill-sides, like golden wine out of a bowl. It 
 was such a day that you could not help saying 
 of it, "There never was such a day before!" 
 although yesterday was just such a day, and 
 to-morrow will be just such another. Ah, but 
 there are very few of them in a twelvemonth's 
 circle! It is a remarkable peculiarity of these 
 October days, that each of them seems to 
 occupy a great deal of space, although the sun 
 rises rather tardily at that season of the year, 
 
92 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 and goes to bed, as little children ought, at 
 sober six o'clock, or even earlier. We cannot, 
 therefore, call the days long; but they appear, 
 somehow or other, to make up for their shortness 
 by their breadth; and when the cool night 
 comes, we are conscious of having enjoyed a 
 big armful of life, since morning. 
 
 "Come, children, come!" cried Eustace 
 Bright. "More nuts, more nuts, more nuts! 
 Fill all your baskets; and, at Christmas time, 
 I will crack them for you, and tell you beautiful 
 stories!" 
 
 So away they went; all of them in excellent 
 spirits, except little Dandelion, who, I am sorry 
 to tell you, had been sitting on a chestnut-bur, 
 and was stuck as full as a pincushion of its 
 prickles. Dear me, how uncomfortably he must 
 have felt! 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 
 
TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO "THE PARADISE OP 
 CHILDREN." 
 
 The golden days of October passed away, as so 
 many other Octobers have, and brown Novem- 
 ber likewise and the greater part of chill Decem- 
 ber, too. At last came merry Christmas, and 
 Eustace Bright along with it, making it all the 
 merrier by his presence. And, the day aftei 
 his arrival from college, there came a mighty 
 snow-storm. Up to this time, the winter had 
 held back, and had given us a good many mild 
 days, which were like smiles upon its wrinkled 
 visage. The grass had kept itself green, in 
 sheltered places, such as the nooks of southern 
 hill-slopes, and along the lee of the stone fences. 
 It was but a week or two ago, and since the 
 beginning of the month, that the children had 
 found a dandelion in bloom, on the margin of 
 Shadow Brook, where it glides out of the dell. 
 
 But no more green grass and dandelions now. 
 This was such a snow-storm! Twenty miles 
 of it might have been visible at once, between 
 the windows of Tanglewood and the dome of 
 
 95 
 
96 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Taconic, had it been possible to see so far among 
 the eddying drifts, that whitened all the atmos- 
 phere. It seemed as if the hills were giants, 
 and were flinging monstrous handfuls of snow 
 at one another, in their enormous sport. So thick 
 were the fluttering snow-flakes, that even the 
 trees, midway down the valley, were hidden by 
 them, the greater part of the time. Sometimes, 
 it is true, the little prisoners of Tanglewood 
 could discern a dim outline of Monument Moun- 
 tain, and the smooth whiteness of the frozen lake 
 at its base, and the black or gray tracts of wood- 
 land in the nearer landscape. But these were 
 merely peeps through the tempest. 
 
 Nevertheless, the children rejoiced greatly in 
 the snow-storm. They had already made ac- 
 quaintance with it, by tumbling heels over head 
 into its highest drifts, and flinging snow at one 
 another, as we have just fancied the Berkshire 
 mountains to be doing. And now they had 
 come back to their spacious play-room, which 
 was as big as the great drawing-room, and was 
 lumbered with all sorts of playthings, large and 
 small. The biggest was a rocking-horse that 
 looked like a real pony; and there was a whole 
 family of wooden, waxen, plaster, and china 
 dolls, besides rag-babies; and blocks enough to 
 build Bunker Hill Monument, and nine-pins, 
 and balls, and humming-tops, and battledores, 
 and grace-sticks, and skipping-ropes, and more 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 97 
 
 of such valuable property than I could tell of 
 in a printed page. But the children liked the 
 snow-storm better than them all. It suggested 
 so many brisk enjoyments for to-morrow, and 
 all the remainder of the winter. The sleigh- 
 ride; the slides down hill into the valley; the 
 snow-images that were to be shaped out; the 
 snow-fortresses that were to be built; and the 
 snowballing to be carried on! 
 
 So the little folks blessed the snow-storm, and 
 were glad to see it come thicker, and thicker, and 
 watched hopefully the long drift that was piling 
 itself up in the avenue, and was already higher 
 than any of their heads. 
 
 "Why, we shall be blocked up till spring!" 
 cried they, with the hugest delight. "What a 
 pity that the house is too high to be quite 
 covered up! The little red house, down yonder, 
 will be buried up to its eaves." 
 
 " You silly children, what do you want of 
 more snow?" asked Eustace, who, tired of 
 some novel that he was skimming through, 
 had strolled into the play-room. " It has done 
 mischief enough already by spoiling the only 
 skating that I could hope for through winter. 
 We shall see nothing more of the lake till April ; 
 and this was to have been my first day upon it! 
 Don't you pity me, Primrose?" 
 
 "Oh, to be sure 1 ." answered Primrose, 
 laughing. "But, for your comfort, we will 
 
98 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 listen to another of your old stories, such as you 
 told us under the porch, and down in the hollow, 
 by Shadow Brook. Perhaps I shall like them 
 better now, when there is nothing to do, than 
 while there were nuts to be gathered, and beau- 
 tiful weather to enjoy." 
 
 Hereupon, Periwinkle, Clover, Sweet Fern, 
 and as many others of the little fraternity and 
 cousinhood as were still at Tanglewood, gathered 
 about Eustace, and earnestly besought him for 
 a story. The student yawned, stretched him- 
 self, and then, to the vast admiration of the 
 small people, skipped three times back and 
 forth over the top of a chair, in order, as he 
 explained to them, to set his wits in motion. 
 
 "Well, well, children," said he, after these 
 preliminaries, "since you insist, and Primrose 
 has set her heart upon it, I will see what can be 
 done for you. And, that you may know what 
 happy days there were before snow-storms 
 came into fashion, I will tell you a story of the 
 oldest of all old times, when the world was as 
 new as Sweet Fern's bran new humming-top. 
 There was then but one season in the year, and 
 that was the delightful summer; and but one 
 age for mortals, and that was childhood." 
 
 " I never heard of that before," said Primrose. 
 
 "Of course, you never did," answered Eus- 
 tace. " It shall be a story of what nobody but 
 myself ever dreamed of, — a Paradise of children, 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 99 
 
 — and how, by the naughtiness of just such a 
 little imp as Primrose here, it all came to 
 nothing." 
 
 So Eustace Bright sat down in the chair which 
 he had just been skipping over, took Cowslip 
 upon his knee, ordered silence throughout the 
 auditory, and began a story about a sad naughty 
 child, whose name was Pandora, and about her 
 playfellow, Epimetheus. You may read it, 
 word for word, in the pages that come next. 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 
 
 Long, long ago, when this old world was in its 
 tender infancy, there was a child, named Epime- 
 theus, who never had either father or mother; 
 and, that he might not be lonely, another child, 
 fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent 
 from a far country, to live with him, and be 
 his playfellow and helpmate. Her name was 
 Pandora. 
 
 The first thing that Pandora saw, when she 
 entered the cottage where Epimetheus dwelt, 
 was a great box. And almost the first ques- 
 tion which she put to him, after crossing the 
 threshold, was this, — 
 
 "Epimetheus, what have you in that box?" 
 
 "My dear little Pandora," answered Epime- 
 theus, " that is a secret, and you must be kind 
 enough not to ask any questions about it. The 
 box was left here to be kept safely, and I do 
 not myself know what it contains." 
 
 "But who gave it to you?" asked Pandora, 
 "And where did it come from?" 
 
 "That is a secret, too," replied Epimetheus. 
 
 "How provoking!" exclaimed Pandora, 
 
 ioo 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 101 
 
 pouting her lip. "I wish the great ugly box 
 were out of the way ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, come, don't let us think of it any 
 more," cried Epimetheus. "Let us run out of 
 doors, and have some nice play with the other 
 children." 
 
 It is thousands of years since Epimetheus 
 and Pandora were alive; and the world, nowa- 
 days, is a very different sort of thing from what 
 it was in their time. Then everybody was a 
 child. They needed no fathers and mothers 
 to take care of the children; because there was 
 no danger, nor trouble of any kind, and no 
 clothes to be mended, and there was always 
 plenty to eat and drink. Whenever a child 
 wanted his dinner, he found it growing on a 
 tree ; and, if he looked at the tree in the morning, 
 he could see the expanding blossom of that 
 night's supper; or, at eventide, he saw the 
 tender bud of to-morrow's breakfast. It was 
 a very pleasant life indeed. No labor to be done, 
 no tasks to be studied; nothing but sports 
 and dances, and sweet voices of children talking, 
 or carolling like birds, or gushing out in merry 
 laughter, throughout the livelong day. 
 
 What was most wonderful of all, the children 
 never quarrelled among themselves; neither 
 had they any crying fits; nor, since time first 
 began, had a single one of these little mortals 
 ever gone apart into a corner, and sulked. Oh, 
 
102 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 what a good time was that to be alive in ? The 
 truth is, those ugly little winged monsters, 
 called Troubles, which are now almost as numer- 
 ous as mosquitoes, had never yet been seen 
 on the earth. It is probable that the very 
 greatest disquietude which a child had ever 
 experienced was Pandora's vexation at not 
 being able to discover the secret of the myste- 
 rious box. 
 
 This was at first only the faint shadow of a 
 Trouble ; but, every day, it grew more and more 
 substantial, until, before a great while, the 
 cottage of Epimetheus and Pandora was less 
 sunshiny than those of the other children. 
 
 "Whence can the box have come?" Pandora 
 continually kept saying to herself and to Epime- 
 theus, "And what in the world can be inside of 
 it?" 
 
 " Always talking about this box! " said Epime- 
 theus, at last; for he had grown extremely 
 tired of the subject. " I wish, dear Pandora, 
 you would try to talk of something else. Come, 
 let us go and gather some ripe figs, and eat 
 them under the trees, for our supper. And I 
 know a vine that has the sweetest and juiciest 
 grapes you ever tasted." 
 
 "Always talking about grapes and figs!" 
 cried Pandora, pettishly. 
 
 "Well, then," said Epimetheus, who was a 
 very good-tempered child, like a multitude of 
 
// was a very pleasant life indeed 
 
 Page 101 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 103 
 
 children in those days, " let us run out and have 
 a merry time with our playmates." 
 
 " I am tired of merry times, and don't care if 
 I never have any more!" answered our pettish 
 little Pandora. " And, besides, I never do have 
 any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with 
 thinking about it all the time. I insist upon 
 your telling me what is inside of it." 
 
 "As I have already said, fifty times over, I 
 do not know!" replied Epimetheus, getting a 
 little vexed. " How, then, can I tell you what 
 is inside?" 
 
 "You might open it," said Pandora, looking 
 sideways at Epimetheus, " and then we could 
 see for ourselves." 
 
 "Pandora, what are you thinking of?" 
 exclaimed Epimetheus. 
 
 And his face expressed so much horror at the 
 idea of looking into a box, which had been 
 confided to him on the condition of his never 
 opening it, that Pandora thought it best not to 
 suggest it any more. Still, however, she could 
 not help thinking and talking about the box. 
 
 " At least," said she, "you can tell me how it 
 came here." 
 
 "It was left at the door," replied Epimetheus, 
 " just before you came, by a person who looked 
 very smiling and intelligent, and who could 
 hardly forbear laughing as he put it down. He 
 was dressed in an odd kind of a cloak, and had 
 
io 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 on a cap that seemed to be made partly of 
 feathers, so that it looked almost as if it had 
 wings." 
 
 "What sort of a staff had he?" asked Pan- 
 dora. 
 
 "Oh, the most curious staff you ever saw!" 
 cried Epimetheus. " It was like two serpents 
 twisting around a stick, and was carved so 
 naturally, that I, at first, thought the serpents 
 were alive." 
 
 "I know him," said Pandora, thoughtfully. 
 " Nobody else has such a staff. It was Quick- 
 silver; and he brought me hither, as well as the 
 box. No doubt he intended it for me; and, 
 most probably, it contains pretty dresses for 
 me to wear, or toys for you and me to play with, 
 or something very nice for us both to eat ! ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps so," answered Epimetheus, turning 
 away. " But until Quicksilver comes back and 
 tells us so, we have neither of us any right to lift 
 the lid of the box." 
 
 "What a dull boy he is!" muttered Pandora, 
 as Epimetheus left the cottage. " I do wish he 
 had a little more enterprise!" 
 
 For the first time since her arrival, Epime- 
 theus had gone out without asking Pandora to 
 accompany him. He went to gather figs and 
 grapes by himself, or to seek whatever amuse- 
 ment he could find, in other society than his 
 little playfellow's. He was tired to death of 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 105 
 
 hearing about the box, and heartily wished that 
 Quicksilver, or whatever was the messenger's 
 name, had left it at some other child's door, 
 where Pandora would never have set eyes on 
 it. So perse veringly as she did babble about 
 this one thing! The box, the box, and nothing 
 but the box! It seemed as if the box were 
 bewitched, and as if the cottage were not big 
 enough to hold it, without Pandora's continu- 
 ally stumbling over it, and making Epimetheus 
 stumble over it likewise, and bruising all four of 
 their shins. 
 
 Well, it was really hard that poor Epimetheus 
 should have a box in his ears from morning till 
 night ; especially as the little people of the earth 
 were so unaccustomed to vexations, in those 
 happy days, that they knew not how to deal with 
 them. Thus, a small vexation made as much 
 disturbance then, as a far bigger one would in 
 our own times. 
 
 After Epimetheus was gone, Pandora stood 
 gazing at the box. She had called it ugly, above 
 a hundred times; but, in spite of all that she 
 had said against it, it was positively a very 
 handsome article of furniture, and would have 
 been quite an ornament to any room in which 
 it should be placed. It was made of a beautiful 
 kind of wood, with dark and rich veins spread- 
 ing over its surface, which was so highly polished 
 that little Pandora could see her face in it. As 
 
106 A WONDER-BOOK 
 
 the child had no other looking-glass, it is odd 
 that she did not value the box, merely on this 
 account. 
 
 The edges and corners of the box were carved 
 with most wonderful skill. Around the margin 
 there were figures of graceful men and women, 
 and the prettiest children ever seen, reclining 
 or sporting amid a profusion of flowers and 
 foliage; and these various objects were so 
 exquisitely represented, and were wrought 
 together in such harmony, that flowers, foliage, 
 and human beings seemed to combine into a 
 wreath of mingled beauty. But here and there, 
 peeping forth from behind the carved foliage, 
 Pandora once or twice fancied that she saw a 
 face not so lovely, or something or other that 
 was disagreeable, and which stole the beauty 
 out of all the rest. Nevertheless, on looking 
 more closely, and touching the spot with her 
 finger, she could discover nothing of the kind. 
 Some face, that was really beautiful, had been 
 made to look ugly by her catching a sideway 
 glimpse at it. 
 
 The most beautiful face of all was done in 
 what is called high relief, in the centre of the 
 lid. There was nothing else, save the dark, 
 smooth richness of the polished wood, and this 
 one face in the centre, with a garland of flowers 
 about its brow. Pandora had looked at this 
 face a great many times, and imagined that the 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 107 
 
 mouth could smile if it liked, or be grave when 
 it chose, the same as any living mouth. The 
 features, indeed, all wore a very lively and rather 
 mischievous expression, which looked almost as 
 if it needs must burst out of the carved lips, and 
 utter itself in words. 
 
 Had the mouth spoken, it would probably 
 have been something like this: 
 
 "Do not be afraid, Pandora! What harm 
 can there be in opening the box? Never mind 
 that poor, simple Epimetheus! You are wiser 
 than he, and have ten times as much spirit. 
 Open the box, and see if you do not find some- 
 thing very pretty!" 
 
 The box, I had almost forgotten to say, was 
 fastened; not by a lock, nor by any other such 
 contrivance, but by a very intricate knot of gold 
 ccrd. There appeared to be no end to this knot, 
 and no beginning. Never was a knot so cun- 
 ningly twisted, nor with so many ins and outs, 
 which roguishly defied the skilfullest fingers to 
 disentangle them. And yet, by the very diffi- 
 culty that there was in it, Pandora was the more 
 tempted to examine the knot, and just see how 
 it was made. Two or three times, already, she 
 had stooped over the box, and taken the knot 
 between her thumb and forefinger, but without 
 positively trying to undo it. 
 
 "I really believe," said she to herself, "that 
 I begin to see how it was done. Nay, perhaps 
 
108 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 I could tie it up again, after undoing it. There 
 would be no harm in that, surely. Even Epime- 
 theus would not blame me for that. I need 
 not open the box, and should not, of course, 
 without the foolish boy's consent, even if the 
 knot were untied." 
 
 It might have been better for Pandora if she 
 had had a little work to do, or anything to 
 employ her mind upon, so as not to be so con- 
 stantly thinking of this one object. But chil- 
 dren led so easy a life, before any Troubles came 
 into the world, that they had really a great deal 
 too much leisure. They could not be forever 
 playing at hide-and-seek among the flower- 
 shrubs, or at blind-man's-buff with garlands 
 over their eyes, or at whatever other games 
 had been found out, while Mother Earth was 
 in her babyhood. When life is all short, toil 
 is the real play. There was absolutely nothing 
 to do. A little sweeping and dusting about the 
 cottage, I suppose, and the gathering of fresh 
 flowers (which were only too abundant every- 
 where), and arranging them in vases, — and 
 poor little Pandora's day's work was over. And 
 then, for the rest of the day, there was the box! 
 
 After all, I am not quite sure that the box was 
 not a blessing to her in its way. It supplied 
 her with such a variety of ideas to think of, and 
 to talk about, whenever she had anybody to 
 listen! When she was in good humour, she 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 109 
 
 could admire the bright polish of its sides, and 
 the rich border of beautiful faces and foliage 
 that ran all around it. Or, if she chanced to be 
 ill-tempered, she could give it a push, or kick it 
 with her naughty little foot. And many a kick 
 did the box — (but it was a mischievous box, as 
 we shall see, and deserved all it got) — many a 
 kick did it receive. But certain it is, if it had 
 not been for the box, our active-minded little 
 Pandora would not have known half so well 
 how to spend her time as she now did. 
 
 For it was really an endless employment to 
 guess what was inside. What could it be, 
 indeed? Just imagine, my little hearers, how 
 busy your wits would be, if there were a great 
 box in the house, which, as you might have 
 reason to suppose, contained something new 
 and pretty for your Christmas or New Year's 
 gifts. Do you think that you should be less 
 curious than Pandora? If you were left alone 
 with the box, might you not feel a little tempted 
 to lift the lid? But you would not do it. Oh, 
 fie! No, no! Only, if you thought there were 
 toys in it, it would be so very hard to let slip 
 an opportunity of taking just one peep! I 
 know not whether Pandora expected any toys; 
 for none had yet begun to be made, probably, 
 in those days, when the world itself was one 
 great plaything for the children that dwelt upon 
 it. But Pandora was convinced that there 
 
no A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 was something very beautiful and valuable in 
 the box; and therefore she felt just as anxious 
 to take a peep as any of these little girls, here 
 around me, would have felt. And, possibly, a 
 little more so; but of that I am not quite so 
 certain. 
 
 On this particular day, however, which we 
 have so long been talking about, her curiosity 
 grew so much greater than it usually was, that, 
 at last, she approached the box. She was more 
 than half determined to open it, if she could. 
 Ah, naughty Pandora! 
 
 First, however, she tried to lift it. It was 
 heavy; quite too heavy for the slender strength 
 of a child, like Pandora. She raised one end 
 of the box a few inches from the floor, and let 
 it fall again, with a pretty loud thump. A 
 moment afterwards, she almost fancied that 
 she heard something stir inside of the box. She 
 applied her ear as closely as possible, and lis- 
 tened. Positively, there did seem to be a kind 
 of stifled murmur, within! Or was it merely 
 the singing in Pandora's ears? Or could it be 
 the beating of her heart? The child could not 
 quite satisfy herself whether she had heard 
 anything on no. But, at all events, her curiosity 
 was stronger than ever. 
 
 As she drew back her head, her eyes fell upon 
 the knot of gold cord. 
 
 "It must have been a very ingenious person 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN, in 
 
 who tied this knot," said Pandora to herself. 
 " But I think I could untie it nevertheless. I 
 am resolved, at least, to find the two ends of the 
 cord." 
 
 So she took the golden knot in her fingers, and 
 pried into its intricacies as sharply as she could. 
 Almost without intending it, or quite knowing 
 what she was about, she was soon busily engaged 
 in attempting to undo it. Meanwhile, the 
 bright sunshine came through the open window ; 
 as did likewise the merry voices of the children, 
 playing at a distance, and perhaps the voice of 
 Epimetheus among them. Pandora stopped 
 to listen. What a beautiful day it was ! Would 
 it not be wiser, if she were to let the troublesome 
 knot alone, and think no more about the box, 
 but run and join her little play-fellows, and be 
 happy ? 
 
 All this time, however, her fingers were half 
 unconsciously busy with the knot; and happen- 
 ing to glance at the flower-wreathed face on 
 the lid of the enchanted box, she seemed to 
 perceive it slyly grinning at her. 
 
 "That face looks very mischievous," thought 
 Pandora. " I wonder whether it smiles because 
 I am doing wrong! I have the greatest mind 
 in the world to run away!" 
 
 But just then, by the merest accident, she 
 gave the knot a kind of twist, which produced 
 a wonderful result. The gold cord untwined 
 
ii2 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 itself, as if by magic, and left the box without a 
 fastening. 
 
 "This is the strangest thing I ever knew!" 
 said Pandora. "What will Epimetheus say? 
 And how can I possibly tie it up again ? ' ' 
 
 She made one or two attempts to restore the 
 knot, but soon found it quite beyond her skill. 
 It had disentangled itself so suddenly that she 
 could not in the least remember how the strings 
 had been doubled into one another; and when 
 she tried to recollect the shape and appearance 
 of the knot, it seemed to have gone entirely out 
 of her mind. Nothing was to be done, therefore, 
 but to let the box remain as it was until Epime- 
 theus should come in. 
 
 "But," said Pandora, "when he finds the 
 knot untied, he will know that I have done it. 
 How shall I make him believe that I have not 
 looked into the box?" 
 
 And then the thought came into her naughty 
 little heart, that, since she would be suspected 
 of having looked into the box, she might just 
 as well do so at once. Oh, very naughty and 
 very foolish Pandora! You should have 
 thought only of doing what was right, and of 
 leaving undone what was wrong, and not of 
 what your playfellow Epimetheus would have 
 said or believed. And so perhaps she might, 
 if the enchanted face on the lid of the box had 
 not looked so bewitchingly persuasive at her, 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 113 
 
 and if she had not seemed to hear, more dis- 
 tinctly than before, the murmur of small 
 voices within. She could not tell whether it 
 was fancy or no; but there was quite a little 
 tumult of whispers in her ear — or else it was 
 her curiosity that whispered, — 
 
 "Let us out, dear Pandora, — pray let us out! 
 We will be such nice pretty playfellows for you! 
 Only let us out!" 
 
 "What can it be?" thought Pandora. "Is 
 there something alive in the box? Well! — 
 yes! — I am resolved to take just one peep! 
 Only one peep; and then the lid shall be shut 
 down as safely as ever! There cannot possibly 
 be any harm in just one little peep!" 
 
 But it is now time for us to see what Epime- 
 theus was doing. 
 
 This was the first time, since his little play- 
 mate had come to dwell with him, that he had 
 attempted to enjoy any pleasure in which she 
 did not partake. But nothing went right; nor 
 was he nearly so happy as on other days. He 
 could not find a sweet grape or a ripe fig (if 
 Epimetheus had a fault, it was a little too much 
 fondness for figs) ; or, if ripe at all, they were 
 over-ripe, and so sweet as to be cloying. There 
 was no mirth in his heart, such as usually made 
 his voice gush out, of its own accord, and swell 
 the merriment of his companions. In short, he 
 grew so uneasy and discontented, that the other 
 
ii 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 children could not imagine what was the matter 
 with Epimetheus. Neither did he himself know 
 what ailed him, any better than they did. For 
 you must recollect that, at the time we are 
 speaking of, it was everybody's nature and 
 constant habit to be happy. The world had 
 not yet learned to be otherwise. Not a single 
 soul or body, since these children were first sent 
 to enjoy themselves on the beautiful earth, had 
 ever been sick or out of sorts. 
 
 At length, discovering that, somehow or other, 
 he had put a stop to all the play, Epimetheus 
 judged it best to go back to Pandora, who was 
 in a humor better suited to his own. But, with 
 a hope of giving her pleasure, he gathered some 
 flowers, and made them into a wreath, which 
 he meant to put upon her head. The flowers 
 were very lovely, — roses, and lilies, and orange- 
 blossoms, and a great many more, which left a 
 trail of fragrance behind, as Epimetheus carried 
 them along; and the wreath was put together 
 with as much skill as could reasonably be 
 expected of a boy. The fingers of little girls, it 
 has always appeared to me, are the fittest to 
 twine flower- wreaths ; but boys could do it, in 
 those days, rather better than they can now. 
 
 And here I must mention that a great black 
 cloud had been gathering in the sky, for some 
 time past, although it had not yet overspread 
 the sun. But, just as Epimetheus reached the 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 115 
 
 cottage door, this cloud began to intercept the 
 sunshine, and thus to make a sudden and sad 
 obscurity. 
 
 He entered softly; for he meant, if possible, 
 to steal behind Pandora, and fling the wreath 
 of flowers over her head, before she should be 
 aware of his approach. But, as it happened 
 there was no need of his treading so very lightly. 
 He might have trod as heavily as he pleased, 
 — as heavily as a grown man, — as heavily, 
 I was going to say, as an elephant, — without 
 much probability of Pandora's hearing his 
 footsteps. She was too intent upon her pur- 
 pose. At the moment of his entering the 
 cottage, the naughty child had put her hand 
 to the lid, and was on the point of opening the 
 mysterious box. Epimetheus beheld her. If 
 he had cried out, Pandora would probably have 
 withdrawn her hand, and the fatal mystery 
 of the box might never have been known. 
 
 But Epimetheus himself, although he said 
 very little about it, had his own share of curi- 
 osity to know what was inside. Perceiving 
 that Pandora was resolved to find out the secret, 
 he determined that his playfellow should not 
 be the only wise person in the cottage. And 
 if there were anything pretty or valuable in the 
 box, he meant to take half of it to himself. 
 Thus, after all his sage speeches to Pandora 
 about restraining her curiosity, Epimetheus 
 
n6 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 turned out to be quite as foolish, and nearly 
 as much in fault, as she. So whenever we 
 blame Pandora for what happened, we must 
 not forget to shake our heads at Epimetheus 
 likewise. 
 
 As Pandora raised the lid, the cottage grew 
 very dark and dismal; for the black cloud had 
 now swept quite over the sun, and seemed to 
 have buried it alive. There had, for a little 
 while past, been a low growling and muttering, 
 which all at once broke into a heavy peal of 
 thunder. But Pandora, heeding nothing of all 
 this, lifted the lid nearly upright, and looked 
 inside. It seemed as if a sudden swarm of 
 winged creatures brushed past her, taking flight 
 out of the box, while, at the same instant, she 
 heard the voice of Epimetheus, with a lament- 
 able tone, as if he were in pain. 
 
 "Oh, I am stung!" cried he. "I am stung! 
 Naughty Pandora! why have you opened this 
 wicked box ? ' ' 
 
 Pandora let fall the lid, and, starting up, 
 looked about her to see what had befallen 
 Epimetheus. The thunder-cloud had so dark- 
 ened the room that she could not very clearly 
 discern what was in it. But she heard a dis- 
 agreeable buzzing, as if a great many huge flies, 
 or gigantic mosquitoes, or those insects which 
 we call dor-bugs, and pinching- dogs, were 
 darting about. And, as her eyes grew more 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 117 
 
 accustomed to the imperfect light, she saw a 
 crowd of ugly little shapes, with bats' wings, 
 looking abominably spiteful, and armed with 
 terribly long stings in their tails. It was one of 
 these that had stung Epimetheus. Nor was it 
 a great while before Pandora herself began to 
 scream, in no less pain and affright than her 
 playfellow, and making a vast deal more hubbub 
 about it. An odious little monster had settled 
 on her forehead, and would have stung her 
 I know not how deeply, if Epimetheus had not 
 run and brushed it away. 
 
 Now, if you wish to know what these ugly 
 things might be, which had made their escape 
 out of the box, I must tell you that they were 
 the whole family of earthly Troubles. There 
 were evil Passions; there were a great many 
 species of Cares ; there were more than a hun- 
 dred and fifty Sorrows; there were Diseases 
 in a vast number of miserable and painful 
 shapes; there were more kinds of Naughtiness 
 than it would be of any use to talk about. In 
 short, everything that has since afflicted the 
 souls and bodies of mankind had been shut up 
 in the mysterious box, and given to Epimetheus 
 and Pandora to be kept safely, in order that 
 the happy children of the world might never 
 be molested by them. Had they been faithful 
 to their trust, all would have gone well. No 
 grown person would ever have been sad, nor 
 
n8 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 any child have had cause to shed a single tear 
 from that hour until this moment. 
 
 But — and you may see by this how a wrong 
 act of any one mortal is a calamity to the whole 
 world — by Pandora's lifting the lid of that 
 miserable box, and by the fault of Epimetheus 
 too, in not preventing her, these Troubles have 
 obtained a foothold among us, and do not seem 
 very likely to be driven away in a hurry. For 
 it was impossible, as you will easily guess, that 
 the two children should keep the ugly swarm in 
 their own little cottage. On the contrary, the 
 first thing that they did was to fling open the 
 doors and windows, in hopes of getting rid of 
 them; and, sure enough, away flew the winged 
 Troubles all abroad, and so pestered and tor- 
 mented the small people, everywhere about, that 
 none of them so much as smiled for many days 
 afterwards. And, what was very singular, all the 
 flowers and dewy blossoms on earth, not one of 
 which had hitherto faded, now began to droop 
 and shed their leaves, after a day or two. The 
 children, moreover, who before seemed immortal 
 in their childhood, now grew older, day by day, 
 and came soon to be youths and maidens, and 
 men and women by and by, and aged people, 
 before they dreamed of such a thing. 
 
 Meanwhile, the naughty Pandora, and hardly 
 less naughty Epimetheus, remained in their 
 cottage. Both of them had been grievously 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 119 
 
 stung, and were in a good deal of pain, which 
 seemed the more intolerable to them, because 
 it was the very first pain that had ever been 
 felt since the world began. Of course, they 
 were entirely unaccustomed to it, and could 
 have no idea what it meant. Besides all this, 
 they were in exceedingly bad humor, both 
 with themselves and with one another. In 
 order to indulge it to the utmost, Epimetheus 
 sat down sullenly in a corner with his back 
 towards Pandora; while Pandora flung herself 
 upon the floor and rested her head on the fatal 
 and abominable box. She was crying bitterly, 
 and sobbing as if her heart would break. 
 
 Suddenly there was a gentle little tap on the 
 inside of the lid. 
 
 "What can that be?" cried Pandora, lifting 
 her head. 
 
 But either Epimetheus had not heard the tap, 
 or was too much out of humor to notice it. At 
 any rate, he made no answer. 
 
 "You are very unkind," said Pandora, sob- 
 bing anew, "not to speak to me!" 
 
 Again the tap! It sounded like the tiny 
 knuckles of a fairy's hand, knocking lightly and 
 playfully on the inside of the box. 
 
 "Who are you?" asked Pandora, with a little 
 of her former curiosity. "Who are you, inside 
 of this naughty box?" 
 
 A sweet little voice spoke from within, — 
 
i2o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Only lift the lid, and you shall see." 
 
 "No, no," answered Pandora, again begin- 
 ning to sob, " I have had enough of lifting the 
 lid! You are inside of the box, naughty crea- 
 ture, and there you shall stay! There are 
 plenty of your ugly brothers and sisters already 
 flying about the world. You need never think 
 that I shall be so foolish as to let you out! " 
 
 She looked towards Epimetheus, as she 
 spoke, perhaps expecting that he would com- 
 mend her for her wisdom. But the sullen boy 
 only muttered that she was wise a little too late. 
 
 "Ah," said the sweet little voice again, "you 
 had much better let me out. I am not like 
 those naughty creatures that have stings in 
 their tails. They are no brothers and sisters 
 of mine, as you would see at once, if you were 
 only to get a glimpse of me. Come, come, my 
 pretty Pandora! I am sure you will let me 
 out!" 
 
 And, indeed, there was a kind of cheerful 
 witchery in the tone, that made it almost impos- 
 sible to refuse anything which this little voice 
 asked. Pandora's heart had insensibly grown 
 lighter, at every word that came from within 
 the box. Epimetheus, too, though still in the 
 corner, had turned half round, and seemed to 
 be in rather better spirits than before. 
 
 " My dear Epimetheus," cried Pandora, "have 
 you heard this little voice?" 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 121 
 
 " Yes, to be sure I have," answered he, but in 
 no very good-humor as yet. " And what of it ? " 
 
 " Shall I lift the lid again?" asked Pandora. 
 
 "Just as you please," said Epimetheus. 
 "You have done so much mischief already, 
 that perhaps you may as well do a little more. 
 One other Trouble, in such a swarm as you have 
 set adrift about the world, can make no very 
 great difference." 
 
 "You might speak a little more kindly!" 
 murmured Pandora, wiping her eyes. 
 
 "Ah, naughty boy!" cried the little voice 
 within the box, in an arch and laughing tone. 
 " He knows he is longing to see me. Come, 
 my dear Pandora, lift up the lid. I am in a 
 great hurry to comfort you. Only let me have 
 some fresh air, and you shall soon see that 
 matters are not quite so dismal as you think 
 them!" 
 
 "Epimetheus," exclaimed Pandora, "come 
 what may, I am resolved to open the box!" 
 
 "And, as the lid seems very heavy," cried 
 Epimetheus, running across the room, " I will 
 help you!" 
 
 So, with one consent, the two children again 
 lifted the lid. Out flew a sunny and smiling 
 little personage, and hovered about the room, 
 throwing a light wherever she went. Have 
 you never made the sunshine dance into dark 
 corners, by reflecting it from a bit of looking- 
 
122 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 glass? Well, so looked the winged cheerfulness 
 of this fairy-like stranger, amid the gloom of 
 the cottage. She flew to Epimetheus, and laid 
 the least touch of her finger on the inflamed spot 
 where the Trouble had stung him, and imme- 
 diately the anguish of it was gone. Then she 
 kissed Pandora on the forehead, and her hurt 
 was cured likewise. 
 
 After performing these good offices, the bright 
 stranger fluttered sportively over the children's 
 heads, and looked so sweetly at them, that they 
 both began to think it not so very much amiss 
 to have opened the box, since, otherwise, their 
 cheery guest must have been kept a prisoner 
 among those naughty imps with stings in their 
 tails. 
 
 "Pray, who are you, beautiful creature?" 
 inquired Pandora. 
 
 "I am to be called Hope!" answered the 
 sunshiny figure. "And because I am such a 
 cheery little body, I was packed into the box, 
 to make amends to the human race for that 
 swarm of ugly Troubles which was destined to 
 be let loose among them. Never fear! we shall 
 do pretty well in spite of them all." 
 
 "Your wings are colored like the rainbow!" 
 exclaimed Pandora. "How very beautiful!" 
 
 "Yes, they are like the rainbow," said Hope, 
 "because, glad as my nature is, I am partly 
 made of tears as well as smiles." 
 
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN. 123 
 
 "And will you stay with us," asked Epime- 
 theus, "forever and ever?" 
 
 "As long as you need me," said Hope, with 
 her pleasant smile, — " and that will be as long 
 as you live in the world, — I promise never to 
 desert you. There may come times and sea- 
 sons, now and then, when you will think that 
 I have utterly vanished. But again, and again, 
 and again, when perhaps you least dream of it, 
 you shall see the glimmer of my wings on the 
 ceiling of your cottage. Yes, my dear children, 
 and I know something very good and beautiful 
 that is to be given you hereafter! " 
 
 " Oh tell us," they exclaimed, — "tell us what 
 it is!" 
 
 "Do not ask me," replied Hope, putting her 
 finger on her rosy mouth. " But do not des- 
 pair, even if it should never happen while you 
 live on this earth. Trust in my promise, for it 
 is true." 
 
 "We do trust you!" cried Epimetheus and 
 Pandora, both in one breath. 
 
 And so they did; and not only they, but so 
 has everybody trusted Hope, that has since 
 been alive. And to tell you the truth, I cannot 
 help being glad — (though, to be sure, it was an 
 uncommonly naughty thing for her to do) — 
 but I cannot help being glad that our foolish 
 Pandora peeped into the box. No doubt — no 
 doubt — the Troubles are still flying about the 
 
124 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 world, and have increased in multitude, rather 
 than lessened, and are a very ugly set of imps, 
 and carry most venomous stings in their tails. 
 I have felt them already, and expect to feel 
 them more, as I grow older. But then that 
 lovely and lightsome little figure of Hope! 
 What in the world could we do without her? 
 Hope spiritualizes the earth; Hope makes it 
 always new; and, even in the earth's best and 
 brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the 
 shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter! 
 
 
TANGLEWOOD PLAY-ROOM. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 " Primrose," asked Eustace, pinching her ear, 
 "how do you like my little Pandora? Don't 
 you think her the exact picture of yourself? 
 But you would not have hesitated half so long 
 about opening the box." 
 
 "Then I should have been well punished for 
 my naughtiness," retorted Primrose, smartly; 
 " for the first thing to pop out, after the lid was 
 lifted, would have been Mr. Eustace Bright, in 
 the shape of a Trouble." 
 
 "Cousin Eustace," said Sweet Fern, "did 
 the box hold all the trouble that has ever come 
 into the world?" 
 
 ' ' Every mite of it ! " answere d Eustace . ' ' This 
 very snow-storm, which has spoiled my skating, 
 was packed up there." 
 
 "And how big was the box?" asked Sweet 
 Fern. 
 
 "Why, perhaps three feet long!" said Eus- 
 tace, " two feet wide, and two feet and a half 
 high." 
 
 "Ah," said the child, "you are making fun 
 of me, Cousin Eustace! I know there is not 
 
 125 
 
126 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 trouble enough in the world to fill such a great 
 box as that. As for the snow-storm, it is no 
 trouble at all, but a pleasure; so it could not 
 have been in the box." 
 
 " Hear the child!" cried Primrose, with an 
 air of superiority. " How little he knows about 
 the troubles of this world! Poor fellow! He 
 will be wiser when he has seen as much of life 
 as I have." 
 
 So saying, she began to skip the rope. 
 
 Meantime, the day was drawing towards its 
 close. Out of doors the scene certainly looked 
 dreary. There was a gray drift, far and wide, 
 through the gathering twilight; the earth was 
 as pathless as the air; and the bank of snow 
 over the steps of the porch proved that nobody 
 had entered or gone out for a good many hours 
 past. Had there been only one child at the 
 window of Tanglewood, gazing at this wintry 
 prospect, it would perhaps have made him sad. 
 But half a dozen children together, though they 
 cannot quite turn the world into a paradise, 
 may defy old Winter and all his storms to put 
 them out of spirits. Eustace Bright, moreover, 
 on the spur of the moment, invented several 
 new kinds of play, which kept them all in a roar 
 of merriment till bedtime, and served for the 
 next stormy day besides. 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 
 
TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO "THE THREE GOLDEN 
 APPLES." 
 
 The snow-storm lasted another day ; but what 
 became of it afterwards, I cannot possibly 
 imagine. At any rate, it entirely cleared away 
 during the night; and when the sun arose the 
 next morning, it shone brightly down on as 
 bleak a tract of hill-country, here in Berkshire, 
 as could be seen anywhere in the world. The 
 frost-work had so covered the window-panes 
 that it was hardly possible to get a glimpse at 
 the scenery outside. But, while waiting for 
 breakfast, the small populace of Tanglewood 
 had scratched peep-holes with their finger-nails, 
 and saw with vast delight that — unless it were 
 one or two bare patches on a precipitous hill- 
 side, or the gray effect of the snow, intermingled 
 with the black pine forest — all nature was as 
 white as a sheet. How exceedingly pleasant! 
 And, to make all the better, it was cold enough 
 to nip one's nose short off! If people have but 
 life enough in them to bear it, there is nothing 
 that so raises the spirits, and makes the blood 
 
 129 
 
i 3 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 ripple and dance so nimbly, like a brook down 
 the slope of a hill, as a bright, hard frost. 
 
 No sooner was breakfast over, than the whole 
 party, well muffled in furs and woollens, floun- 
 dered forth into the midst of the snow. Well, 
 what a day of frosty sport was this! They 
 slid down hill into the valley, a hundred times, 
 nobody knows how far; and, to make it all the 
 merrier, upsetting their sledges, and tumbling 
 head over heels, quite as often as they came 
 safely to the bottom. And, once, Eustace 
 Bright took Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, and Squash- 
 Blossom, on the sledge with him, by way of 
 insuring a safe passage; and down they went, 
 full speed. But, behold, half-way down, the 
 sledge hit against a hidden stump, and flung 
 all four of its passengers into a heap; and, on 
 gathering themselves up there was no little 
 Squash-Blossom to be found! Why, what 
 could have become of the child? And while 
 they were wondering and staring about, up 
 started Squash-Blossom out of a snow-bank, 
 with the reddest face you ever saw, and looking 
 as if a large scarlet flower had suddenly sprouted 
 up in mid winter. Then there was a great 
 laugh. 
 
 When they had grown tired of sliding down 
 hill, Eustace set the children to digging a cave 
 in the biggest snow-drift that they could find. 
 Unluckily, just as it was completed, and the 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 131 
 
 party had squeezed themselves into the hollow, 
 down came the roof upon their heads, and 
 buried every soul of them alive! The next 
 moment, up popped all their little heads out of 
 the ruins, and the tall student's head in the 
 midst of them, looking hoary and venerable 
 with the snow-dust they had got amongst his 
 brown curls. And then, to punish Cousin Eus- 
 tace for advising them to dig such a tumble- 
 down cavern, the children attacked him in a 
 body, and so bepelted him with snowballs that 
 he was fain to take to his heels. 
 
 So he ran away, and went into the woods, and 
 thence to the margin of Shadow Brook, where 
 he could hear the streamlet grumbling along, 
 under great over-hanging banks of snow and 
 ice, which would scarcely let it see the light of 
 day. There were adamantine icicles glittering 
 around all its little cascades. Thence he strolled 
 to the shore of the lake, and beheld a white 
 untrodden plain before him, stretching from 
 his own feet to the foot of Monument Mountain. 
 And, it being now almost sunset, Eustace 
 thought that he had never beheld anything so 
 fresh and beautiful as the scene. He was glad 
 that the children were not with him; for their 
 lively spirits and tumble-about activity would 
 quite have chased away his higher and graver 
 mood, so that he would merely have been merry 
 (as he had already been, the whole day long), 
 
1 32 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 and would not have known the loveliness of the 
 winter sunset among the hills. 
 
 When the sun was fairly down, our friend 
 Eustace went home to eat his supper. After 
 the meal was over, he betook himself to the 
 study, with a purpose, I rather imagine, to 
 write an ode, or two or three sonnets, or verses 
 of some kind or other, in praise of the purple 
 and golden clouds which he had seen around 
 the setting sun. But before he had hammered 
 out the very first rhyme, the door opened, and 
 Primrose and Periwinkle made their appearance. 
 
 "Go away, children! I can't be troubled 
 with you now!" cried the student, looking over 
 his shoulder, with the pen beween his fingers. 
 "What in the world do you want here? I 
 thought you were all in bed ! ' ' 
 
 " Hear him, Periwinkle, trying to talk like a 
 grown man!" said Primrose. "And he seems 
 to forget that I am now thirteen years old, and 
 may sit up almost as late as I please. But 
 Cousin Eustace, you must put off your airs, 
 and come with us to the drawing-room. The 
 children have talked so much about your stories, 
 that my father wishes to hear one of them, in 
 order to judge whether they are likely to do any 
 mischief." 
 
 " Poh, poh, Primrose!" exclaimed the stu- 
 dent, rather vexed. " I don't believe I can tell 
 one of my stories in the presence of grown 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 133 
 
 people. Besides, your father is a classical 
 scholar; not that I am much afraid of his 
 scholarship, neither, for I doubt not it is as 
 rusty as an old case-knife by this time. But 
 then he will be sure to quarrel with the admir- 
 able nonsense that I put into these stories out 
 of my own head, and which makes the great 
 charm of the matter for children, like yourself. 
 No man of fifty, who has read the classical 
 myths in his youth, can possibly understand my 
 merit as a rein ven tor and improver of them." 
 
 "All this may be very true," said Primrose, 
 "but come you must! My father will not open 
 his book, nor will mamma open the piano, till 
 you have given us some of your nonsense, as you 
 very correctly call it. So be a good boy, and 
 come along. 
 
 Whatever he might pretend, the student was 
 rather glad than otherwise, on second thoughts, 
 to catch at the opportunity of proving to Mr. 
 Pringle what an excellent faculty he had in 
 modernizing the myths of ancient times. Until 
 twenty years of age, a young man may, indeed, 
 be rather bashful about showing his poetry and 
 his prose; but, for all that, he is pretty apt to 
 think that these very productions would place 
 him at the tiptop of literature, if once they could 
 be known. Accordingly, without much more 
 resistance, Eustace suffered Primrose and Peri- 
 winkle to drag him into the drawing-room. 
 
i 3 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 It was a large, handsome apartment, with a 
 semi-circular window at one end, in the recess 
 of which stood a. marble copy of Greenough's 
 Angel and Child. On one side of the fireplace 
 there were many shelves of books, gravely but 
 richly bound. The white light of the astral- 
 lamp, and the red glow of the bright coal-fire, 
 made the room brilliant and cheerful ; and before 
 the fire, in a deep arm-chair, sat Mr. Pringle, 
 looking just fit to be seated in such a chair, and 
 in such a room. He was a tall and quite a 
 handsome gentleman, with a bald brow; and 
 was always so nicely dressed, that even Eustace 
 Bright never liked to enter his presence without 
 at least pausing at the threshold to settle his 
 shirt-collar. But now, as Primrose had hold 
 of one of his hands, and Periwinkle of the other, 
 he was forced to make his appearance with a 
 rough-and-tumble sort of look, as if he had 
 been rolling all day in a snow-bank. And so 
 he had. 
 
 Mr. Pringle turned towards the student 
 benignly enough, but in a way that made him 
 feel how uncombed and unbrushed he was, and 
 how uncombed and unbrushed, likewise, were 
 his mind and thoughts. 
 
 "Eustace," said Mr. Pringle with a smile, 
 " I find that you are producing a great sensation 
 among the little public of Tanglewood, by the 
 exericse of your gifts of narrative. Primrose 
 
Then lie sat down on the grass, and told them the story of his life 
 
 PitR? ' I' 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 135 
 
 here, as the little folks choose to call her, and 
 the rest of the children, have been so loud in 
 praise of your stories, that Mrs. Pringle and 
 myself are really curious to hear a specimen. It 
 would be so much the more gratifying to myself 
 as the stories appear to be an attempt to render 
 the fables of classical antiquity into the idiom 
 of modern fancy and feeling. At least, so I 
 judge from a few of the incidents which have 
 come to me at second hand." 
 
 "You are not exactly the auditor that I 
 should have chosen, sir," observed the student, 
 "for fantasies of this nature." 
 
 "Possibly not," replied Mr. Pringle. "I 
 suspect, however, that a young author's most 
 useful critic is precisely the one whom he would 
 be least apt to choose. Pray oblige me, there- 
 fore." 
 
 " Sympathy, methinks, should have some 
 little share in the critic's qualifications," mur- 
 mured Eustace Bright. " However, sir, if you 
 will find patience, I will find stories. But he 
 kind enough to remember that I am addressing 
 myself to the imagination and sympathies of the 
 children, not to your own." 
 
 Accordingly, the student snatched hold of the 
 first theme which presented itself. It was 
 suggested by a plate of apples that he happened 
 to spy on the mantel-piece. 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 
 
 Did you ever hear of the golden apples, that 
 grew in the garden of the Hesperides! Ah, 
 those were such apples as would bring a great 
 price, by the bushel, if any of them could be 
 found growing in the orchards of nowadays! 
 But there is not, I suppose, a graft of that 
 wonderful fruit on a single tree in the wide 
 world. Not so much as a seed of those apples 
 exists any longer. 
 
 And, even in the old, old, half-forgotten 
 times, before the garden of the Hesperides was 
 overrun with weeds, a great many people 
 doubted whether there could be real trees that 
 bore apples of solid gold upon their branches. 
 All had heard of them, but nobody remembered 
 to have seen any. Children, nevertheless, used 
 to listen, open-mouthed, to stories of the golden 
 apple-tree, and resolved to discover it, when 
 they should be big enough. Adventurous young 
 men, who desired to do a braver thing than any 
 of their fellows, set out in quest of this fruit. 
 Many of them returned no more; none of them 
 brought back the apples. No wonder that they 
 found it impossible to gather them! It 
 
 136 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 137 
 
 is said that there was a dragon beneath the 
 tree, with a hundred terrible heads, fifty of 
 which were always on the watch, while the other 
 fifty slept. 
 
 In my opinion it was hardly worth running so 
 much risk for the sake of a solid golden apple. 
 Had the apples been sweet, mellow, and juicy, 
 indeed that would be another matter. There 
 might then have been some sense in trying to 
 get at them, in spite of the hundred-headed 
 dragon. 
 
 But, as I have already told you, it was quite 
 a common thing with young persons, when 
 tired of too much peace and rest, to go in search 
 of the garden of the Hesperides. And once the 
 adventure was undertaken by a hero who had 
 enjoyed very little peace or rest since he came 
 into the world. At the time of which I am 
 going to speak, he was wandering through the 
 pleasant land of Italy, with a mighty club in 
 his hand, and a bow and quiver slung across 
 his shoulders. He was wrapt in the skin of the 
 biggest and fiercest lion that ever had been seen, 
 and which he himself had killed; and though, 
 on the whole, he was kind, and generous, and 
 noble, there was a good deal of the lion's fierce- 
 ness in his heart. As he went on his way, he 
 continually inquired whether that were the right 
 road to the famous garden. But none of the 
 country people knew anything about the matter, 
 
138 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 and many looked as if they would have laughed 
 at the question, if the stranger had not carried 
 so very big a club. 
 
 So he journeyed on and on, still making the 
 same inquiry, until, at last, he came to the 
 brink of a river where some beautiful young 
 women sat twining wreaths of flowers. 
 
 "Can you tell me, pretty maidens," asked 
 the stranger, " whether this is the right way to 
 the garden of the Hesperides?" 
 
 The young women had been having a fine 
 time together, weaving the flowers into wreaths, 
 and crowning one another's heads. And there 
 seemed to be a kind of magic in the touch of 
 their fingers, that made the flowers more fresh 
 and dewy, and of brighter hues, and sweeter 
 fragrance, while they played with them, than 
 even when they had been growing on their 
 native stems. But, on hearing the stranger's 
 question, they dropped all their flowers on the 
 grass, and gazed at him in astonishment. 
 
 "The garden of the Hesperides!" cried one. 
 "We thought mortals had been weary of seek- 
 ing it, after so many disappointments. And 
 pray, adventurous traveller, what do you want 
 there?" 
 
 "A certain king, who is my cousin," replied 
 he, "has ordered me to get him three of the 
 golden apples." 
 
 ''Most of the young men who go in quest of 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 139 
 
 these apples," observed another of the damsels, 
 "desire to obtain them for themselves, or to 
 present them to some fair maiden whom they 
 love Do you, then, love this king, your cousin, 
 so very much?" 
 
 "Perhaps not," replied the stranger, sighing. 
 "He has often been severe and cruel to me. 
 But it is my destiny to obey him." 
 
 "And do you know," asked the damsel who 
 had first spoken, "that a terrible dragon, with 
 a hundred heads, keeps watch under the golden 
 apple-tree?" 
 
 "I know it well," answered the stranger, 
 calmly. " But, from my cradle upwards, it 
 has been my business, and almost my pastime, 
 to deal with serpents and dragons." 
 
 The young women looked to his massive club, 
 and at the shaggy lion's skin which he wore, 
 and likewise at his heroic limbs and figure; 
 and they whispered to each other that the 
 stranger appeared to be one who might reason- 
 ably expect to perform deeds far beyond the 
 might of other men. But, then, the dragon 
 with a hundred heads! What mortal, even 
 if he possessed a hundred lives, could hope to 
 escape the fangs of such a monster? So kind- 
 hearted were the maidens, that they could not 
 bear to see this brave and handsome traveller 
 attempt what was so very dangerous, and 
 devote himself, most probably, to become a 
 
i 4 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 meal for the dragon's hundred ravenous 
 mouths. 
 
 " Go back," cried they all, — "go back to your 
 own home! Your mother, beholding you safe 
 and sound, will shed tears of joy; and what can 
 she do more, should you win ever so great a 
 victory? No matter for the golden apples! 
 No matter for the king, your cruel cousin ! We 
 do not wish the dragon with the hundred heads 
 to eat you up!" 
 
 The stranger seemed to grow impatient at 
 these remonstrances. He carelessly lifted his 
 mighty club, and let it fall upon a rock that lay 
 half buried in the earth, near by. With the 
 force of that idle blow, the great rock was 
 shattered all to pieces. It cost the stranger 
 no more effort to achieve this feat of a giant's 
 strength than for one of the young maidens to 
 touch her sister's rosy cheek with a flower. 
 
 "Do you not believe," said he, looking at 
 the damsels with a smile, " that such a blow 
 would have crashed one of the dragon's hundred 
 heads?" 
 
 Then he sat down on the grass, and told them 
 the story of his life, or as much of it as he could 
 remember from the day when he was first 
 cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he 
 lay there, two immense serpents came gliding 
 over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws 
 to devour him; and he, a baby of a few months 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 141 
 
 old, had griped one of the fierce snakes in each 
 of his little fists, and strangled them to death. 
 When he was but a stripling, he had killed a 
 huge lion, almost as big as the one whose vast 
 and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. 
 The next thing that he had done was to fight 
 a battle with an ugly sort of monster, called 
 a hydra, which had no less than nine heads, and 
 exceedingly sharp teeth in every one. 
 
 " But the dragon of the Hesperides, you 
 know," observed one of the damsels, "has a 
 hundred heads!" 
 
 " Nevertheless," replied the stranger, " I would 
 rather fight two such dragons than a single 
 hydra. For, as fast as I cut off a head, two 
 others grew in its place; and, besides, there 
 was one of the heads that could not possibly be 
 killed, but kept biting as fiercely as ever, long 
 after it was cut off. So I was forced to bury it 
 under a stone, where it is doubtless alive to this 
 very day. But the hydra's body and its eight 
 other heads, will never do any further mischief." 
 
 The damsels, judging that the story was 
 likely to last a good while, had been preparing 
 a repast of bread and grapes, that the stranger 
 might refresh himself in the intervals of his talk. 
 They took pleasure in helping him to this simple 
 food; and, now and then, one of them would 
 put a sweet grape between her rosy lips, lest 
 it should make him bashful to eat alone. 
 
i42 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 The traveller proceeded to tell how he had 
 chased a very swift stag, for a twelvemonth 
 together, without ever stopping to take breath, 
 and had at last caught it by the antlers, and 
 carried it home alive. And he had fought with 
 a very odd race of people, half horses and half 
 men, and had put them all to death, from a 
 sense of duty, in order that their ugly figures 
 might never be seen any more. Besides all 
 this, he took to himself great credit for having 
 cleaned out a stable. 
 
 "Do you call that a wonderful exploit?" 
 asked one of the young maidens, with a smile. 
 "Any clown in the country has done as much!" 
 
 "Had it been an ordinary stable," replied 
 the stranger, " I should not have mentioned it. 
 But this was so gigantic a task that it would 
 have taken me all my life to perform it, if I had 
 not luckily thought of turning the channel of a 
 river through the stable-door. That did the 
 business in a very short time!" 
 
 Seeing how earnestly his fair auditors listened, 
 he next told them how he had shot some mon- 
 strous birds, and had caught a wild bull alive 
 and let him go again, and had tamed a number 
 of very wild horses, and had conquered Hippo- 
 lyta, the warlike queen of the Amazons. He 
 mentioned, likewise, that he had taken off 
 Hippolyta's enchanted girdle, and had given it 
 to the daughter of his cousin, the king. 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 143 
 
 "Was it the girdle of Venus," inquired the 
 prettiest of the damsels, "which makes women 
 beautiful?" 
 
 "No," answered the stranger. "It had for- 
 merly been the sword-belt of Mars; and it can 
 only make the wearer valiant and coura- 
 geous." 
 
 "An old sword-belt!" cried the damsel, 
 tossing her head. "Then I should not care 
 about having it!" 
 
 "You are right," said the stranger. 
 
 Going on with his wonderful narrative, he 
 informed the maidens that as strange an adven- 
 ture as ever happened was, when he fought with 
 Geryon, the six-legged man. This was a very 
 odd and frightful sort of figure, as you may well 
 believe. Any person, looking at his tracks in 
 the sand or snow, would suppose that three 
 sociable companions had been walking along 
 together. On hearing his footsteps at a little 
 distance, it was no more than reasonable to 
 judge that several people must be coming. But 
 it was only the strange man Geryon clattering 
 onward, with his six legs! 
 
 Six legs, and one gigantic body! Certainly, 
 he must have been a very queer monster to look 
 at; and, my stars, what a waste of shoe-leather! 
 
 When the stranger had finished the story of 
 his adventures, he looked around at the atten- 
 tive faces of the maidens. 
 10 
 
144 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 " Perhaps you may have heard of me before," 
 said he, modestly. "My name is Hercules!" 
 
 "We had already guessed it," replied the 
 maidens; "for your wonderful deeds are known 
 all over the world. We do not think it strange, 
 any longer, that you should set out in quest of 
 the golden apples of the Hesperides. Come, 
 sisters, let us crown the hero with flowers!" 
 
 Then they flung beautiful wreaths over his 
 stately head and mighty shoulders, so that the 
 lion's skin was almost entirely covered with 
 roses. They took possession of his ponderous 
 club, and so entwined it about with the bright- 
 est, softest, and most fragrant blossoms, that 
 not a finger's breadth of its oaken substance 
 could be seen. It looked all like a huge bunch 
 of flowers. Lastly, they joined hands, and 
 danced around him, chanting words which 
 became poetry of their own accord, and grew 
 into a choral song, in honor of the illustrious 
 Hercules. 
 
 And Hercules was rejoiced, as any other hero 
 would have been, to know that these fair young 
 girls had heard of the valiant deeds which it 
 had cost him so much toil and danger to achieve. 
 But, still, he was not satisfied. He could not 
 think that what he had already done was worthy 
 of so much honor, while there remained any bold 
 or difficult adventure to be undertaken. 
 
 "Dear maidens," said he, when they paused 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 145 
 
 to take breath, "now that you know my name, 
 will you not tell me how I am to reach the garden 
 of the Hesperides?" 
 
 "Ah! must you go so soon?" they exclaimed. 
 "You — that have performed so many wonders, 
 and spent such a toilsome life — cannot you 
 content yourself to repose a little while on the 
 margin of this peaceful river?" 
 
 Hercules shook his head. 
 
 " I must depart now," said he. 
 
 "We will then give you the best directions 
 we can," replied the damsels. "You must go 
 to the sea-shore, and find out the Old One, and 
 compel him to inform you where the golden 
 apples are to be found." 
 
 "The Old One!" repeated Hercules, laughing 
 at this odd name. "And, pray, who may the 
 Old One be?" 
 
 "Why, the Old Man of the Sea, to be sure!" 
 answered one of the damsels. " He has fifty 
 daughters, whom some people call very beauti- 
 ful ; but we do not think it proper to be acquain- 
 ted with them because they have sea-green 
 hair, and taper away like fishes. You must 
 talk with this Old Man of the Sea. He is a 
 sea-faring person, and knows all about the 
 garden of the Hesperides; for it is situated in 
 an island which he is often in the habit of 
 visiting." 
 
 Hercules then asked whereabouts the Old 
 
146 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 One was most likely to be met with. When 
 the damsels had informed him, he thanked 
 them for all their kindness, — for the bread and 
 grapes with which they had fed him, the lovely 
 flowers with which they had crowned him, and 
 the songs and dances wherewith they had done 
 him honor, — and he thanked them, most of all, 
 for telling him the right way, — and immedi- 
 ately set forth upon his journey. 
 
 But, before he was out of hearing, one of the 
 maidens called after him. 
 
 " Keep fast hold of the Old One, when you 
 catch him!" cried she, smiling, and lifting her 
 finger to make the caution more impressive. 
 " Do not be astonished at anything that may 
 happen. Only hold him fast, and he will tell 
 you what you wish to know." 
 
 Hercules again thanked her, and pursued his 
 way, while the maidens resumed their pleasant 
 labor of making flower- wreaths. They talked 
 about the hero, long after he was gone. 
 
 "We will crown him with the loveliest of our 
 garlands," said they, "when he returns hither 
 with the three golden apples, after slaying the 
 dragon with a hundred heads." 
 
 Meanwhile, Hercules travelled constantly 
 onward, over hill and dale, and through the soli- 
 tary woods. Sometimes he swung his club aloft, 
 and splintered a mighty oak with a downright 
 blow. His mind was so full of the giants and 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 147 
 
 monsters with whom it was the business of his 
 life to fight, that perhaps he mistook the great 
 tree for a giant or a monster. And so eager 
 was Hercules to achieve what he had undertaken, 
 that he almost regretted to have spent so much 
 time with the damsels, wasting idle breath 
 upon the story of his adventures. But thus it 
 always is with persons who are destined to 
 perform great things. What they have already 
 done seems less than nothing. What they have 
 taken in hand to do seems worth toil, danger, 
 and life itself. 
 
 Persons who happened to be passing through 
 the forest must have been affrighted to see him 
 smite the trees with his great club. With but 
 a single blow, the trunk was riven as by the 
 stroke of lightning, and the broad boughs came 
 rustling and crashing down. 
 
 Hastening forward, without ever pausing or 
 looking behind, he by and by heard the sea 
 roaring at a distance. At this sound, he 
 increased his speed, and soon came to a beach, 
 where the great surf -waves tumbled themselves 
 upon the hard sand, in a long line of snowy foam. 
 At one end of the beach, however, there was a 
 pleasant spot, where some green shrubbery 
 clambered up a cliff, making its rocky face look 
 soft and beautiful. A carpet of verdant grass, 
 largely intermixed with sweet-smelling clover, 
 covered the narrow space between the bottom 
 
148 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 of the cliff and the sea. And what should 
 Hercules espy there, but an old man fast 
 asleep ! 
 
 But was it really and truly an old man? 
 Certainly, at first sight, it looked very like one; 
 but, on closer inspection, it rather seemed to 
 be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. 
 For, on his legs, and arms there were scales such 
 as fishes have; he was web-footed and web- 
 fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his 
 long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more 
 the appearance of a tuft of sea- weed than of an 
 ordinary beard. Have you ever seen a stick of 
 timber, that has been long tossed about by the 
 waves, and has got all ovei grown with barnacles, 
 and, at last drifting ashore, seems to have been 
 thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the 
 sea. Well, the old man would have put you 
 in mind of just such a wave-tost spar! But 
 Hercules, the instant he set eyes on this strange 
 figure, was convinced that it could be no other 
 than the Old One, who was to direct him on his 
 way. 
 
 Yes, it was the selfsame Old Man of the Sea 
 whom the hospitable maidens had talked to him 
 about. Thanking his stars for the lucky acci- 
 dent of finding the old fellow asleep, Hercules 
 stole on tiptoe towards him, and caught him by 
 the arm and leg. 
 
 "Tell me," cried he, before the Old One was 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 149 
 
 well awake, "which is the way to the garden of 
 the Hesperides?" 
 
 As you may easily imagine, the Old Man of 
 the Sea awoke in a fright. But his astonish- 
 ment could hardly have been greater than was 
 that of Hercules, the next moment. For, all 
 of a sudden, the Old One seemed to disappear 
 out of his grasp, and he found himself holding 
 a stag by the fore and hind leg! But still he 
 kept fast hold. Then the stag disappeared, 
 and in its stead there was a sea-bird, fluttering 
 and screaming, while Hercules clutched it by 
 the wing and claw ! But the bird could not get 
 away. Immediately afterwards, there was an 
 ugly three-headed dog, which growled and 
 barked at Hercules, and snapped fiercely at 
 the hands by which he held him ! But Hercules 
 would not let him go. In another minute, 
 instead of the three-headed dog, what should 
 appear but Geryon, the six-legged man-monster, 
 kicking at Hercules with five of his legs, in 
 order to get the remaining one at liberty! But 
 Hercules held on. By and by, no Geryon was 
 there, but a huge snake, like one of those which 
 Hercules had strangled in his babyhood, only a 
 hundred times as big ; and it twisted and twined 
 about the hero's neck and body, and threw its 
 tail high into the air, and opened its deadly 
 jaws as if to devour him outright; so that it 
 was really a very terrible spectacle! But 
 
iSo A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Hercules was no whit disheartened, and squeezed 
 the great snake so tightly that he soon began to 
 hiss with pain. 
 
 You must understand that the Old Man of 
 the Sea, though he generally looked so much 
 like the wave-beaten figure-head of a vessel, 
 had the power of assuming any shape he pleased. 
 When he found himself so roughly seized by 
 Hercules, he had been in hopes of putting him 
 into such surprise and terror, by these magical 
 transformations that the hero would be glad 
 to let him go. If Hercules had relaxed his 
 grasp, the Old One would certainly have plunged 
 down to the very bottom of the sea, whence he 
 would not soon have given himself the trouble 
 of coming up, in order to answer any impertinent 
 questions. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred 
 I suppose, would have been frightened out of 
 their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, 
 and would have taken to their heels at once. 
 For, one of the hardest things in this world is, 
 to see the difference between real dangers and 
 imaginary ones. 
 
 But, as Hercules held on so stubbornly, and 
 only squeezed the Old One so much the tighter 
 at every change of shape, and really put him to 
 no small torture, he finally thought it best to 
 reappear in his own figure. So there he was again, 
 a fishy, scaly, web-footed sort of personage with 
 something like a tuft of sea-weed at his chin. 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 151 
 
 "Pray, what do you want with me?" cried 
 the Old One, as soon as he could take breath; 
 for it is quite a tiresome affair to go through so 
 many false shapes. "Why do you squeeze me 
 so hard? Let me go, this moment, or I shall 
 begin to consider you an extremely uncivil 
 person ! ' ' 
 
 "My name is Hercules!" roared the mighty 
 stranger. "And you will never get out of my 
 clutch, until you tell me the nearest way to the 
 garden of the Hesperides ! ' ' 
 
 When the old fellow heard who it was that 
 had caught him, he saw, with half an eye, that 
 it would be necessary to tell him everything 
 that he wanted to know. The Old One was an 
 inhabitant of the sea, you must recollect, and 
 roamed about everywhere, like other sea-faring 
 people. Of course, he had often heard of the 
 fame of Hercules, and of the wonderful things 
 that he was constantly performing in various 
 parts of the earth, and how determined he always 
 was to accomplish whatever he undertook. He 
 therefore made no more attempts to escape, 
 but told the hero how to find the garden of the 
 Hesperides, and likewise warned him of many 
 difficulties which must be overcome, before he 
 could arrive thither. 
 
 "You must go on, thus and thus," said the 
 Old Man of the Sea, after taking the points of 
 the compass, " till you come in sight of a very 
 
152 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tall giant, who holds the sky on his shoulders. 
 And the giant, if he happens to be in the humor, 
 will tell you exactly where the garden of the 
 Hesperides lies." 
 
 "And if the giant happens not to be in the 
 humor," remarked Hercules, balancing his club 
 on the tip of his finger, " perhaps I shall find 
 means to persuade him ! ' ' 
 
 Thanking the Old Man of the Sea, and begging 
 his pardon for having squeezed him so roughly, 
 the hero resumed his journey. He met with a 
 great many strange adventures, which would 
 be well worth your hearing, if I had leisure to 
 narrate them as minutely as they deserve. 
 
 It was in this journey, if I mistake not, that 
 he encountered a prodigious giant, who was 
 so wonderfully contrived by nature, that, every 
 time he touched the earth, he became ten times 
 as strong as ever he had been before. His name 
 was Antaeus. You may see, plainly enough, 
 that it was a very difficult business to fight 
 with such a fellow; for, as often as he got a 
 knock-down blow, up he started again, stronger, 
 fiercer, and abler to use his weapons, than if his 
 enemy had let him alone. Thus, the harder 
 Hercules pounded the giant with his club, the 
 further he seemed from winning the victory. 
 I have sometimes argued with such people, but 
 never fought with one. The only way in which 
 Hercules found it possible to finish the battle, 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 153 
 
 was by lifting Antaeus off his feet into the air, 
 and squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing 
 him, until finally, the strength was quite 
 squeezed out of his enormous body. 
 
 When this affair was finished, Hercules con- 
 tinued his travels, and went to the land of 
 Egypt, where he was taken prisoner, and would 
 have been put to death, if he had not slain the 
 king of the country, and made his escape. 
 Passing through the deserts of Africa, and going 
 as fast as he could, he arrived at last on the 
 shore of the great ocean. And here, unless he 
 could walk on the crests of the billows, it seemed 
 as if his journey must needs be at an end. 
 
 Nothing was before him, save the foaming, 
 dashing, measureless ocean. But, suddenly, as 
 he looked towards the horizon, he saw some- 
 thing, a great way off, which he had not seen the 
 moment before. It gleamed very brightly, 
 almost as you may have beheld the round, 
 golden disk of the sun, when it rises or sets over 
 the edge of the world. It evidently drew 
 nearer; for, at every instant, this wonderful 
 object became larger and more lustrous. At 
 length, it had come so nigh that Hercules dis- 
 covered it to be an immense cup or bowl, made 
 either of gold or burnished brass. How it had 
 got afloat upon the sea is more than I can tell 
 you. There it was, at all events, rolling on the 
 tumultuous billows, which tossed it up and 
 
i 5 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 down, and heaved their foamy tops against its 
 sides, but without ever throwing their spray 
 over the brim. 
 
 "I have seen many giants in my time," 
 thought Hercules, "but never one that would 
 need to drink his wine out of a cup like this!" 
 
 And, true enough, what a cup it must have 
 been! It was as large — as large — but, in short, 
 I am afraid to say how immeasurably large it 
 was. To speak within bounds, it was ten times 
 larger than a great mill-wheel ; and, all of metal 
 as it was, it floated over the heaving surges 
 more lightly than an acorn-cup adown the 
 brook. The waves tumbled it onward, until it 
 grazed against the shore, within a short distance 
 of the spot where Hercules was standing. 
 
 As soon as this happened, he knew what was 
 to be done; for he had not gone through so 
 many remarkable adventures without learning 
 pretty well how to conduct himself, whenever 
 anything came to pass a little out of the common 
 rule. It was just as clear as daylight that this 
 marvellous cup had been set adrift by some 
 unseen power, and guided hitherward, in order 
 to carry Hercules across the sea, on his way to 
 the garden of the Hesperides. Accordingly, 
 without a moment's delay, he clambered over 
 the brim, and slid down on the inside, where, 
 spreading out his lion's skin, he proceeded to 
 take a little repose. He had scarcely rested, 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 155 
 
 until now, since he bade farewell to the damsels 
 on the margin of the river. The waves dashed, 
 with a pleasant and ringing sound, against the 
 circumference of the hollow cup; it rocked 
 lightly to and fro and the motion was so sooth- 
 ing that it speedily rocked Hercules into an 
 agreeable slumber. 
 
 His nap had probably lasted a good while, 
 when the cup chanced to graze against a rock, 
 and, in consequence, immediately resounded 
 and reverberated through its golden or brazen 
 substance, a hundred times as loudly as ever 
 you heard a church-bell. The noise awoke 
 Hercules, who instantly started up and gazed 
 around him, wondering whereabouts he was. 
 He was not long in discovering that the cup had 
 floated across a great part of the sea, and was 
 approaching the shore of what seemed to be an 
 island. And, on that island, what do you think 
 he saw? 
 
 No ; you will never guess it, not if you were 
 to try fifty thousand times! It positively 
 appears to me that this was the most marvellous 
 spectacle that had ever been seen by Hercules, 
 in the whole course of his wonderful travels and 
 adventures. It was a greater marvel than the 
 hydra with nine heads, which kept growing 
 twice as fast as they were cut off; greater than 
 the six-legged man -monster; greater than 
 Antaeus; greater than anything that was ever 
 
156 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 beheld by anybody, before or since the days of 
 Hercules, or than anything that remains to be 
 beheld, by travellers in all time to come. It 
 was a giant! 
 
 But such an intolerably big giant! A giant 
 as tall as a mountain; so vast a giant, that the 
 clouds rested about his midst, like a girdle, and 
 hung like a hoary beard from his chin, and 
 flitted before his huge eyes, so that he could 
 neither see Hercules nor the golden cup in which 
 he was voyaging. And, most wonderful of all, 
 the giant held up his great hands and appeared 
 to support the sky, which, so far as Hercules 
 could discern through the clouds, was resting 
 upon his head! This does really seem almost 
 too much to believe. 
 
 Meanwhile, the bright cup continued to float 
 onward, and finally touched the strand. Just 
 then a breeze wafted away the clouds from 
 before the giant's visage, and Hercules beheld 
 it, with all its enormous features; eyes each of 
 them as big as yonder lake, a nose a mile long, 
 and a mouth of the same width. It was a 
 countenance terrible from its enormity of size, 
 but disconsolate and weary, even as you may 
 see the faces of many people, nowadays, who 
 are compelled to sustain burdens above their 
 strength. What the sky was to the giant, such 
 are the cares of the earth to those who let them- 
 selves be weighed down by them. And when- 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 157 
 
 ever men undertake what is beyond the just 
 measure of their abilities they encounter pre- 
 cisely such a doom as had befallen this poor 
 giant. 
 
 Poor fellow! He had evidently stood there 
 a long while. An ancient forest had been 
 growing and decaying around his feet; and oak 
 trees, of six or seven centuries old, had sprung 
 from the acorn, and forced themselves between 
 his toes. 
 
 The giant now looked down from the far 
 height of his great eyes, and, perceiving, Her- 
 cules, roared out, in a voice that resembled 
 thunder, proceeding out of the cloud that had 
 just flitted away from his face. 
 
 " Who are you, down at my feet there? And 
 whence do you come, in that little cup?" 
 
 "I am Hercules!" thundered back the hero, 
 in a voice pretty nearly or quite as loud as the 
 giant's own. " And I am seeking for the garden 
 of the Hesperides!" 
 
 "Ho! ho! ho!" roared the giant, in a fit of 
 immense laughter. "That is a wise adventure, 
 truly!" 
 
 "And why not?" cried Hercules, getting a 
 little angry at the giant's mirth. " Do you 
 think I am afraid of the dragon with a hundred 
 heads?" 
 
 Just at this time, while they were talking 
 together, some black clouds gathered about the 
 
158 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous 
 storm of thunder and lightning, causing such 
 a pother that Hercules found it impossible to 
 distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeas- 
 urable legs were to be seen, standing up into the 
 obscurity of the tempest; and now and then a 
 momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled 
 in a volume of mist. He seemed to be speaking 
 most of the time ; but his big, deep, rough voice 
 chimed in with the reverberations of the thun- 
 der-claps, and rolled away over the hills, like 
 them. Thus, by talking out of season, the 
 foolish giant expended an incalculable quantity 
 of breath to no purpose; for the thunder spoke 
 quite as intelligibly as he. 
 
 At last, the storm swept over, as suddenly as 
 it had come. And there again was the clear 
 sky, and the weary giant holding it up, and the 
 pleasant sunshine beaming over his vast height, 
 and illuminating it against the background of 
 the sullen thunder-clouds. So far above the 
 shower had been his head, that not a hair of it 
 was moistened by the rain-drops. 
 
 When the giant could see Hercules still stand- 
 ing on the sea-shore, he roared out to him anew. 
 
 " I am Atlas, the mightiest giant in the world! 
 And I hold the sky upon my head!" 
 
 "So I see," answered Hercules. "But, can 
 you show me the way to the garden of the 
 Hesperides?" 
 
And what should Hercules espy there, but an old man fast asleep! 
 
 1'age //v 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 159 
 
 "What do you want there?" asked the giant. 
 
 "I want three of the golden apples," shouted 
 Hercules, "for my cousin, the king." 
 
 "There is nobody but myself," quoth the 
 giant, " that can go to the garden of the Hes- 
 perides, and gather the golden apples. If it 
 were not for this little business of holding up 
 the sky, I would make a half dozen steps across 
 the sea, and get them for you." 
 
 " You are very kind," replied Hercules. " And 
 cannot you rest the sky upon a mountain?" 
 
 "None of them are quite high enough," said 
 Atlas, shaking his head. " But, if you were to 
 take your stand on the summit of that nearest 
 one, your head would be pretty nearly on a level 
 with mine. You seem to be a fellow of some 
 strength. What if you should take my burden 
 on your shoulders, while I do your errand for 
 you?" 
 
 Hercules, as you must be careful to remember, 
 was a remarkably strong man; and though it 
 certainly requires a great deal of muscular 
 power to uphold the sky, yet, if any mortal 
 could be supposed capable of such an exploit 
 he was the one. Nevertheless, it seemed so 
 difficult an undertaking, that, for the first time 
 in his life, he hesitated. 
 
 "Is the sky very heavy?" he inquired. 
 
 " Why, not particularly so, at first, ' ' answered 
 the giant, shrugging his shoulders. "But it 
 11 
 
160 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 gets to be a little burdensome, after a thousand 
 years!" 
 
 "And how long a time," asked the hero, 
 "will it take you to get the golden apples?" 
 
 "Oh, that will be done in a few minutes," 
 cried Atlas. " I shall take ten or fifteen miles 
 at a stride, and be at the garden and back again 
 before your shoulders begin to ache." 
 
 "Well, then," answered Hercules, "I will 
 climb the mountain behind you there, and 
 relieve you of your burden." 
 
 The truth is, Hercules had a kind heart of his 
 own, and considered that he should be doing 
 the giant a favor, by allowing him this oppor- 
 tunity for a ramble. And, besides, he thought 
 that it would be still more for his own glory, if 
 he could boast of upholding the sky than merely 
 to do so ordinary a thing as to conquer a dragon 
 with a hundred heads. Accordingly, without 
 more words, the sky was shifted from the shoul- 
 ders of Atlas, and placed upon those of Hercules 
 
 When this was safely accomplished, the first 
 thing that the giant did was to stretch himself; 
 and you may imagine what a prodigious spec- 
 tacle he was then. Next, he slowly lifted one 
 of his feet out of the forest that had grown up 
 around it; then, the other. Then all at once, 
 he began to caper, and leap, and dance, for joy 
 at his freedom; flinging himself nobody knows 
 how high into the air, and floundering down 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 161 
 
 again with a shock that made the earth tremble. 
 Then he laughed — Ho! ho! ho! — with a thun- 
 derous roar that was echoed from the mountains, 
 far and near, as if they and the giant had been 
 so many rejoicing brothers. When his joy had 
 a little subsided, he stepped into the sea; ten 
 miles at the first stride, which brought him 
 midleg deep; and ten miles at the second, when 
 the water came just above his knees; and ten 
 miles more at the third, by which he was im- 
 mersed nearly to his waist. This was the great- 
 est depth of the sea. 
 
 Hercules watched the giant as he still went 
 onward; for it was really a wonderful sight, 
 this immense human form, more than thirty 
 miles off, half hidden in the ocean, but with his 
 upper half as tall, and misty, and blue, as a 
 distant mountain. At last the gigantic shape 
 faded entirely out of view. And now Hercules 
 began to consider what he should do, in case 
 Atlas should be drowned in the sea, or if he 
 were to be stung to death by the dragon with 
 the hundred heads, which guarded the golden 
 apples of the Hesperides. If any such mis- 
 fortune were to happen, how could he ever get 
 rid of the sky? And, by and by, its weight 
 began already to be a little irksome to his head 
 and shoulders. 
 
 "I really pity the poor giant," thought Her- 
 cules. "If it wearies me so much in ten 
 
i62 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 minutes, how must it have wearied him in a 
 thousand years!" 
 
 my sweet little people, you have no idea 
 what a weight there was in that same blue sky, 
 which looks so soft and aerial above our heads! 
 And there, too, was the bluster of the wind, 
 and the chill and watery clouds, and the blazing 
 sun, all taking their turns to make Hercules 
 uncomfortable! He began to be afraid that 
 the giant would never come back. He gazed 
 wistfully at the world beneath him, and acknowl- 
 edged to himself that it was a far happier kind 
 of life to be a shepherd at the foot of a moun- 
 tain, than to stand on its dizzy summit, and 
 bear up the firmament with his might and main. 
 For, of course, as you will easily understand, 
 Hercules had an immense responsibility on 
 his mind, as well as a weight on his head and 
 shoulders. Why, if he did not stand perfectly 
 still, and keep the sky immovable, the sun would 
 perhaps be put ajar! Or, after nightfall, a 
 great many of the stars might be loosened from 
 their places, and shower down like fiery rain, 
 upon the people's heads! And how ashamed 
 would the hero be, if, owing to his unsteadiness 
 beneath its weight, the sky should crack, and 
 show a great fissure quite across it! 
 
 1 know not how long it was before, to his 
 unspeakable joy, he beheld the huge shape of 
 the giant, like a cloud, on the far-off edge of 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 163 
 
 the sea. At his nearer approach, Atlas held 
 up his hand, in which Hercules could perceive 
 three magnificent golden apples, as big as pump- 
 kins, all hanging from one branch. 
 
 "I am glad to see you again," shouted Her- 
 cules, when the giant was within hearing. " So 
 you have got the golden apples?" 
 
 "Certainly, certainly," answered Atlas; 
 "and very fair apples they are. I took the 
 finest that grew on the tree, I assure you. Ah! 
 it is a beautiful spot, that garden of the Hes- 
 perides. Yes; and the dragon with a hundred 
 heads is a sight worth any man's seeing. After 
 all, you had better have gone for the apples 
 yourself." 
 
 "No matter," replied Hercules. "You have 
 had a pleasant ramble, and have done the 
 business as well as I could. I heartily thank 
 you for your trouble. And now, as I have a 
 long way to go, and am rather in haste — and 
 as the king, my cousin, is anxious to receive the 
 golden apples, — will you be kind enough to 
 take the sky off my shoulders again?" 
 
 "Why, as to that," said the giant, chucking 
 the golden apples into the air twenty miles high, 
 or thereabouts, and catching them as they came 
 down, — "as to that, my good friend, I consider 
 you a little unreasonable. Cannot I carry the 
 golden apples to the king, your cousin, much 
 quicker than you could? As his majesty is in 
 
164 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 such a hurry to get them, I promise you to take 
 my longest strides. And, besides, I have no 
 fancy for burdening myself with the sky, just 
 now." 
 
 Here Hercules grew impatient, and gave a 
 great shrug of his shoulders. It being now 
 twilight, you might have seen two or three stars 
 tumble out of their places. Everybody on 
 earth looked upward in affright, thinking that 
 the sky might be going to fall next. 
 
 "Oh, that will never do!" cried Giant Atlas, 
 with a great roar of laughter. " I have not 
 let fall so many stars within the last five cen- 
 turies. By the time you have stood there as 
 long as I did, you will begin to learn patience!" 
 
 "What!" shouted Hercules, very wrathfully, 
 "do you intend to make me bear this burden 
 forever?" 
 
 "We will see about that, one of these days," 
 answered the giant. "At all events, you ought 
 not to complain, if you have to bear it the next 
 hundred years, or perhaps the next thousand 
 I bore it a good while longer, in spite of the 
 back-ache. Well, then, after a thousand years, 
 if I happen to feel in the mood, we may possibly 
 shift about again. You are certainly a very 
 strong man, and can never have a better oppor- 
 tunity to prove it. Posterity will talk of you, 
 I warrant it!" 
 
 "Pish! a fig for its talk!" cried Hercules, 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 165 
 
 with another hitch of his shoulders. "Just 
 take the sky upon your head one instant, will 
 you? I want to make a cushion of my lion's 
 skin, for the weight to rest upon. It really 
 chafes me, and will cause unnecessary incon- 
 venience in so many centuries as I am to stand 
 here." 
 
 "That's no more than fair, and I'll do it!" 
 quoth the giant; for he had no unkind feeling 
 towards Hercules, and was merely acting with 
 a too selfish consideration of his own ease. 
 " For just five minutes, then, I'll take back the 
 sky. Only for five minutes, recollect! I have 
 no idea of spending another thousand years as 
 I spent the last. Variety is the spice of life, 
 say I." 
 
 Ah, the thick-witted old rogue of a giant! 
 He threw down the golden apples, and received 
 back the sky, from the head and shoulders of 
 Hercules, upon his own, where it rightly be- 
 longed. And Hercules picked up the three 
 golden apples, that were as big or bigger than 
 pumpkins, and straightway set out on his jour- 
 ney homeward, without paying the slightest 
 heed to the thundering tones of the giant, who 
 bellowed after him to come back. Another 
 forest sprang up around his feet, and grew 
 ancient there; and again might be seen oak- 
 trees, of six or seven centuries old, that had 
 waxed thus aged betwixt his enormous toes. 
 
i66 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 And there stands the giant to this day; or, 
 at any rate, there stands a mountain as tall as 
 he, and which bears his name; and when the 
 thunder rumbles about its summit, we may 
 imagine it to be the voice of Giant Atlas, bel- 
 lowing after Hercules! 
 
TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 "Cousin Eustace," demanded Sweet Fern, 
 who had been sitting at the story-teller's feet 
 with his mouth wide open, "exactly how tall 
 was this giant?" 
 
 "O Sweet Fern, Sweet Fern!" cried the 
 student, " do you think I was there, to measure 
 him with a yard-stick? Well, if you must 
 know to a hair's-breadth, I suppose he might 
 be from three to fifteen miles straight upward 
 and that he might have seated himself on 
 Taconic, and had Monument Mountain for a 
 footstool." 
 
 "Dear me!" ejaculated the good little boy, 
 with a contented sort of a grunt, "that was a 
 giant sure enough! And how long was his 
 little finger?" 
 
 "As long as from Tanglewood to the lake," 
 said Eustace. 
 
 "Sure enough, that was a giant!" repeated 
 Sweet Fern, in an ecstacy at the precision of 
 these measurements. "And how broad, I won- 
 der, were the shoulders of Hercules?" 
 
 167 
 
168 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "That is what I have never been able to find 
 out," answered the student. "But I think 
 they must have been a great deal broader than 
 mine, or than your father's, or than almost any 
 shoulders which one sees nowadays." 
 
 "I wish," whispered Sweet Fern, with his 
 mouth close to the student's ear, "that you 
 would tell me how big were some of the oak- 
 trees that grew between the giant's toes." 
 
 "They were bigger," said Eustace, "than 
 the great chestnut-tree which stands beyond 
 Captain Smith's house." 
 
 "Eustace," remarked Mr. Pringle, after some 
 deliberation, " I find it impossible to express 
 such an opinion of this story as will be likely 
 to gratify, in the smallest degree, your pride 
 of authorship. Pray let me advise you never 
 more to meddle with a classical myth. Your 
 imagination is altogether Gothic, and will inevit- 
 ably Gothicize everything that you touch. The 
 effect is like bedaubing a marble statue with 
 paint. This giant, now! How can you have 
 ventured to thrust his huge, disproportioned 
 mass among the seemly outlines of Grecian 
 fable, the tendency of which is to reduce even 
 the extravagant within limits, by its pervading 
 elegance?" 
 
 " I described the giant as he appeared to me," 
 replied the student, rather piqued. "And, sir, 
 if you would only bring your mind into such 
 
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 169 
 
 a relation with these fables as is necessary in 
 order to remodel them, you would see at once 
 that an old Greek had no more exclusive right 
 to them than a modem Yankee has. They are 
 the common property of the world, and of all 
 time. The ancient poets remodelled them at 
 pleasure, and held them plastic in their hands; 
 and why should they not be plastic in my hands 
 as well?" 
 
 Mr. Pringle could not forbear a smile. 
 
 "And besides," continued Eustace, "the 
 moment you put any warmth of heart, any 
 passion or affection, any human or divine 
 morality, into a classic mould, you make it 
 quite another thing from what it was before. 
 My own opinion is, that the Greeks, by taking 
 possession of these legends (which were the 
 immemorial birthright of mankind), and put- 
 ting them into shapes of indestructible beauty, 
 indeed, but cold and heartless, have done all 
 subsequent ages an incalculable injury." 
 
 " Which you, doubtless, were born to 
 remedy," said Mr. Pringle, laughing outright. 
 "Well, well, go on; but take my advice, and 
 never put any of your travesties on paper. 
 And, as your next effort, what if you should 
 try your hand on some one of the legends of 
 Apollo?" 
 
 " Ah, sir, you propose it as an impossibility," 
 observed the student, after a moment's medi- 
 
170 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 tation; "and, to be sure, at first thought, the 
 idea of a Gothic Apollo strikes one rather ludi- 
 crously. But I will turn over your suggestion 
 in my mind, and do not quite despair of success." 
 During the above discussion the children 
 (who understood not a word of it) had grown 
 very sleepy, and were now sent off to bed. 
 Their drowsy babble was heard, ascending the 
 staircase, while a northwest wind roared loudly 
 among the tree-tops of Tanglewood, and played 
 an anthem around the house. Eustace Bright 
 went back to the study, and again endeavored 
 to hammer out some verses, but fell asleep 
 between two of the rhymes. 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 
 
THE HILL-SIDE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO " THE MIRACULOUS 
 PITCHER." 
 
 And when, and where, do you think we find 
 the children next? No longer in the winter- 
 time, but in the merry month of May. No 
 longer in Tanglewood play-room, or at Tangle- 
 wood fireside, but more than half-way up a mon- 
 strous hill, or a mountain, as perhaps it would 
 be better pleased to have us call it. They had 
 set out from home with the mighty purpose of 
 climbing this high hill, even to the very tiptop 
 of its bald head. To be sure, it was not quite 
 so high as Chimborazo, or Mont Blanc, and was 
 even a good deal lower than old Graylock. But 
 at any rate, it was higher than a thousand ant- 
 hillocks, or a million of mole-hills; and, when 
 measured by the short strides of little children, 
 might be reckoned a very respectable mountain. 
 
 And was Cousin Eustace with the party? Of 
 that you may be certain; else how could the 
 book go on a step further? He was now in 
 the middle of the spring vacation, and looked 
 pretty much as we saw him four or five months 
 
 173 
 
i 7 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 ago, except that, if you gazed quite closely at 
 his upper lip, you could discern the funniest 
 little bit of a mustache upon it. Setting aside 
 this mark of mature manhood, you might have 
 considered Cousin Eustace just as much a boy 
 as when you first became acquainted with him. 
 He was as merry, as playful, as good-humored, 
 as light of foot and of spirits, and equally a 
 favorite with the little folks, as he had always 
 been. This expedition up the mountain was 
 entirely of his contrivance. All the way up the 
 steep ascent, he had encouraged the elder chil- 
 dren with his cheerful voice; and when Dande- 
 lion, Cowslip, and Squash- Blossom grew weary, 
 he had lugged them along alternately, on his 
 back. In this manner, they had passed through 
 orchards and pastures on the lower part of the 
 hill, and had reached the wood, which extends 
 thence towards its bare summit. 
 
 The month of May, thus far, had been more 
 amiable than it often is, and this was as sweet 
 and genial a day as the heart of man or child 
 could wish. In their progress up the hill, the 
 small people had found enough of violets, blue 
 and white, and some that were as golden as if 
 they had the touch of Midas on them. That 
 sociablest of flowers, the little Houstonia, was 
 very abundant. It is a flower that never lives 
 alone, but which loves its own kind, and is 
 always fond of dwelling with a great many 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 175 
 
 friends and relatives around it. Sometimes 
 you see a family of them covering a space no 
 bigger than the palm of your hand; and some- 
 times a large community, whitening a whole 
 tract of pasture, and all keeping one another in 
 cheerful heart and life. 
 
 Within the verge of the wood there were 
 columbines, looking more pale than red, because 
 they were so modest, and had thought proper 
 to seclude themselves too anxiously from the 
 sun. There were wild geraniums, too, and a 
 thousand white blossoms of the strawberry. 
 The trailing arbutus was not yet quite out of 
 bloom; but it hid its precious flowers under the 
 last year's withered forest leaves, as carefully 
 as a mother-bird hides its little young ones. 
 It knew, I suppose, how beautiful and sweet- 
 scented they were. So cunning was their con- 
 cealment, that the children sometimes smelt 
 the delicate richness of their perfume before 
 they knew whence it proceeded. 
 
 Amid so much new life, it was strange and 
 truly pitiful to behold, here and there, in the 
 fields of pastures, the hoary periwigs of dande- 
 lions that had already gone to seed. They had 
 done with summer before the summer came. 
 Within those small globes of winged seed it was 
 autumn now! 
 
 Well, we must not waste our valuable pages 
 with any more talk about the spring-time and 
 12 
 
176 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 wild flowers. There is something, we hope, 
 more interesting to be talked about. If you 
 look at the group of children, you may see 
 them all gathered round Eustace Bright, who, 
 sitting on the stump of a tree, seems to be just 
 beginning a story. The fact is, the younger 
 part of the troop have found out that it takes 
 rather too many of their short strides to measure 
 the long ascent of the hill. Cousin Eustace, 
 therefore, has decided to leave Sweet Fern, 
 Cowslip, Squash-Blossom, and Dandelion, at 
 this point, midway up, until the return of the 
 rest of the party from the summit. And because 
 they complain a little, and do not quite like 
 to stay behind, he gives them some apples out 
 of his pocket, and proposes to tell them a very 
 pretty story. Hereupon they brighten up, and 
 change their grieved looks into the broadest 
 kind of smiles. 
 
 As for the story, I was there to hear it, hidden 
 behind a bush, and shall tell it over to vou in 
 the pages that come next. 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 
 
 One evening, in times long ago, old Philemon 
 and his old wife Baucis sat at their cottage-door, 
 enjoying the calm and beautiful sunset- They 
 had already eaten their frugal supper, and 
 intended now to spend a quiet hour or two 
 before bedtime. So they talked together about 
 their garden, and their cow, and their bees, and 
 their grapevine, which clambered over the 
 cottage-wall, and on which the grapes were 
 beginning to turn purple. But the rude shouts 
 of children, and the fierce barking of dogs, in 
 the village near at hand, grew louder and louder, 
 until, at last, it was hardly possible for Baucis 
 and Philemon to hear each other speak. 
 
 "Ah, wife," cried Philemon, "I fear some 
 poor traveller is seeking hospitality among our 
 neighbors yonder, and, instead of giving him 
 food and lodging, they have set their dogs at 
 him, as their custom is!" 
 
 " Well-a-day!" answered old Baucis, "I do 
 wish our neighbors felt a little more kindness 
 for their fellow-creatures. And only think of 
 bringing up their children in this naughty way, 
 
 177 
 
178 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 and patting them on the head when they fling 
 stones at strangers!" 
 
 "Those children will never come to any 
 good," said Philemon, shaking his white head. 
 "To tell you the truth, wife, I should not 
 wonder if some terrible thing were to happen 
 to all the people in the village, unless they mend 
 their manners. But, as for you and me, so 
 long as Providence affords us a crust of bread, 
 let us be ready to give half to any poor, home- 
 less stranger, that may come along and need 
 it." 
 
 "That's right, husband!" said Baucis. "So 
 we will!" 
 
 These old folks, you must know, were quite 
 poor, and had to work pretty hard for a living. 
 Old Philemon toiled diligently in his garden, 
 while Baucis was always busy with her distaff, 
 or making a little butter and cheese with 
 their cow's milk, or doing one thing and another 
 about the cottage. Their food was seldom 
 anything but bread, milk, and vegetables, 
 with sometimes a portion of honey from 
 their beehive, and now and then a bunch of 
 grapes, that had ripened against the cottage 
 wall. But they were two of the kindest old 
 people in the world, and would cheerfully have 
 gone without their dinners, any day, rather 
 than refuse a slice of their brown loaf, a cup 
 of new milk, and a spoonful of honey, to the 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 179 
 
 weary traveller who might pause before their 
 door. They felt as if such guests had a sort of 
 holiness, and that they ought, therefore, to 
 treat them better and more bountifully than 
 their own selves. 
 
 Their cottage stood on a rising ground, at 
 some short distance from the village, which 
 lay in a hollow valley, that was about half a 
 mile in breadth. This valley, in past ages, 
 when the world was new, had probably been 
 the bed of a lake. There, fishes had glided to 
 and fro in the depths, and water- weeds had 
 grown along the margin, and trees and hills 
 had seen their reflected images in the broad and 
 peaceful mirror. But, as the waters subsided, 
 men had cultivated the soil, and built houses 
 on it, so that it was now a fertile spot, and bore 
 no traces of the ancient lake, except a very 
 small brook, which meandered through the 
 midst of the village, and supplied the inhabi- 
 tants with water. The valley had been dry 
 land so long, that oaks had sprung up, and 
 grown great and high, and perished with old 
 age, and been succeeded by others, as tall and 
 stately as the first. Never was there a prettier 
 or more fruitful valley. The very sight of the 
 plenty around them should have made the 
 inhabitants kind and gentle, and ready to show 
 their gratitude to Providence by doing good to 
 their fellow-creatures. 
 
180 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 But, we are sorry to say, the people of this 
 lovely village were not worthy to dwell in a 
 spot on which Heaven had smiled so benefi- 
 cently. They were a very selfish and hard- 
 hearted people, and had no pity for the poor, 
 nor sympathy with the homeless. They would 
 only have laughed, had anybody told them that 
 human beings owe a debt of love to one another, 
 because there is no other method of paying the 
 debt of love and care which all of us owe to 
 Providence. You will hardly believe what I 
 am going to tell you. These naughty people 
 taught their children to be no better than them- 
 selves, and used to clap their hands, by way of 
 encouragement, when they saw the little boys 
 and girls run after some poor stranger, shouting 
 at his heels, and pelting him with stones. They 
 kept large and fierce dogs, and whenever a 
 traveller ventured to show himself in the village 
 street, this pack of disagreeable curs scampered 
 to meet him, barking, snarling, and showing 
 their teeth. Then they would seize him by his 
 leg or by his clothes, just as it happened; and 
 if he were ragged when he came, he was gener- 
 ally a pitiable object before he had time to 
 run away. This was a very terrible thing to 
 poor travellers, as you may suppose, especially 
 when they chanced to be sick, or feeble, or lame, 
 or old. Such persons (if they once knew how 
 badly these unkind people, and their unkind 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 181 
 
 children and curs were in the habit of behaving) 
 would go miles and miles out of their way, 
 rather than try to pass through the village again. 
 
 What made the matter seem worse if possible, 
 was that when rich persons came in their 
 chariots, or riding on beautiful horses, with 
 their servants in rich liveries attending on 
 them, nobody could be more civil and obsequious 
 than the inhabitants of the village. They would 
 take off their hats, and make the humblest 
 bows you ever saw. If the children were rude, 
 they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed : 
 and as for the dogs, if a single cur in the pack 
 presumed to yelp, his master instantly beat 
 him with a club, and tied him up without any 
 supper. This would have been all very well, 
 only it proved that the villagers cared much 
 about the money that a stranger had in his 
 pocket, and nothing whatever for the human 
 soul, which lives equally in the beggar and the 
 prince. 
 
 So now you can understand why old Philemon 
 spoke so sorrowfully, when he heard the shouts 
 of the children, and the barking of the dogs, at 
 the farthest extremity of the village street. 
 There was a confused din, which lasted a good 
 while, and seemed to pass quite through the 
 breadth of the valley. 
 
 "I never heard the dogs so loud!" observed 
 the good old man. 
 
1 82 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Nor the children so rude!" answered his 
 good old wife. 
 
 They sat shaking their heads, one to another, 
 while the noise came nearer and nearer; until 
 at the foot of the little eminence on which their 
 cottage stood, they saw two travellers approach- 
 ing on foot. Close behind them came the fierce 
 dogs, snarling at their very heels. A little 
 farther off, ran a crowd of children, who sent 
 up shrill cries, and flung stones at the two 
 strangers with all their might. Once or twice, 
 the younger of the two men (he was a slender 
 and very active figure) turned about and drove 
 back the dogs with a staff which he carried in 
 his hand. His companion, who was a very 
 tall person, walked calmly along, as if disdaining 
 to notice either the naughty children, or the 
 pack of curs, whose manners the children seemed 
 to imitate. 
 
 Both of the travellers were very humbly clad, 
 and looked as if they might not have money 
 enough in their pockets to pay for a night's 
 lodging. And this, I am afraid, was the reason 
 why the villagers had allowed their children and 
 dogs to treat them so rudely. 
 
 "Come, wife," said Philemon to Baucis, "let 
 us go and meet these poor people. No doubt, 
 they feel almost too heavy-hearted to climb the 
 hill." 
 
 "Go you and meet them," answered Baucis, 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 183 
 
 "while I make haste within doors, and see 
 whether we can get them anything for supper. 
 A comfortable bowl of bread and milk would 
 do wonders towards raising their spirits." 
 
 Accordingly, she hastened into the cottage. 
 Philemon, on his part, went forward, and ex- 
 tended his hand with so hospitable an aspect that 
 there was no need of saying what nevertheless 
 he did say, in the heartiest tone imaginable, — 
 
 " Welcome, strangers! welcome ! " 
 
 "Thank you!" replied the younger of the 
 two, in a lively kind of way, notwithstanding 
 his weariness and trouble. "This is quite 
 another greeting than we have met with yonder 
 in the village. Pray, why do you live in such 
 a bad neighborhood?" 
 
 "Ah!" observed old Philemon, with a quiet 
 and benign smile, "Providence put me here, I 
 hope, among other reasons, in order that I may 
 make you what amends I can for the inhospi- 
 tality of my neighbors." 
 
 "Well said, old father!" cried the traveller, 
 laughing; "and, if the truth must be told, my 
 companion and myself need some amends. 
 Those children (the little rascals!) have bespat- 
 tered us finely with their mud-ball; and one 
 of the curs has torn my cloak, which was ragged 
 enough already. But I took him across the 
 muzzle with my staff ; and I think you may have 
 heard him yelp, even thus far off." 
 
184 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Philemon was glad to see him in such good 
 spirits; nor, indeed, would you have fancied, 
 by the traveller's look and manner, that he was 
 weary with a long day's journey, besides being 
 disheartened by rough treatment at the end of 
 it. He was dressed in rather an odd way, with 
 a sort of cap on his head, the brim of which 
 stuck out over both ears. Though it was a 
 summer evening, he wore a cloak, which he 
 kept wrapt closely about him, perhaps because 
 his under garments were shabby. Philemon 
 perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair 
 of shoes; but, as it was now growing dusk, and 
 as the old man's eyesight was none the sharpest, 
 he could not precisely tell in what the strange- 
 ness consisted. One thing certainly seemed 
 queer. The traveller was so wonderfully light 
 and active, that it appeared as if his feet some- 
 times rose from the ground of their own accord, 
 or could only be kept down by an effort. 
 
 "I used to be light-footed in my youth," 
 said Philemon to the traveller. " But I always 
 found my feet grow heavier towards nightfall." 
 
 "There is nothing like a good staff to help 
 one along," answered the stranger; "and I 
 happen to have an excellent one, as you see." 
 
 This staff, in fact, was the oddest-looking 
 staff that Philemon had ever beheld. It was 
 made of olive-wood, and had something like a 
 little pair of wings near the top. Two snakes, 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 185 
 
 carved in the wood, were represented as twining 
 themselves about the staff, and were so very 
 skilfully executed that old Philemon (whose 
 eyes, you know, were getting rather dim) almost 
 thought them alive, and that he could see them 
 wriggling and twisting. 
 
 "A curious piece of work, sure enough!" 
 said he. "A staff with wings! It would be 
 an excellent kind of stick for a little boy to ride 
 astride of!" 
 
 By this time, Philemon and his two guests, 
 had reached the cottage door. 
 
 "Friends," said the old man, "sit down and 
 rest yourselves here on this bench. My good 
 wife Baucis has gone to see what you can have 
 for supper. We are poor folks; but you shall 
 be welcome to whatever we have in the cup- 
 board." 
 
 The younger stranger threw himself carelessly 
 on the bench, letting his staff fall, as he did so. 
 And here happened something rather marvel- 
 lous, though trifling enough, too. The staff 
 seemed to get up from the ground of its own 
 accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, 
 it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against 
 the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite 
 still, except that the snakes continued to 
 wriggle. But in my private opinion, old Phile- 
 mon's eyesight had been playing him tricks 
 again. 
 
1 86 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Before he could ask any questions, the elder 
 stranger drew his attention from the wonderful 
 staff, by speaking to him. 
 
 "Was there not," asked the stranger, in a 
 remarkably deep tone of voice, " a lake, in very 
 ancient times, covering the spot where now 
 stands yonder village?" 
 
 " Not in my day, friend," answered Philemon; 
 " and yet I am an old man, as you see. There 
 were always the fields and meadows, just as they 
 are now, and the old trees, and the little stream 
 murmuring through the midst of the valley. 
 My father, nor his father before him, ever saw 
 it otherwise, so far as I know; and doubtless it 
 will still be the same, when old Philemon shall 
 be gone and forgotten!" 
 
 "That is more than can safely be foretold," 
 observed the stranger; and there was some- 
 thing very stern in his deep voice. He shook 
 his head, too, so that his dark and heavy curls 
 were shaken with the movement. "Since the 
 inhabitants of yonder village have forgotten 
 the affections and sympathies of their nature, 
 it were better that the lake should be rippling 
 over their dwellings again!" 
 
 The traveller looked so stern, that Philemon 
 was really almost frightened; the more so, that, 
 at his frown, the twilight seemed suddenly to 
 grow darker, and that, when he shook his head, 
 there was a roll as of thunder in the air. 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 187 
 
 But, in a moment afterwards, the stranger's 
 face became so kindly and mild, that the old 
 man quite forgot his terror. Nevertheless, he 
 could not help feeling that this elder traveller 
 must be no ordinary personage, although he 
 happened now to be attired so humbly and to 
 be journeying on foot. Not that Philemon 
 fancied him a prince in disguise, or any char- 
 acter of that sort; but rather some exceedingly 
 wise man, who went about the world in this 
 poor garb, despising wealth and all worldly 
 objects, and seeking everywhere to add a mite 
 to his wisdom. This idea appeared the more 
 probable, because, when Philemon raised his 
 eyes to the stranger's face, he seemed to see more 
 thought there, in one look, than he could have 
 studied out in a lifetime. 
 
 While Baucis was getting the supper, the 
 travellers both began to talk very sociably with 
 Philemon. The younger, indeed, was extremely 
 loquacious, and made such shrewd and witty 
 remarks, that the good old man continually 
 burst out a-laughing, and pronounced him the 
 merriest fellow whom he had seen for many a day. 
 
 "Pray, my young friend," said he, as they 
 grew familiar together, "what may I call your 
 name?" 
 
 "Why, I am very nimble, as you see," 
 answered the traveller. "So, if you call me 
 Quicksilver, the name will fit tolerably well." 
 
188 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Quicksilver? Quicksilver?" repeated Phile- 
 mon, looking in the traveller's face, to see if he 
 were making fun of him. "It is a very odd 
 name! And your companion there? Has he 
 as strange a one?" 
 
 "You must ask the thunder to tell it you!" 
 replied Quicksilver, putting on a mysterious 
 look. " No other voice is loud enough." 
 
 This remark, whether it were serious or in 
 jest, might have caused Philemon to conceive 
 a very great awe of the elder stranger, if, on 
 venturing to gaze at him, he had not beheld 
 so much beneficence in his visage. But, un- 
 doubtedly, here was the grandest figure that 
 ever sat so humbly beside a cottage door. When 
 the stranger conversed, it was with gravity, 
 and in such a way that Philemon felt irresistibly 
 moved to tell him everything which he had most 
 at heart. This is always the feeling that people 
 have, when they meet with anyone wise enough 
 to comprehend all their good and evil, and to 
 despise not a tittle of it. 
 
 But Philemon, simple and kind-hearted old 
 man that he was, had not many secrets to dis- 
 close. He talked, however, quite garrulously, 
 about the events of his past life, in the whole 
 course of which he had never been a score of 
 miles from this very spot. His wife Baucis and 
 himself had dwelt in the cottage from their 
 youth upward, earning their bread by honest 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 189 
 
 labor, always poor, but still contented. He 
 told what excellent butter and cheese Baucis 
 made, and how nice were the vegetables which 
 he raised in his garden. He said, too, that, 
 because they loved one another so very much, 
 it was the wish of both that death might not 
 separate them, but that they should die, as 
 they had lived, together. 
 
 As the stranger listened, a smile beamed over 
 his countenance, and made its expression as 
 sweet as it was grand. 
 
 "You are a good old man," said he to Phile- 
 mon, " and you have a good old wife to be your 
 helpmeet. It is fit that your wish be granted." 
 
 And it seemed to Philemon, just then, as if 
 the sunset clouds threw up a bright flash from 
 the west, and kindled a sudden light in the sky. 
 
 Baucis had now got supper ready, and, coming 
 to the door, began to make apologies for the 
 poor fare which she was forced to set before her 
 guests. 
 
 " Had we known you were coming," said she, 
 "my good man and myself would have gone 
 without a morsel, rather than you should lack 
 a better supper. But I took the most part of 
 to-day's milk to make cheese; and our last 
 loaf is already half eaten. Ah me! I never feel 
 the sorrow of being poor, save when a poor 
 traveller knocks at our door." 
 
 "All will be very well; do not trouble your- 
 
iqo A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 self, my good dame," replied the elder stranger, 
 kindly. "An honest, hearty welcome to a 
 guest works miracles with the fare, and is capa- 
 ble of turning the coarsest food to nectar and 
 ambrosia." 
 
 "A welcome you shall have," cried Baucis, 
 "and likewise, a little honey that we happen 
 to have left, and a bunch of purple grapes 
 besides." 
 
 "Why, Mother Baucis, it is a feast!" ex- 
 claimed Quicksilver, laughing, "an absolute 
 feast ! and you shall see how bravely I will play 
 my part at it! I think I never felt hungrier in 
 my life." 
 
 "Mercy on us!" whispered Baucis to her 
 husband. " If the young man has such a terri- 
 ble appetite, I am afraid there will not be half 
 enough supper!" 
 
 They all went into the cottage. 
 
 And now, my little auditors, shall I tell you 
 something that will make you open your eyes 
 very wide? It is really one of the oddest cir- 
 cumstances in the whole story. Quicksilver's 
 staff, you will recollect, had set itself up against 
 the wall of the cottage. Well; when its master 
 entered the door, leaving this wonderful staff 
 behind, what should it do but immediately 
 spread its little wings, and go hopping and 
 fluttering up the door steps! Tap, tap, went 
 the staff, on the kitchen floor; nor did it rest 
 
.■1// abundant cascade fell bubbling, into the bote! 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 191 
 
 until it had stood itself on end, with the greatest 
 gravity and decorum, beside Quicksilver's chair. 
 Old Philemon, however, as well as his wife, 
 were so taken up in attending to their guests, 
 that no notice was given to what the staff had 
 been about. 
 
 As Baucis had said, there was but a scanty 
 supper for two hungry travellers. In the mid- 
 dle of the table was the remnant of a brown 
 loaf, with a piece of cheese on one side of it, 
 and a dish of honeycomb on the other. There 
 was a pretty good bunch of grapes for each of 
 the guests. A moderately sized earthen pitcher, 
 nearly full of milk, stood at a corner of the 
 board; and when Baucis had filled two bowls, 
 and set them before the strangers, only a little 
 milk remained in the bottom of the pitcher. 
 Alas! it is a very sad business, when a bountiful 
 heart finds itself pinched and squeezed among 
 narrow circumstances. Poor Baucis kept wish- 
 ing that she might starve for a week to come, 
 if it were possible, by so doing, to provide these 
 hungry folks a more plentiful supper. 
 
 And, since the supper was so exceedingly 
 small, she could not help wishing that their 
 appetites had not been quite so large. Why, 
 at their very first sitting down, the travellers 
 both drank off all the milk in their two bowls, 
 at a draught. 
 
 "A little more milk, kind Mother Baucis, if 
 
 13 
 
i 9 2 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 you please," said Quicksilver. "The day has 
 been hot, and I am very much athirst." 
 
 "Now, my dear people," answered Baucis, 
 in great confusion, " I am so sorry and 
 ashamed! But the truth is, there is hardly 
 a drop more milk in the pitcher. O husband! 
 husband! why didn't we go without our 
 supper ? ' ' 
 
 "Why, it appears to me," cried Quicksilver, 
 starting up from the table and taking the pitcher 
 by the handle, "it really appears to me that 
 matters are not quite so bad as you represent 
 them. Here is certainly more milk in the 
 pitcher." 
 
 So saying, and to the vast astonishment of 
 Baucis, he proceeded to fill, not only his own 
 bowl, but his companion's likewise, from the 
 pitcher, that was supposed to be almost empty. 
 The good woman could scarcely believe her 
 eyes. She had certainly poured out nearly all 
 the milk, and had peeped in afterwards, and 
 seen the bottom of the pitcher, as she set it 
 down upon the table. 
 
 "But I am old," thought Baucis to herself, 
 "and apt to be forgetful. I suppose I must 
 have made a mistake. At all events, the pitcher 
 cannot help being empty now, after filling the 
 bowls twice over." 
 
 "What excellent milk!" observed Quick- 
 silver, after quaffing the contents of the second 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 193 
 
 bowl. " Excuse me, my kind hostess, but I 
 must really ask you for a little more." 
 
 Now Baucis had seen, as plainly as she could 
 see anything, that Quicksilver had turned the 
 pitcher upside down, and consequently had 
 poured out every drop of milk, in filling the last 
 bowl. Of course, there could not possibly be 
 any left. However, in order to let him know 
 precisely how the case was, she lifted the pitcher, 
 and made a gesture as if pouring milk into 
 Quicksilver's bowl, but without the remotest 
 idea that any milk would stream forth. What 
 was her surprise, therefore, when such an 
 abundant cascade fell bubbling into the bowl, 
 that it immediately filled to the brim, and 
 overflowed upon the table! The two snakes 
 that were twisted about Quicksilver's staff 
 (but neither Baucis nor Philemon happened 
 to observe this circumstance) stretched out 
 their heads, and began to lap up the spilt milk. 
 
 And then what a delicious fragrance the milk 
 had! It seemed as if Philemon's only cow 
 must have pastured that day, on the richest, 
 herbage that could be found anywhere in the 
 world. I only wish that each of you, my 
 beloved little souls, could have such a bowl of 
 nice milk, at supper- time! 
 
 "And now a slice of your brown loaf, Mother 
 Baucis," said Quicksilver, "and a little of that 
 honey ! ' ' 
 
i 9 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Baucis cut him a slice accordingly; and 
 though the loaf, when she and her husband ate 
 of it, had been rather too dry and crusty to be 
 palatable, it was now as light and moist as if 
 but a few hours out of the oven. Tasting a 
 crumb, which had fallen on the table, she found 
 it more delicious than bread ever was before, 
 and could hardly believe that it was a loaf of 
 her own kneading and baking. Yet, what other 
 loaf could it possibly be? 
 
 But, oh the honey! I may just as well let 
 it alone, without trying to describe how exquis- 
 itely it smelt and looked. Its color was that 
 of the purest and most transparent gold; and 
 it had the odor of a thousand flowers; but 
 of such flowers as never grew in an earthly gar- 
 den, and to seek which the bees must have flown 
 high above the clouds. The wonder is, that 
 after alighting on a flower-bed of so delicious 
 fragrance and immortal bloom, they should 
 have been content to fly down again to their 
 hive in Philemon's garden. Never was such 
 honey tasted, seen, or smelt. The perfume 
 floated around the kitchen, and made it so 
 delightful, that, had you closed your eyes, you 
 would instantly have forgotten the low ceiling 
 and smoky walls, and have fancied yourself 
 in an arbor, with celestial honeysuckles creeping 
 over it ! 
 
 Although good Mother Baucis was a simple 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 195 
 
 old dame, she could not but think that there was 
 something rather out of the common way, in all 
 that had been going on. So, after helping the 
 guests to bread and honey, and laying a bunch 
 of grapes by each of their plates, she sat down 
 by Philemon, and told him what she had seen, 
 in a whisper. 
 
 " Did you ever hear the like?" asked she. 
 
 "No, I never did," answered Philemon, with 
 a smile. "And I rather think, my dear old 
 wife, you have been walking about in a sort of 
 dream. If I had poured out the milk I should 
 have seen through the business at once. There 
 happened to be a little more in the pitcher than 
 you thought, — that is all." 
 
 "Ah, husband," said Baucis, "say what you 
 will, these are very uncommon people." 
 
 "Well, well," replied Philemon, still smiling, 
 "perhaps they are. They certainly do look as 
 if they had seen better days; and I am heartily 
 glad to see them making so comfortable a 
 supper." 
 
 Each of the guests had now taken his bunch 
 of grapes upon his plate. Baucis (who rubbed 
 her eyes, in order to see the more clearly), was 
 of opinion that the clusters had grown larger 
 and richer, and that each separate grape seemed 
 to be on the point of bursting with ripe juice. 
 It was entirely a mystery to her how such grapes 
 could ever have been produced from the old 
 
196 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 stunted vine that climbed against the cottage 
 wall. 
 
 "Very admirable grapes these!" observed 
 Quicksilver, as he swallowed one after another, 
 without apparently diminishing his cluster. 
 " Pray, my good host, whence did you gather 
 them?" 
 
 "From my own vine," answered Philemon. 
 "You may see one of its branches twisting 
 across the window, yonder. But wife and I 
 never thought the grapes very fine ones." 
 
 "I never tasted better," said the guest. 
 "Another cup of this delicious milk, if you 
 please, and I shall then have supped better than 
 a prince." 
 
 This time, old Philemon bestirred himself, 
 and took up the pitcher; for he was curious to 
 discover whether there was any reality in the 
 marvels which Baucis had whispered to him. 
 He knew that his good old wife was incapable 
 of falsehood, and that she was seldom mistaken 
 in what she supposed to be true; but this was 
 so very singular a case, that he wanted to see 
 into it with his own eyes. On taking up the 
 pitcher, therefore, he slyly peeped into it, and 
 was fully satisfied that it contained not so much 
 as a single drop. All at once, however, he 
 beheld a little white fountain, which gushed 
 up from the bottom of the pitcher, and speedily 
 filled it to the brim with foaming and deliciously 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 197 
 
 fragrant milk. It was lucky that Philemon, in 
 his surprise, did not drop the miraculous pitcher 
 from his hand. 
 
 ''Who are ye, wonder-working strangers!" 
 cried he, even more bewildered than his wife 
 had been. 
 
 'Your guests, my good Philemon, and your 
 friends," replied the elder traveller, in his mild, 
 deep voice, that had something at once sweet 
 and awe-inspiring in it. " Give me likewise a 
 cup of the milk; and may your pitcher never 
 be emptied for kind Baucis and yourself, any 
 more than for the needy wayfarer!" 
 
 The supper being now over, the strangers 
 requested to be shown to their place of repose. 
 The old people would gladly have talked with 
 them a little longer, and have expressed the 
 wonder which they felt, and their delight at 
 finding the poor and meagre supper prove so 
 much better and more abundant than they 
 hoped. But the elder traveller had inspired 
 them with such reverence that they dared not 
 ask him any questions. And when Philemon 
 drew Quicksilver aside and inquired how under 
 the sun a fountain of milk could have got into 
 an old earthen pitcher, this latter personage 
 pointed to his staff. 
 
 "There is the whole mystery of the affair," 
 quoth Quicksilver; "and if you can make it out, 
 I'll thank you to let me know. I can't tell what 
 
198 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 to make of my staff. It is always playing such 
 odd tricks as this; sometimes getting me a 
 supper; and, quite as often, stealing it away. 
 If I had any faith in such nonsense, I should say 
 the stick was bewitched!" 
 
 He said no more, but looked so slyly in their 
 faces, that they rather fancied he was laughing 
 at them. The magic staff went hopping at his 
 heels, as Quicksilver quitted the room. When 
 left alone, the good old couple spent some little 
 time in conversation about the events of 
 the evening, and then lay down on the floor, 
 and fell fast asleep. They had given up 
 their sleeping-room to the guests, and had no 
 other bed for themselves, save these planks, 
 which I wish had been as soft as their own 
 hearts. 
 
 The old man and his wife were stirring, 
 betimes, in the morning, and the strangers 
 likewise arose with the sun, and made their 
 preparations to depart. Philemon hospitably 
 entreated them to remain a little longer, until 
 Baucis could milk the cow, and bake a cake upon 
 the hearth, and, perhaps, find them a few fresh 
 eggs, for breakfast. The guests, however, 
 seemed to think it better to accomplish a good 
 part of their journey before the heat of the day 
 should come on. They, therefore, persisted in 
 setting out immediately, but asked Philemon 
 and Baucis to walk forth with them a short 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 199 
 
 distance, and show them the road which they 
 were to take. 
 
 So they all four issued from the cottage, 
 chatting together like old friends. It was very 
 remarkable indeed, how familiar the old couple 
 insensibly grew with the elder traveller, and 
 how their good and simple spirits melted into 
 his, even as two drops of water would melt into 
 the illimitable ocean. And as for Quicksilver, 
 with his keen, quick, laughing wits, he appeared 
 to discover every little thought that but peeped 
 into their minds, before they suspected it them- 
 selves. They sometimes wished, it is true, that 
 he had not been quite so quick-witted, and also 
 that he would fling away his staff, which looked 
 so mysteriously mischievous, with the snakes 
 always writhing about it. But, then again, 
 Quicksilver showed himself so very good- 
 humored that they would have rejoiced to keep 
 him in their cottage, staff, snakes and all, every 
 day, and the whole day long. 
 
 "Ah me! Well-a-day!" exclaimed Phile- 
 mon, when they had walked a little way from 
 their door. "If our neighbors only knew what 
 a blessed thing it is to show hospitality to 
 strangers, they would tie up all their dogs, and 
 never allow their children to fling another 
 stone." 
 
 " It is a sin and shame for them to behave so, 
 — that it is!" cried good old Baucis, vehe- 
 
2oo A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 mently. "And I mean to go this very day, 
 and tell some of them what naughty people 
 they are ! ' ' 
 
 "I fear," remarked Quicksilver, slyly smiling, 
 " that you will find none of them at home." 
 
 The elder traveller's brow, just then, assumed 
 such a grave, stern, and awful grandeur, yet 
 serene withal, that neither Baucis nor Philemon 
 dared to speak a word. They gazed reverently 
 into his face, as if they had been gazing at 
 the sky. 
 
 ' When men do not feel towards the humblest 
 stranger as if he were a brother," said the tra- 
 veller, in tones so deep that they sounded like 
 those of an organ, " they are unworthy to exist 
 on earth, which was created as the abode of a 
 great human brotherhood!" 
 
 "And, by the by, my dear old people," cried 
 Quicksilver, with the liveliest look of fun and 
 mischief in his eyes, "where is this same village 
 that you talk about? On which side of us 
 does it lie? Methinks I do not see it here- 
 abouts." 
 
 Philemon and his wife turned towards the 
 valley, where, at sunset, only the day before, 
 they had seen the meadows, the houses, the 
 gardens, the clumps of trees, the wide, green- 
 margined street, with children playing in it, 
 and all the tokens of business, enjoyment, and 
 prosperity. But what was their astonishment! 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 201 
 
 There was no longer any appearance of a village ! 
 Even the fertile vale, in the hollow of which it 
 lay, had ceased to have existence. In its 
 stead, they beheld the broad, blue surface of 
 a lake, which filled the great basin of the valley 
 from brim to brim, and reflected the surrounding 
 hills in its bosom with as tranquil an image as 
 if it had been there ever since the creation of 
 the world. For an instant, the lake remained 
 perfectly smooth. Then, a little breeze sprang 
 up, and caused the water to dance, glitter, and 
 sparkle in the early sunbeams, and to dash 
 with a pleasant rippling murmur, against the 
 hither shore. 
 
 The lake seemed so strangely familiar, that 
 the old couple were greatly perplexed, and felt 
 as if they could only have been dreaming about 
 a village having lain there. But, the next 
 moment, they remembered the vanished dwell- 
 ings, and the faces and characters of the inhabi- 
 tants, far too distinctly for a dream. The 
 village had been there yesterday, and now was 
 gone! 
 
 "Alas!" cried these kind-hearted old people, 
 "what has become of our poor neighbors?" 
 
 "They exist no longer as men and women," 
 said the elder traveller, in his grand and deep 
 voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo 
 it at a distance. " There was neither use nor 
 beauty in such a life as theirs; for they never 
 
202 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 softened or sweetened the hard lot of mortality 
 by the exercise of kindly affections between 
 man and man. They retained no image of the 
 better life in their bosoms; therefore, the lake, 
 that was of old, has spread itself forth again, to 
 reflect the sky!" 
 
 " And as for these foolish people," said Quick- 
 silver, with his mischievous smile, "they are 
 all transformed to fishes. They needed but 
 little change, for they were already a scaly set 
 of rascals, and the coldest-blooded beings in 
 existence. So, kind Mother Baucis, whenever 
 you or your husband have an appetite for a 
 dish of broiled trout, he can throw in a line, 
 and pull out half a dozen of your old neighbors! " 
 
 "Ah," cried Baucis, shuddering, "I would 
 not, for the world, put one of them on the 
 gridiron ! ' ' 
 
 "No," added Philemon, making a wry face, 
 "we could never relish them!" 
 
 "As for you, good Philemon," continued the 
 elder traveller, — " and you, kind Baucis, — you, 
 with your scanty means — have mingled so 
 much heartfelt hospitality with your enter- 
 tainment of the homeless stranger, that the 
 milk became an inexhaustible fount of nectar, 
 and the brown loaf and the honey were am- 
 brosia. Thus, the divinities have feasted, at 
 your board, of the same viands that supply 
 their banquets on Olympus. You have done 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 203 
 
 well, my dear old friends. Wherefore, request 
 whatever favor you have most at heart, and it 
 is granted." 
 
 Philemon and Baucis looked at one another, 
 and then, — I know not which of the two it was 
 who spoke, but that one uttered the desire of 
 both their hearts. 
 
 "Let us live together, while we live, and 
 leave the world at the same instant, when we 
 die! For we have always loved one another!" 
 
 "Be it so!" replied the stranger, with ma- 
 jestic kindness. " Now, look towards your 
 cottage!" 
 
 They did so. But what was their surprise 
 on beholding a tall edifice of white marble, 
 with a wide-open portal, occupying the spot 
 where their humble residence had so lately 
 stood ! 
 
 "There is your home," said the stranger, 
 beneficently smiling on them both. " Exercise 
 your hospitality in yonder palace as freely as in 
 the poor hovel to which you welcomed us last 
 evening." 
 
 The old folks fell on their knees to thank 
 him; but, behold! neither he nor Quicksilver 
 was there. 
 
 vSo Philemon and Baucis took up their resi- 
 dence in the marble palace, and spent their time 
 with vast satisfaction to themselves, in making 
 everybody jolly and comfortable who happened 
 
2o 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 to pass that way. The milk-pitcher, I must 
 not forget to say, retained its marvellous quality 
 of being never empty, when it was desirable to 
 have it full. Whenever an honest, good- 
 humored, and free-hearted guest took a draught 
 from this pitcher, he invariably found it the 
 sweetest and most invigorating fluid that ever 
 ran down his throat. But, if a cross and dis- 
 agreeable curmudgeon happened to sip, he 
 was pretty certain to twist his visage into a 
 hard knot, and pronounce it a pitcher of sour 
 milk! 
 
 Thus the old couple lived in their palace a 
 great, great while, and grew older and older, 
 and very old indeed. At length, however, 
 there came a summer morning when Philemon 
 and Baucis failed to make their appearance, 
 as on other mornings, with one hospitable smile 
 overspreading both their pleasant faces, to 
 invite the guests of over-night to breakfast. 
 The guests searched everywhere, from top to 
 bottom of the spacious palace, and all to no 
 purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, 
 they espied, in front of the portal, two venerable 
 trees, which nobody could remember to have 
 seen there the day before. Yet, there they 
 stood, with their roots fastened deep into the 
 soil, and a huge breadth of foliage overshadow- 
 ing the whole front of the edifice. One was 
 an oak, and the other a linden- tree. Their 
 
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER. 205 
 
 boughs — it was strange and beautiful to see 
 — were intertwined together, and embraced 
 one another, so that each tree seemed to live 
 in the other tree's bosom much more than in 
 its own. 
 
 While the guests were marvelling how these 
 trees that must have required at least a century 
 to grow, could have come to be so tall and 
 venerable in a single night, a breeze sprang up, 
 and set their intermingled boughs astir. And 
 then there was a deep, broad murmur in the 
 air, as if the two mysterious trees were speaking. 
 
 "I am old Philemon!" murmured the oak. 
 
 "I am old Baucis!" murmured the linden- 
 tree. 
 
 But, as the breeze grew stronger, the trees 
 both spoke at once — "Philemon! Baucis! 
 Baucis ! Philemon ! " — as if one were both 
 and both were one, and talking together in the 
 depths of their mutual heart. It was plain 
 enough to perceive that the good old couple had 
 renewed their age, and were now to spend a 
 quiet and delightful hundred years or so, Phile- 
 mon as an oak, and Baucis as a linden-tree. 
 And oh, what a hospitable shade did they fling 
 around them. Whenever a wayfarer passed 
 beneath it, he heard a pleasant whisper of the 
 leaves above his head, and wondered how the 
 sound should so much resemble words like 
 these : — 
 
206 
 
 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, wel- 
 come ! ' ' 
 
 And some kind soul, that knew what would 
 have pleased old Baucis and old Philemon best, 
 built a circular seat around both their trunks, 
 where, for a great while afterwards, the weary, 
 and the hungry, and the thirsty used to repose 
 themselves, and quaff milk abundantly out of 
 the miraculous pitcher. 
 
 And I wish, for all our sakes, that we had 
 the pitcher here now! 
 
THE HILL-SIDE. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 "How much did the pitcher hold?" asked 
 Sweet Fern. 
 
 "It did not hold quite a quart," answered 
 the student; "but you might keep pouring milk 
 out of it, till you should fill a hogshead, if you 
 pleased. The truth is, it would run on forever, 
 and not be dry, even at mid-summer, — which 
 is more than can be said of yonder rill, that goes 
 babbling down the hill-side." 
 
 "And what has become of the pitcher now?" 
 inquired the little boy. 
 
 "It was broken, I am sorry to say, about 
 twenty-five thousand years ago," replied Cousin 
 Eustace. "The people mended it as well as 
 they could, but though it would hold milk 
 pretty well, it was never afterwards known to 
 fill itself of its own accord. So, you see, it 
 was no better than any other cracked earthen 
 pitcher." 
 
 "What a pity!" cried all the children at 
 once. 
 
 The respectable dog Ben had accompanied 
 
 14 207 
 
2o8 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 the party, as did likewise a half-grown New- 
 foundland puppy, who went by the name of 
 Bruin, because he was just as black as a bear. 
 Ben, being elderly, and of very circumspect 
 habits, was respectfully requested, by Cousin 
 Eustace, to stay behind with the four little 
 children, in order to keep them out of mischief. 
 As for Black Bruin, who was himself nothing 
 but a child, the student thought it best to take 
 him along, lest, in his rude play, with the other 
 children, he should trip them up, and send them 
 rolling and tumbling down the hill. Advising 
 Cowslip, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, and Squash- 
 Blossom to sit pretty still, in the spot where he 
 left them, the student, with Primrose and the 
 elder children, began to ascend, and were soon 
 out of sight among the trees. 
 
THE CHIMERA. 
 
BALD-SUMMIT. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO " THE CHIMERA." 
 
 Upward, along the steep and wooded hill-side, 
 went Eustace Bright and his companions. The 
 trees were not yet in full leaf, but had budded 
 forth sufficiently to throw an airy shadow, 
 while the sunshine filled them with green light. 
 There were moss-grown rocks, half hidden 
 among the old, brown, fallen leaves; there were 
 rotton tree-trunks, lying at full length where 
 they had long ago fallen; there were decayed 
 boughs, that had been shaken down by the 
 wintry gales, and were scattered everywhere 
 about. But still, though these things looked 
 so aged, the aspect of the wood was that of 
 the newest life; for, whichever way you turned 
 your eyes, something fresh and green was spring- 
 ing forth, so as to be ready for the summer. 
 
 At last, the young people reached the upper 
 verge of the wood, and found themselves almost 
 at the summit of the hill. It was not a peak, 
 nor a great round ball, but a pretty wide plain, 
 or table-land, with a house and a barn upon it, 
 at some distance. That house was the home 
 
 211 
 
2i2 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 of a solitary family; and oftentimes the clouds, 
 whence fell the rain, and whence the snow- 
 storm drifted down into the valley, hung lower 
 than this bleak and lonely dwelling-place. 
 
 On the highest point of the hill was a heap 
 of stones, in the center of which was stuck a 
 long pole, with a little flag fluttering at the 
 end of it. Eustace led the children thither, 
 and bade them look around, and see how large 
 a tract of our beautiful world they could take 
 in at a glance. And their eyes grew wider as 
 they looked. 
 
 Monument Mountain, to the southward, was 
 still in the centre of the scene, but seemed to 
 have sunk and subsided, so that it was now but 
 an undistinguished member of a large family 
 of hills. Beyond it, the Taconic range looked 
 higher and bulkier than before. Our pretty 
 lake was seen, with all its little bays and inlets; 
 and not that alone, but two or three new lakes 
 were opening their blue eyes to the sun. Several 
 white villages, each with its steeple, were scat- 
 tered about in the distance. There were so 
 many farm-houses, with their acres of wood- 
 land, pasture, mowing-fields, and tillage, that 
 the children could hardly make room in their 
 minds to receive all these different objects. 
 There, too, was Tanglewood, which they had 
 hitherto thought such an important apex of 
 the world. It now occupied so small a space. 
 
THE CHIMERA. 213 
 
 that they gazed far beyond it, and on either 
 side, and searched a good while with all their 
 eyes, before discovering whereabout it stood. 
 
 White, fleecy clouds were hanging in the air, 
 and threw the dark spots of their shadow here 
 and there over the landscape. But, by and by, 
 the sunshine was where the shadow had been, 
 and the shadow was somewhere else. 
 
 Far to the westward was a range of blue 
 mountains, which Eustace Bright told the 
 children were the Catskills. Among those misty 
 hills, he said, was a spot where some old Dutch- 
 men were playing an everlasting game of nine- 
 pins, and where an idle fellow, whose name 
 was Rip Van Winkle, had fallen asleep, and 
 slept twenty years at a stretch. The children 
 eagerly besought Eustace to tell them all about 
 this wonderful affair. But the student replied 
 that the story had been told once already, and 
 better than it could ever be told again; and 
 that nobody would have a right to alter a word 
 of it, until it should have grown as old as " The 
 Gorgon's Head," and "The Three Golden 
 Apples," and the rest of those miraculous 
 legends. 
 
 "At least" said Periwinkle, "while we rest 
 ourselves here, and are looking about us, you 
 can tell us another of your own stories." 
 
 "Yes, Cousin Eustace," cried Primrose, "I 
 advise you to tell us a story here. Take some 
 
2i 4 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 lofty subject or other, and see if your imagina- 
 tion will not come up to it. Perhaps the moun- 
 tain air may make you poetical, for once. And 
 no matter how strange and wonderful the story 
 may be, now that we are up among the clouds, 
 we can believe anything." 
 
 ''Can you believe," asked Eustace, "that 
 there was once a w T inged horse?" 
 
 "Yes," said saucy Primrose; "but I am 
 afraid you will never be able to catch him." 
 
 "For that matter, Primrose," rejoined the 
 student; "I might possibly catch Pegasus, and 
 get upon his back, too, as well as a dozen other 
 fellows that I know of. At any rate, here is a 
 story about him ; and, of all places in the world, 
 it ought certainly to be told upon a mountain- 
 top." 
 
 So, sitting on a pile of stones, while the 
 children clustered themselves at its base, Eus- 
 tace fixed his eyes on a white cloud that was 
 sailing by, and began as follows. 
 
THE CHIMERA. 
 
 Once in the old, old times (for all the strange 
 things which I tell you about happened long 
 before anybody can remember), a fountain 
 gushed out of a hill-side, in the marvelous land 
 of Greece. And, for aught I know, after so 
 many thousand years, it is still gushing out of 
 the very selfsame spot. At any rate, there was 
 the pleasant fountain, welling freshly forth and 
 sparkling adown the hill-side, in the golden 
 sunset, when a handsome young man named 
 Bellerophon drew near its margin. In his hand 
 he held a bridle, studded with brilliant gems, 
 and adorned with a golden bit. Seeing an old 
 man, and another of middle age, and a little 
 boy, near the fountain, and likewise a maiden 
 who was dipping up some of the water in a 
 pitcher, he paused, and begged that he might 
 refresh himself with a draught. 
 
 "This is very delicious water," he said to the 
 maiden as he rinsed and filled her pitcher, after 
 drinking out of it. "Will you be kind enough 
 to tell me whether the fountain has any name?" 
 
 "Yes; it is called the Fountain of Pirene," 
 
 215 
 
216 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 answered the maiden; and then she added, 
 " My grandmother has told me that this clear 
 fountain was once a beautiful woman; and 
 when her son was killed by the arrows of the 
 huntress Diana, she melted all away into tears. 
 And so the water, which you find so cool and 
 sweet, is the sorrow of that poor mother's 
 heart!" 
 
 "I should not have dreamed," observed the 
 young stranger, "that so clear a well-spring, 
 with its gush and gurgle, and its cheery dance 
 out of the shade into the sunlight, had so much 
 as one tear-drop in its bosom! And this, then, 
 is Pirene? I thank you, pretty maiden, for 
 telling me its name. I have come from a far- 
 away country to find this very spot." 
 
 A middle-aged country fellow (he had driven 
 his cow to drink out of the spring) stared hard 
 at young Bellerophon, and at the handsome 
 bridle which he carried in his hand. 
 
 "The water-courses must be getting low, 
 friend, in your part of the world," remarked he, 
 " if you come so far only to find the Fountain 
 of Pirene. But pray, have you lost a horse? 
 I see you carry the bridle in your hand; and 
 a very pretty one it is with that double row 
 of bright stones upon it. If the horse was as 
 fine as the bridle, you are much to be pitied for 
 losing him." 
 
 " I have lost no horse," said Bellerophon, with 
 
THE CHIMERA. 217 
 
 a smile. "But I happen to be seeking a very 
 famous one, which, as wise people have informed 
 me, must be found hereabouts, if anywhere. 
 Do you know whether the winged horse Pegasus 
 still haunts the Fountain of Pirene, as he used 
 to do in your forefathers' days?" 
 
 But then the country fellow laughed. 
 
 Some of you, my little friends, have probably 
 heard that this Pegasus was a snow-white 
 steed, with beautiful silvery wings, who spent 
 most of his time on the summit of Mount Heli- 
 con. He was as wild, and as swift, and as 
 buoyant, in his flight through the air, as any 
 eagle that ever soared into the clouds. There 
 was nothing else like him in the world. He 
 had no mate; he never had been backed or 
 bridled by a master ; and for many a long year, 
 he led a solitary and a happy life. 
 
 Oh, how fine a thing it is to be a winged 
 horse! Sleeping at night, as he did, on a lofty 
 mountain-top, and passing the greater part of 
 the day in the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to 
 be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was 
 seen, up very high above people's heads, with 
 the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would 
 have thought that he belonged to the sky, and 
 that, skimming a little too low, he had got 
 astray among our mists and vapors, and was 
 seeking his way back again. It was very pretty 
 to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of 
 
2i8 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 a bright cloud, and be lost in it, for a moment 
 or two, and then break forth from the other 
 side. Or, in a sullen rain-storm, when there 
 was a gray pavement of clouds over the whole 
 sky, it would sometimes happen that the winged 
 horse descended right through it, and the glad 
 light of the upper region would gleam after him. 
 In another instant, it is true, both Pegasus and 
 the pleasant light would be gone away together. 
 But any one that was fortunate enough to see 
 this wondrous spectacle felt cheerful the whole 
 day afterwards, and as much longer as the 
 storm lasted. 
 
 In the summer-time, and in the beautifullest 
 of weather, Pegasus often alighted on the solid 
 earth, and, closing his silvery wings, would 
 gallop over hill and dale for pastime, as fleetly 
 as the wind. Oftener than in any other place, 
 he had been seen near the Fountain of Pirene, 
 drinking the delicious water, or rolling himself 
 upon the soft grass of the margin. Sometimes, 
 too (but Pegasus was very dainty in his food), 
 he would crop a few of the clover-blossoms that 
 happened to be sweetest. 
 
 To the Fountain of Pirene, therefore, people's 
 great-grandfathers had been in the habit of 
 going (as long as they were youthful, and 
 retained their faith in winged horses), in hopes 
 of getting a glimpse at the beautiful Pegasus. 
 But, of late years, he had been very seldom 
 
THE CHIMERA. 219 
 
 seen. Indeed, there were many of the country 
 folks, dwelling within half an hour's walk of the 
 fountain, who had never beheld Pegasus, and 
 did not believe that there was any such creature 
 in existence. The country fellow to whom 
 Bellerophon was speaking chanced to be one of 
 those incredulous persons. 
 
 And that was the reason why he laughed. 
 
 "Pegasus, indeed!" cried he, turning up his 
 nose as high as such a flat nose could be turned 
 up, — "Pegasus, indeed! A winged horse, 
 truly! Why, friend, are you in your senses? 
 Of what use would wings be to a horse? Could 
 he drag the plough so well, think you? To 
 be sure, there might be a little saving in the 
 expense of shoes; but then, how would a man 
 like to see his horse flying out of the stable 
 window? — yes, or whisking him up above the 
 clouds, when he only wanted to ride him to 
 mill? No, no! I don't believe in Pegasus. 
 There never was such a ridiculous kind of a 
 horse-fowl made!" 
 
 "I have some reason to think otherwise," 
 said Bellerophon, quietly. 
 
 And then he turned to an old, gray man, who 
 was leaning on a staff, and listening very atten- 
 tively, with his head stretched forward, and 
 one hand at his ear, because, for the last twenty 
 years, he had been getting rather deaf. 
 
 "And what say you, venerable sir?" inquired 
 
22o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 he. " In your younger days, I should imagine 
 you must frequently have seen the winged 
 steed!" 
 
 "Ah, young stranger, my memory is very 
 poor!" said the aged man. "When I was a 
 lad, if I remember rightly, I used to believe 
 there was such a horse, and so did everybody 
 else. But, nowadays, I hardly know what to 
 think, and very seldom think about the winged 
 horse at all. If I ever saw the creature, it was 
 a long, long while ago; and, to tell you the 
 truth, I doubt whether I ever did see him. One 
 day, to be sure, when I was quite a youth, I 
 remember seeing some hoof-tramps round about 
 the brink of the fountain. Pegasus might have 
 made those hoof -marks; and so might some 
 other horse." 
 
 "And have you never seen him, my fair 
 maiden?" asked Bellerophon of the girl, who 
 stood with the pitcher on her head, while this 
 talk went on. "You certainly could see Pega- 
 sus, if anybody can, for your eyes are very 
 bright." 
 
 "Once I thought I saw him," replied the 
 maiden, with a smile and a blush. "It was 
 either Pegasus, or a large white bird, a very 
 great way up in the air. And one other time, 
 as I was coming to the fountain with my pitcher, 
 I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious 
 neigh as that was! My very heart leaped with 
 
THE CHIMERA. 221 
 
 delight at the sound. But it startled me, 
 nevertheless; so that I ran home without filling 
 my pitcher." 
 
 "That was truly a pity!" said Bellerophon. 
 
 And he turned to the child, whom I mentioned 
 at the beginning of the story, and who was 
 gazing at him, as children are apt to gaze at 
 strangers, with his rosy mouth wide open. 
 
 "Well, my little fellow," cried Bellerophon, 
 playfully pulling one of his curls, " I suppose 
 you have often seen the winged horse." 
 
 "That I have," answered the child, very 
 readily. " I saw him yesterday, and many 
 times before." 
 
 "You are a fine little man!" said Bellero- 
 phon, drawing the child closer to him. " Come, 
 tell me all about it." 
 
 "Why," replied the child, "I often come 
 here to sail little boats in the fountain, and to 
 gather pretty pebbles out of its basin. And 
 sometimes, when I look down into the water, 
 I see the image of the winged horse, in the 
 picture of the sky that is there. I wish he 
 would come down, and take me on his back, 
 and let me ride him up to the moon! But, if 
 I so much as stir to look at him, he flies far 
 away out of sight." 
 
 And Bellerophon put his faith in the child, 
 who had seen the image of Pegasus in the water, 
 and in the maiden, who had heard him neigh 
 
222 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 so melodiously, rather than in the middle-aged 
 clown who believed only in cart-horses, or in 
 the old man who had forgotten the beautiful 
 things of his youth. 
 
 Therefore, he haunted about the Fountain of 
 Pirene for a great many days afterward. He 
 kept continually on the watch, looking upward 
 at the sky, or else down into the water, hoping 
 forever that he should see either the reflected 
 image of the winged horse or the marvellous 
 reality. He held the bridle with its bright 
 gems and golden bit, always ready in his hand. 
 The rustic people who dwelt in the neighbor- 
 hood, and drove their cattle to the fountain to 
 drink, would often laugh at poor Bellerophon, 
 and sometimes take him pretty severely to 
 task. They told him that an able-bodied 
 young man, like himself, ought to have better 
 business than to be wasting his time in such 
 an idle pursuit. They offered to sell him a 
 horse, if he wanted one; and when Bellerophon 
 declined the purchase, they tried to drive a 
 bargain with him for his fine bridle. 
 
 Even the country boys thought him so very 
 foolish, that they used to have a great deal of 
 sport about him, and were rude enough not to 
 care a fig, although Bellerophon saw and heard 
 it. One little urchin, for example, would play 
 Pegasus, and cut the oddest imaginable capers, 
 by way of flying; while one of his school- 
 
THE CHIMERA. 223 
 
 fellows would scamper after him, holding forth 
 a twist of bulrushes, which was intended to 
 represent Bellerophon's ornamental bridle. But 
 the gentle child, who had seen the picture of 
 Pegasus in the water, comforted the young 
 stranger more than all the naughty boys could 
 torment him. The dear little fellow, in his 
 play-hours, often sat down beside him, and 
 without speaking a word, would look down into 
 the fountain and up towards the sky, with so 
 innocent a faith, that Bellerophon could not 
 help feeling encouraged. 
 
 Now you will, perhaps, wish to be told why 
 it was that Bellerophon had undertaken to 
 catch the winged horse. And we shall find 
 no better opportunity to speak about this 
 matter than while he is waiting for Pegasus to 
 appear. 
 
 If I were to relate the whole of Bellerophon's 
 previous adventures, they might easily grow 
 into a very long story. It will be quite enough 
 to say, that in a certain country of Asia, a 
 terrible monster, called a Chimasra, had made 
 its appearance, and was doing more mischief 
 than could be talked about between now and 
 sunset. According to the best accounts which 
 I have been able to obtain, this Chimaera was 
 nearly, if not quite, the ugliest and most poison- 
 ous creature, and the strangest and unaccount- 
 
 ablest, and the hardest to fight with, and the 
 10 
 
224 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 most difficult to run away from, that ever came 
 out of the earth's inside. It had a tail like a 
 boa-constrictor; its body was like I do not care 
 what; and it had three separate heads, one of 
 which was a lion's, the second a goat's, and 
 the third an abominably great snake's. And 
 a hot blast of fire came flaming out of each of 
 its three mouths! Being an earthly monster, 
 I doubt whether it had any wings; but, wings 
 or no, it ran like a goat and a lion, and wriggled 
 along like a serpent, and thus contrived to 
 make about as much speed as all the three 
 together. 
 
 Oh, the mischief, and mischief, and mischief 
 that this naughty creature did! With its 
 naming breath, it could set a forest on fire, or 
 burn up a field of grain, or, for that matter, a 
 village, with all its fences and houses. It laid 
 waste the whole country round about, and 
 used to eat up people and animals alive, and 
 cook them afterwards in the burning oven of 
 its stomach. Mercy on us, little children, I 
 hope neither you or I will ever happen to meet 
 a Chimaera! 
 
 While the hateful beast (if a beast we can 
 anywise call it) was doing all these horrible 
 things, it so chanced that Bellerophon came to 
 that part of the world, on a visit to the king. 
 The king's name was Iobates, and Lycia was 
 the country which he ruled over. Bellerophon 
 
THE CHIMERA. 225 
 
 was one of the bravest youths in the world, and 
 desired nothing so much as to do some valiant 
 and beneficent deed, such as would make all 
 mankind admire and love him. In those days, 
 the only way for a young man to distinguish 
 himself was by fighting battles, either with the 
 enemies of his country, or with wicked giants, 
 or with troublesome dragons, or with wild beasts, 
 when he could find nothing more dangerous 
 to encounter. King Iobates, perceiving the 
 courage of his youthful visitor, proposed to him 
 to go and fight the Chimasra, which everybody 
 else was afraid of, and which, unless it should 
 be soon killed, was likely to convert Lycia 
 into a desert. Bellerophon hesitated not a 
 moment, but assured the king that he would 
 either slay this dreaded Chimasra, or perish in 
 the attempt. 
 
 But, in the first place, as the monster was so 
 prodigiously swift, he bethought himself that 
 he should never win the victory by fighting on 
 foot. The wisest thing he could do, therefore, 
 was to get the very best and fleetest horse that 
 could anywhere be found. And what other 
 horse, in all the world, was half so fleet as the 
 marvellous horse Pegasus, who had wings as 
 well as legs, and was even more active in the 
 air than on the earth? To be sure, a great 
 many people denied that there was any such 
 horse with wings, and said that the stories 
 
226 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 about him were all poetry and nonsense. But 
 wonderful as it appeared, Bellerophon believed 
 that Pegasus was a real steed, and hoped that 
 he himself might be fortunate enough to find 
 him; and, once fairly mounted on his back, he 
 would be able to fight the Chimaera at better 
 advantage. 
 
 And this was the purpose with which he had 
 traveled from Lycia to Greece, and had brought 
 the beautifully ornamented bridle in his hand. 
 It was an enchanted bridle. If he could only 
 succeed in putting the golden bit into the mouth 
 of Pegasus, the winged horse would be sub- 
 missive, and would own Bellerophon for his 
 master, and fly whithersoever he might choose 
 to turn the rein. 
 
 But, indeed, it was a weary and anxious time, 
 while Bellerophon waited and waited for Pega- 
 sus, in hopes that he would come and drink at 
 the Fountain of Pirene. He was afraid lest 
 King Iobates should imagine that he had fled 
 from the Chimaera. It pained him, too, to 
 think how much mischief the monster was doing 
 while he himself, instead of fighting with it, 
 was compelled to sit idly poring over the bright 
 waters of Pirene, as they gushed out of the 
 sparkling sand. And as Pegasus came thither 
 so seldom in these latter years, and scarcely 
 alighted there more than once in a lifetime, 
 Bellerophon feared that he might grow an old 
 
THE CHIMERA. 227 
 
 man and have no strength left in his arms nor 
 courage in his heart, before the winged horse 
 would appear. Oh, how heavily passes the 
 time, while an adventurous youth is yearning 
 to do his part in life, and to gather in the harvest 
 of his renown ! How hard a lesson it is to wait ! 
 Our life is brief, and how much of it is spent in 
 teaching us only this! 
 
 Well was it for Bellerophon that the gentle 
 child had grown so fond of him, and was never 
 weary of keeping him company. Every morn- 
 ing the child gave him a new hope to put in his 
 bosom, instead of yesterday's withered one. 
 
 "Dear Bellerophon," he would cry, looking 
 up hopefully into his face, " I think we shall see 
 Pegasus to-day!" 
 
 And, at length, if it had not been for the little 
 boy's unwavering faith, Bellerophon would 
 have given up all hope, and would have gone 
 back to Lycia, and have done his best to slay 
 the Chimaera without the help of the winged 
 horse. And in that case poor Bellerophon 
 would at least have been terribly scorched by 
 the creature's breath, and would most probably 
 have been killed and devoured. Nobody should 
 ever try to fight an earth-born Chimaera, unless 
 he can first get upon the back of an aerial steed. 
 / One morning the child spoke to Bellerophon 
 even more hopefully than usual. 
 
 "Dear, dear Bellerophon," cried he, "I know 
 
228 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 not why it is, but I feel as if we should certainly 
 see Pegasus to-day!" 
 
 And all that day he would not stir a step from 
 Bellerophon's side; so they ate a crust of bread 
 together, and drank some of the water of the 
 fountain. In the afternoon there they sat, and 
 Bellerophon had thrown his arm around the 
 child, who likewise had put one of his little 
 hands into Bellerophon's. The latter was lost 
 in his own thoughts, and was fixing his eyes 
 vacantly on the trunks of the trees that over- 
 shadowed the fountain, and on the grapevines 
 that clambered up among their branches. But 
 the gentle child was gazing down into the water ; 
 he was grieved for Bellerophon's sake, that the 
 hope of another day should be deceived, like 
 so many before it; and two or three quiet tear- 
 drops fell from his eyes, and mingled with 
 what were said to be the many tears of Pirene, 
 when she wept for her slain children. 
 
 But, when he least thought of it, Bellerophon 
 felt the pressure of the child's little hand, and 
 heard a soft, almost breathless whisper. 
 
 "See there, dear Bellerophon! There is an 
 image in the water ! ' ' 
 
 The young man looked down into the dimpling 
 mirror of the fountain, and saw what he took 
 to be the reflection of a bird which seemed to be 
 flying at a great height in the air, with a gleam 
 of sunshine on its snowy or silvery wings. 
 
THE CHIMERA. 229 
 
 "What a splendid bird it must be!" said he. 
 " And how very large it looks, though it must 
 really be flying higher than the clouds ! ' ' 
 
 "It makes me tremble!" whispered the 
 child. "I am afraid to look up into the air! 
 It is very beautiful, and yet I dare only look 
 at its image in the water. Dear Bellerophon, 
 do you not see that it is no bird? It is the 
 winged horse Pegasus!" 
 
 Bellerophon's heart began to throb! He 
 gazed keenly upward, but could not see the 
 winged creature, whether bird or horse; because, 
 just then, it had plunged into the fleecy depths 
 of a summer cloud. It was but a moment, 
 however, before the object reappeared, sinking 
 lightly down out of the cloud, although still 
 at a vast distance from the earth. Bellerophon 
 caught the child in his arms, and shrank back 
 with him, so that they were both hidden among 
 the thick shrubbery which grew all around the 
 fountain. Not that he was afraid of any harm, 
 but he dreaded lest, if Pegasus caught a glimpse 
 of them, he would fly far away, and alight in 
 some inaccessible mountain-top. For it was 
 really the winged horse. After they had ex- 
 pected him so long, he was coming to quench 
 his thirst with the water of Pirene. 
 
 Nearer and nearer came the aerial wonder, 
 flying in great circles, as you may have seen a 
 dove when about to alight. Downward came 
 
2 3 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Pegasus, in those wide, sweeping circles, which 
 grew narrower, and narrower still, as he grad- 
 ually approached the earth. The nigher the 
 view of him, the more beautiful he was, and 
 the more marvellous the sweep of his silvery 
 wings. At last, with so light a pressure as 
 hardly to bend the grass about the fountain, 
 or imprint a hoof -tramp in the sand of its margin, 
 he alighted, and, stooping his wild head, began 
 to drink. He drew in the water, with long and 
 pleasant sighs, and tranquil pauses of enjoy- 
 ment; and then another draught, and another, 
 and another. For, nowhere in the world, or up 
 among the clouds, did Pegasus love any water 
 as he loved this of Pirene. And when his thirst 
 was slaked, he cropped a few of the honey- 
 blossoms of the clover, delicately tasting them, 
 but not caring to make a hearty meal, because 
 the herbage, just beneath the clouds, on the 
 lofty sides of Mount Helicon, suited his palate 
 better than this ordinary grass. 
 
 After thus drinking to his heart's content, and 
 in his dainty fashion, condescending to take a 
 little food, the winged horse began to caper to and 
 fro, and dance as it were, out of mere idleness 
 and sport. There never was a more playful 
 creature made than this very Pegasus. So 
 there he frisked, in a way that it delights me to 
 think about, fluttering his great wings as lightly 
 as ever did a linnet, and running little races, 
 
THE CHIMERA. 231 
 
 half on earth, and half in air, and which I know 
 not whether to call a flight or a gallop. When 
 a creature is perfectly able to fly, he some- 
 times chooses to run, just for the pastime of 
 the thing; and so did Pegasus, although it 
 cost him some little trouble to keep his hoofs 
 so near the ground. Bellerophon, meanwhile, 
 holding the child's hand, peeped forth from 
 the shrubbery, and thought that never was 
 any sight so beautiful as this, nor ever a horse's 
 eyes so wild and spirited as those of Pegasus. 
 It seemed a sin to think of bridling him and 
 riding on his back. 
 
 Once or twice, Pegasus stopped, and snuffed 
 the air, pricking up his ears, tossing his head, 
 and turning it on all sides, as if he partly sus- 
 pected some mischief or other. Seeing nothing, 
 however, and hearing no sound, he soon began 
 his antics again. 
 
 At length, — not that he was weary, but only 
 idle and luxurious, — Pegasus folded his wings, 
 and lay down on the soft green turf. But, being 
 too full of aerial life to remain quiet for many 
 moments together, he soon rolled over on his 
 back, with his four slender legs in the air. It 
 was beautiful to see him, this one solitary 
 creature, whose mate had never been created, 
 but who needed no companion, and, living a 
 great many hundred years, was as happy as 
 the centuries were long. The more he did such 
 
232 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 things as mortal horses are accustomed to do, 
 the less earthly and the more wonderful he 
 seemed. Bellerophon and the child almost held 
 their breath, partly from a delightful awe, but 
 still more because they dreaded lest the slightest 
 stir or murmur should send him up, with the 
 speed of an arrow-flight, into the farthest blue 
 of the sky. 
 
 Finally, when he had had enough of rolling 
 over and over, Pegasus turned himself about, 
 and indolently, like any other horse, put out his 
 fore legs, in order to rise from the ground; and 
 Bellerophon, who had guessed that he would 
 do so, darted suddenly from the thicket, and 
 leaped astride of his back. 
 
 Yes, there he sat, on the back of the winged 
 horse ! 
 
 But what a bound did Pegasus make, when, 
 for the first time, he felt the weight of a mortal 
 man upon his loins! A bound indeed! Before 
 he had time to draw a breath, Bellerophon 
 found himself five hundred feet aloft, and still 
 shooting upward, while the winged horse snorted 
 and trembled with terror and anger. Upward 
 he went, up, up, up, until he plunged into the 
 cold misty bosom of a cloud, at which, only a 
 little while before, Bellerophon had been gazing, 
 and fancying it a very pleasant spot. Then 
 again, out of the heart of the cloud, Pegasus shot 
 down like a thunderbolt, as if he meant to dash 
 
THE CHIMERA. 233 
 
 both himself and his rider headlong against a 
 rock. Then he went through about a thousand 
 of the wildest caprioles that had ever been per- 
 formed either by a bird or a horse. 
 
 I cannot tell you half that he did. He 
 skimmed straight forward, and sideways, and 
 backward. He reared himself erect, with his 
 fore legs on a wreath of mist, and his hind legs 
 on nothing at all. He flung out his heels behind, 
 and put down his head between his legs, with 
 his wings pointing right upward. At about 
 two miles' height above the earth, he turned 
 a somerset, so that Bellerophon's heels were 
 where his head should have been, and he seemed 
 to look down into the sky, instead of up. He 
 twisted his head about, and looking Bellero- 
 phon in the face, with fire flashing from his eyes, 
 made a terrible attempt to bite him. He 
 fluttered his pinions so wildly that one of the 
 silvery feathers was shaken out, and floating 
 earthward, was picked up by the child, who 
 kept it as long as he lived, in memory of Pegasus 
 and Bellerophon. 
 
 But the latter (who, as you may judge, was 
 as good a horseman as ever galloped) had been 
 watching his opportunity, and at last clapped 
 the golden bit of the enchanted bridle between 
 the winged steed's jaws. No sooner was this 
 done, than Pegasus became as manageable as 
 if he had taken food, all his life, out of Bellero- 
 
234 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 phon's hand. To speak what I really feel, it 
 was almost a sadness to see so wild a creature 
 grow suddenly so tame. And Pegasus seemed 
 to feel it so, likewise. He looked round to 
 Bellerophon, with the tears in his beautiful 
 eyes, instead of the fire that so recently flashed 
 from them. But when Bellerophon patted his 
 head, and spoke a few authoritative, yet kind 
 and soothing words, another look came into the 
 eyes of Pegasus; for he was glad at heart, after 
 so many lonely centuries, to have found a com- 
 panion and a master. 
 
 Thus it always is with winged horses, and 
 with all such wild and solitary creatures. If 
 you can catch and overcome them, it is the 
 surest way to win their love. 
 
 While Pegasus had been doing his utmost to 
 shake Bellerophon off his back, he had flown a 
 very long distance; and they had come within 
 sight of a lofty mountain by the time the bit 
 was in his mouth. Bellerophon had seen this 
 mountain before, and knew it to be Helicon, 
 on the summit of which was the winged horse's 
 abode. Thither (after looking gently into his 
 rider's face, as if to ask leave) Pegasus now flew, 
 and alighting, waited patiently until Bellero- 
 phon should please to dismount. The young 
 man, accordingly, leaped from his steed's back, 
 but still held him fast by the bridle. Meeting 
 his eyes, however, he was so affected by the 
 
THE CHIMERA. 235 
 
 gentleness of his aspect, and by the thought of 
 the free life which Pegasus had heretofore lived, 
 that he could not bear to keep him a prisoner, 
 if he really desired his liberty. 
 
 Obeying this generous impulse he slipped the 
 enchanted bridle off the head of Pegasus, and 
 took the bit from his mouth. 
 
 "Leave me, Pegasus!" said he. "Either 
 leave me, or love me." 
 
 In an instant the winged horse shot almost 
 out of sight, soaring straight upward from the 
 summit of Mount Helicon. Being long after 
 sunset, it was now twilight on the mountain- 
 top, and dusky evening over all the country 
 round about. But Pegasus flew so high that 
 he overtook the departed day, and was bathed 
 in the upper radiance of the sun. Ascending 
 higher and higher, he looked like a bright speck, 
 and, at last, could no longer be seen in the 
 hollow waste of the sky. And Bellerophon 
 was afraid that he should never behold him 
 more. But, while he was lamenting his own 
 folly, the bright speck reappeared, and drew 
 nearer and nearer, until it descended lower than 
 the sunshine; and, behold, Pegasus had come 
 back! After this trial there was no more fear 
 of the winged horse's making his escape. He 
 and Bellerophon were friends, and put loving 
 faith in one another. 
 
 That night they lay down and slept together, 
 
236 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 with Bellerophon's arm about the neck of 
 Pegasus, not as a caution, but for kindness. 
 And they awoke at peep of day, and bade one 
 another good morning each in his own language. 
 
 In this manner, Bellerophon and the wondrous 
 steed spent several days, and grew better 
 acquainted and fonder of each other all the 
 time. They went on long aerial journeys, and 
 sometimes ascended so high that the earth 
 looked hardly bigger than — the moon. They 
 visited distant countries, and amazed the inhabi- 
 tants, who thought that the beautiful young 
 man, on the back of the winged horse, must have 
 come down out of the sky. A thousand miles 
 a day was no more than an easy space for the 
 fleet Pegasus to pass over. Belleropohn was 
 delighted with this kind of life, and would have 
 liked nothing better than to live always in the 
 same way, aloft in the clear atmosphere; for it 
 was always sunny weather up there, however 
 cheerless and rainy it might be in the lower 
 region. But he could not forget the horrible 
 Chimsera, which he had promised King Iobates 
 to slay. So, at last, when he had become well 
 accustomed to feats of horsemanship in the air, 
 and could manage Pegasus with the least motion 
 of his hand, and had taught him to obey his 
 voice, he determined to attempt the performance 
 of this perilous adventure. 
 
 At daybreak, therefore, as soon as he unclosed 
 
THE CHIMERA. 237 
 
 his eyes, he gently pinched the winged horse's 
 ear, in order to arouse him. Pegasus imme- 
 diately started from the ground, and pranced 
 about a quarter of a mile aloft, and made a 
 grand sweep around the mountain-top, by way 
 of showing that he was wide awake, and ready 
 for any kind of excursion. During the whole 
 of this little flight, he uttered a loud, brisk, and 
 melodious neigh, and finally came down at 
 Bellerophon's side, as lightly as ever you saw 
 a sparrow hop upon a twig. 
 
 "Well done, dear Pegasus! well done, 
 my sky-skimmer!" cried Bellerophon, fondly 
 stroking the horse's neck. "And now, my 
 fleet and beautiful friend, we must break our 
 fast. To-day we are to fight the terrible 
 Chimaera." 
 
 As soon as they had eaten their morning 
 meal and drank some sparkling water from a 
 spring called Hippocrene, Pegasus held out his 
 head, of his own accord, so that his master 
 might put on his bridle. Then, with a great 
 many playful leaps and airy caperings, he 
 showed his impatience to be gone ; while Bellero- 
 phon was girding on his sword, and hanging 
 his shield about his neck, and preparing himself 
 for battle. When everything was ready, the 
 rider mounted, and (as was his custom, when 
 going a long distance) ascended five miles per- 
 pendicularly, so as the better to see whither 
 
238 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 he was directing his course. He then turned 
 the head of Pegasus towards the east, and set 
 out for Lycia. In their flight they overtook 
 an eagle, and came so nigh him, before he 
 could get out of their way, that Bellerophon 
 might easily have caught him by the leg. 
 Hastening onward at this rate, it was still 
 early in the forenoon when they beheld the 
 lofty mountains of Lycia, with their deep and 
 shaggy valleys. If Bellerophon had been told 
 truly, it was in one of those dismal valleys 
 that the hideous Chimaera had taken up its 
 abode. 
 
 Being now so near their journey's end, the 
 winged horse gradually descended with his rider; 
 and they took advantage of some clouds that 
 were floating over the mountain-tops, in order 
 to conceal themselves. Hovering on the upper 
 surface of a cloud, and peeping over its edge, 
 Bellerophon had a pretty distinct view of the 
 mountainous part of Lycia, and could look into 
 all its shadowy vales at once. At first there 
 appeared to be nothing remarkable. It was a 
 wild, savage, and rocky tract of high and pre- 
 cipitous hills. In the more level part of the 
 country, there were the ruins of houses that 
 had been burnt, and, here and there, the car- 
 casses of dead cattle, strewn about the pastures 
 where they had been feeding. 
 
 " The Chimaera must have done this mischief," 
 
Page 242 
 
 As it came within arm's-length, Bellerophon w</</.' a cut at the 
 monster 
 
THE CHIMERA. 239 
 
 thought Bellerophon. " But where can the 
 monster be?" 
 
 As I have already said, there was nothing 
 remarkable to be detected, at first sight, in 
 any of the valleys and dells that lay among the 
 precipitous heights of the mountains. Nothing 
 at all; unless, indeed, it were three spires of 
 black smoke, which issued from what seemed 
 to be the mouth of a cavern, and clambered 
 sullenly into the atmosphere. Before reaching 
 the mountain-top, these three black smoke- 
 wreaths mingled themselves into one. The 
 cavern was amost directly beneath the winged 
 horse and his rider, at the distance of about a 
 thousand feet. The smoke, as it crept heavily 
 upward, had an ugly sulphurous, stifling scent 
 which caused Pegasus to snort and Bellerophon 
 to sneeze. So disagreeable was it to the mar- 
 vellous steed (who was accustomed to breathe 
 only the purest air), that he waved his wings, 
 and shot half a mile out of the range of this 
 offensive vapor. 
 
 But, on looking behind him, Bellerophon saw 
 something that induced him first to draw the 
 bridle, and then to turn Pegasus about. He 
 made a sign, which the winged horse under- 
 stood, and sunk slowly through the air, until 
 his hoofs were scarcely more than a man's 
 height above the rocky bottom of the valley 
 In front, as far off as you could throw a stone, 
 
 16 
 
2 4 o A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 was the cavern's mouth, with the three smoke- 
 wreaths oozing out of it. And what else did 
 Bellerophon behold there? 
 
 There seemed to be a heap of strange and 
 terrible creatures curled up within the cavern. 
 Their bodies lay so close together, that Bellero- 
 phon could not distinguish them apart; but, 
 judging by their heads, one of these creatures 
 was a huge snake, the second a fierce lion, and 
 the third an ugly goat. The lion and the goat 
 were asleep; the snake was broad awake, and 
 kept staring around him with a great pair of 
 fiery eyes, But — and this was the most won- 
 derful part of the matter — the three spires of 
 smoke evidently issued from the nostrils of 
 these three heads! So strange was the spec- 
 tacle, that, though Bellerophon had been all 
 along expecting it, the truth did not immedi- 
 ately occur to him, that here was the terrible 
 three-headed Chimaera. He had found out the 
 Chimasra's cavern. The snake, the lion, and 
 the goat, as he supposed them to be, were not 
 three separate creatures, but one monster! 
 
 The wicked, hateful thing! Slumbering as 
 two-thirds of it were, it still held, in its abomin- 
 able claws, the remnant of an unfortunate 
 lamb, — or possibly (but I hate to think so) it 
 was a dear little boy, — which its three mouths 
 had been gnawing, before two of them fell 
 asleep ' 
 
THE CHIMERA. 241 
 
 All at once, Bellerophon started as from a 
 dream, and knew it to be the Chimaera. Pegasus 
 seemed to know it, at the same instant, and 
 sent forth a neigh, that sounded like the call of 
 a trumpet to battle. At this sound the three 
 heads reared themselves erect, and belched out 
 great flashes of flame. Before Bellerophon had 
 time to consider what to do next, the monster 
 flung itself out of the cavern and sprung straight 
 towards him, with its immense claws extended, 
 and its snaky tail twisting itself venomously 
 behind. If Pegasus had not been as nimble 
 as a bird, both he and his rider would have been 
 overthrown by the Chimaera's headlong rush, 
 and thus the battle have been ended before it 
 was well begun. But the winged horse was not 
 to be caught so. In the twinkling of an eye he 
 was up aloft, half way to the clouds, snorting 
 with anger. He shuddered, too, not with 
 affright, but with utter disgust at the loath- 
 someness of this poisonous thing with three 
 heads. 
 
 The Chimaera, on the other hand, raised 
 itself up so as to stand absolutely on the tip- 
 end of its tail, with its talons pawing fiercely 
 in the air, and its three heads spluttering fire 
 at Pegasus and his rider. My stars, how it 
 roared, and hissed, and bellowed! Bellerophon, 
 meanwhile, was fitting his shield on his arm 
 and drawing his sword. 
 
242 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Now, my beloved Pegasus," he whispered 
 in the winged horse's ear, "thou must help me 
 to slay this insufferable monster; or else thou 
 shalt fly back to thy solitary mountain-peak 
 without thy friend Bellerophon. For either the 
 Chimaera dies, or its three mouths shall gnaw 
 this head of mine, which has slumbered upon 
 thy neck!" 
 
 Pegasus whinnied, and, turning back his head, 
 rubbed his nose tenderly against his rider's 
 cheek. It was his way of telling him that 
 though he had wings and was an immortal 
 horse, yet he would perish, if it were possible 
 for immortality to perish, rather than leave 
 Bellerophon behind. 
 
 "I thank you, Pegasus," answered Bellero- 
 phon. "Now then, let us make a dash at the 
 monster!" 
 
 Uttering these words, he shook the bridle; 
 and Pegasus darted down aslant, as swift 
 as the flight of an arrow, right towards the 
 Chimasra's threefold head, which, all this time, 
 was poking itself as high as it could into the 
 air. As it came within arm's-length, Bellero- 
 phon made a cut at the monster, but was carried 
 onward by his steed, before he could see whether 
 the blow had been successful. Pegasus con- 
 tinued his course, but soon wheeled round, at 
 about the same distance from the Chimaera as 
 before. Bellerophon then perceived that he 
 
THE CHIMERA. 243 
 
 had cut the goat's head of the monster almost 
 off, so that it dangled downward by the skin, 
 and seemed quite dead. 
 
 But, to make amends, the snake's head and 
 the lion's head had taken all the fierceness of 
 the dead one into themselves, and spit flame, 
 and hissed, and roared, with a vast deal more 
 fury than before. 
 
 "Never mind, my brave Pegasus!" cried 
 Bellerophon. "With another stroke like that, 
 we will stop either its hissing or its roaring." 
 
 And again he shook the bridle. Dashing 
 aslantwise, as before, the winged horse made 
 another arrow-flight towards the Chimasra, and 
 Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke 
 at one of the two remaining heads, as he shot 
 by. But this time, neither he nor Pegasus 
 escaped so well as at first. With one of its 
 claws, the Chimaera had given the young man 
 a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly 
 damaged the left wing of the flying steed with 
 the other. On his part, Bellerophon had mor- 
 tally wounded the lion's head of the monster, 
 insomuch that it now hung downward, with its 
 fire almost extinguished, and sending out gasps 
 of thick black smoke. The snake's head, how- 
 ever (which was the only one now left), was 
 twice as fierce and venomous as ever before. 
 It belched forth shoots of fire five hundred yards 
 long, and emitted hisses so loud, so harsh, and 
 
244 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 so ear-piercing, that King Iobates heard them, 
 fifty miles off, and trembled till the throne shook 
 under him. 
 
 "Well-a-day!" thought the poor king; "the 
 Chimaera is certainly coming to devour me!" 
 
 Meanwhile Pegasus had again paused in the 
 air, and neighed angrily, while sparkles of a 
 pure crystal flame darted out of his eyes. How 
 unlike the lurid fire of the Chimaera ! The aerial 
 steed's spirit was all aroused, and so was that 
 of Bellerophon. 
 
 " Dost thou bleed, my immortal horse?" cried 
 the young man, caring less for his own hurt 
 than for the anguish of this glorious creature, 
 that ought never to have tasted pain. "The 
 execrable Chimaera shall pay for this mischief 
 with his last head!" 
 
 Then he shook the bridle, shouted loudly, and 
 guided Pegasus, not aslantwise as before, but 
 straight at the monster's hideous front. So 
 rapid was the onset, that it seemed but a dazzle 
 and a flash before Bellerophon was at close 
 gripes with his enemy. 
 
 The Chimaera, by this time, after losing his 
 second head, had got into a red-hot passion of 
 pain and rampant rage. It so flounced about, 
 half on earth and partly in the air, that it was 
 impossible to say which element it rested upon. 
 It opened its snake- jaws to such an abomin- 
 able width, that Pegasus might almost, I was 
 
THE CHIMERA. 245 
 
 going to say, have flown right down its throat, 
 wings outspread, rider and all! At their ap- 
 proach it shot out a tremendous blast of its 
 fiery breath, and enveloped Bellerophon and 
 his steed in a perfect atmosphere of flame, 
 singeing the wings of Pegasus, scorching off one 
 whole side of the young man's golden ringlets, 
 and making them both far hotter than was 
 comfortable, from head to foot. 
 
 But this was nothing to what followed. 
 
 When the airy rush of the winged horse had 
 brought him within the distance of a hundred 
 yards, the Chimaera gave a spring, and flung 
 its huge, awkward, venomous, and utterly 
 detestable carcass right upon poor Pegasus, 
 clung round him with might and main, and tied 
 up its snaky tail into a knot ! Up flew the aerial 
 steed, higher, higher, higher, above the moun- 
 tain-peaks, above the clouds, and almost out of 
 sight of the solid earth. But still the earth- 
 born monster kept its hold, and was borne 
 upward, along with the creature of light and 
 air. Bellerophon, meanwhile, turning about, 
 found himself face to face with the ugly grim- 
 ness of the Chimasra's visage, and could only 
 avoid being scorched to death, or bitten right 
 in twain, by holding up his shield. Over the 
 upper edge of the shield, he looked sternly into 
 the savage eyes of the monster. 
 
 But the Chimaera was so mad and wild with 
 
246 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 pain, that it did not guard itself so well as might 
 else have been the case. Perhaps, after all, the 
 best way to fight a Chimsera is by getting as 
 close to it as you can. In its efforts to stick 
 its horrible iron claws into its enemy, the crea- 
 ture left its own breast quite exposed; and per- 
 ceiving this, Bellerophon thrust his sword up 
 to the hilt into its cruel heart. Immediately 
 the snaky tail untied its knot. The monster 
 let go its hold of Pegasus, and fell from that 
 vast height, downward; while the fire within 
 its bosom, instead of being put out, burned 
 fiercer than ever, and quickly began to con- 
 sume the dead carcass. Thus it fell out of the 
 sky, all a-flame, and (it being nightfall before 
 it reached the earth) was mistaken for a shooting 
 star or a comet. But, at early sunrise, some 
 cottagers were going to their day's labor, and 
 saw, to their astonishment, that several acres 
 of ground were strewn with black ashes. In 
 the middle of a field, there was a heap of whit- 
 ened bones, a great deal higher than a hay-stack. 
 Nothing else was ever seen of the dreadful 
 Chimasra ! 
 
 And when Bellerophon had won the victory, 
 he bent forward and kissed Pegasus, while the 
 tears stood in his eyes. 
 
 "Back now, my beloved steed!" said he. 
 "Back to the Fountain of Pirene!" 
 
 Pegasus skimmed through the air, quicker 
 
THE CHIMERA. 247 
 
 than ever he did before, and reached the foun- 
 tain in a very short time. And there he found 
 the old man leaning on his staff, and the country 
 fellow watering his cow, and the pretty maiden 
 filling her pitcher. 
 
 "I remember now," quoth the old man, "I 
 saw this winged horse once before, when I was 
 quite a lad. But he was ten times handsomer 
 in those days." 
 
 "I own a cart-horse, worth three of him!" 
 said the country fellow. " If this pony were 
 mine, the first thing I should do would be to 
 clip his wings!" 
 
 But the poor maiden said nothing, for she had 
 always the luck to be afraid at the wrong time. 
 So she ran away, and let her pitcher tumble 
 down, and broke it. 
 
 "Where is the gentle child," asked Bellero- 
 phon, "who used to keep me company, and 
 never lost his faith, and never was weary of 
 gazing into the fountain?" 
 
 "Here am I, dear Bellerophon ! " said the 
 child, softly. 
 
 For the little boy had spent day after day, on 
 the margin of Pirene, waiting for his friend to 
 come back! but when he perceived Bellerophon 
 descending through the clouds, mounted on the 
 winged horse, he had shrunk back into the 
 shrubbery. He was a delicate and tender child, 
 and dreaded lest the old man and the country 
 
248 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 fellow should see the tears gushing from his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Thou hast won the victory," said he, joy- 
 fully, running to the knee of Bellerophon, who 
 still sat on the back of Pegasus. " I knew thou 
 wouldst." 
 
 " Yes, dear child! " replied Bellerophon, alight- 
 ing from the winged horse. " But if thy faith 
 had not helped me, I should never have waited 
 for Pegasus, and never have gone up above the 
 clouds, and never have conquered the terrible 
 Chimaera. Thou, my beloved little friend, hast 
 done it all. And now let us give Pegasus his 
 liberty." 
 
 So he slipped off the enchanted bridle from 
 the head of the marvelous steed. 
 
 "Be free, forevermore, my Pegasus!" cried 
 he, with a shade of sadness in his tone. " Be 
 as free as thou art fleet!" 
 
 But Pegasus rested his head on Bellerophon's 
 shoulder, and would not be persuaded to take 
 flight. 
 
 "Well, then," said Bellerophon, caressing the 
 airy horse, "thou shalt be with me, as long as 
 thou wilt; and we will go together, forthwith, 
 and tell King Iobates that the Chimsera is 
 destroyed." 
 
 Then Bellerophon embraced the gentle child, 
 and promised to come to him again, and 
 departed. But, in after years, that child took 
 
THE CHIMERA. 
 
 249 
 
 higher flights upon the aerial steed than ever 
 did Bellerophon, and achieved more honorable 
 deeds than his friend's victory over the Chimsera. 
 For, gentle and tender as he was, he grew to be 
 a mighty poet! 
 
BALD-SUMMIT. 
 
 AFTER THE STORY. 
 
 Eustace Bright told the legend of Bellerophon 
 with as much fervor and animation as if he 
 had really been taking a gallop on the winged 
 horse. At the conclusion, he was gratified to 
 discern, by the glowing countenances of his 
 auditors, how greatly they had been interested. 
 All their eyes were dancing in their heads, 
 except those of Primrose. In her eyes there 
 were positively tears; for she was conscious of 
 something in the legend which the rest of them 
 were not yet old enough to feel. Child's story 
 as it was, the student had contrived to breathe 
 through it the ardor, the generous hope, and 
 the imaginative enterprise of youth. 
 
 "I forgive you now, Primrose," said he, 
 " for all your ridicule of myself and my stories. 
 One tear pays for a great deal of laughter." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Bright," answered Primrose, wip- 
 ing her eyes, and giving him another of her mis- 
 chievous smiles, " it certainly does elevate your 
 ideas, to get your head above the clouds. I 
 advise you never to tell another story, 
 
 250 
 
THE CHIMERA. 251 
 
 unless it be, as at present, from the top of a 
 mountain." 
 
 "Or from the back of Pegasus," replied 
 Eustace, laughing. " Don't you think that I 
 succeeded pretty well in catching that wonder- 
 ful pony?" 
 
 "It was so like one of your madcap pranks!" 
 cried Primrose, clapping her hands. " I think 
 I see you now on his back, two miles high; and 
 with your head downward! It is well that 
 you have not really an opportunity of trying 
 your horsemanship on any wilder steed than 
 our sober Davy, or Old Hundred." 
 
 " For my part, I wish I had Pegasus here, 
 at this moment," said the student. "I would 
 mount him forthwith, and gallop about the 
 country, within a circumference of a few miles, 
 making literary calls on my brother-authors. 
 Doctor Dewey would be within my reach, at the 
 foot of Taconic. In Stockbridge, yonder, is 
 Mr. James, conspicuous to all the world on his 
 mountain-pile of history and romance. Long- 
 fellow, I believe, is not yet at the Ox-bow, else 
 the winged horse would neigh at the sight of 
 him. But, here in Lenox, I should find our 
 most truthful novelist, who has made the 
 scenery and life of Berkshire all her own. On 
 the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman Melville, 
 shaping out the gigantic conception of his 
 'White Whale,' while the gigantic shape of 
 
252 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 Graylock looms upon him from his study 
 window. Another bound of my flying steed 
 would bring me to the door of Holmes, whom I 
 mention last, because Pegasus would certainly 
 unseat me, the next minute, and claim the poet 
 as his rider." 
 
 " Have we not an author for our next neigh- 
 bor?" asked Primrose. "That silent man, who 
 lives in the old red house, near Tanglewood 
 Avenue, and whom we sometimes meet, with 
 two children at his side, in the woods or at the 
 lake. I think I have heard of his having written 
 a poem, or a romance, or an arithmetic, or a 
 school-history, or some other kind of a book." 
 
 "Hush, Primrose, hush!" exclaimed Eustace, 
 in a thrilling whisper, and putting his finger on 
 his lip. " Not a word about that man, even 
 on a hill-top! If our babble were to reach his 
 ears, and happen not to please him, he has but 
 to fling a quire or two of paper into the stove, 
 and you, Primrose, and I, and Periwinkle, 
 Sweet Fern, Squash-Blossom, Blue Eye, Huckle- 
 berry, Clover, Cowslip, Plantain, Milkweed, 
 Dandelion, and Buttercup — yes, and wise Mr. 
 Pringle, with his unfavorable criticisms on my 
 legends, and poor Mrs. Pringle, too — would 
 all turn to smoke, and go whisking up the 
 funnel! Our neighbor in the red house is a 
 harmless sort of person enough, for aught I 
 know, as concerns the rest of the world: but 
 
THE CHIMERA. 253 
 
 something whispers to me that he has a terrible 
 power over ourselves, extending to nothing short 
 of annihilation." 
 
 "And would Tanglewood turn to smoke, as 
 well as we?" asked Periwinkle, quite appalled 
 at the threatened destruction. "And what 
 would become of Ben and Bruin?" 
 
 "Tanglewood would remain," replied the 
 student, "looking just as it does now, but occu- 
 pied by an entirely different family. And Ben 
 and Bruin would be still alive, and would make 
 themselves very comfortable with the bones 
 from the dinner-table, without ever thinking 
 of the good times which they and we have had 
 together ! ' ' 
 
 "What nonsense you are talking!" exclaimed 
 Primrose. 
 
 With idle chat of this kind, the party had 
 already begun to descend the hill, and were 
 now within the shadow of the woods. Primrose 
 gathered some mountain-laurel, the leaf of 
 which, though of last year's growth, was still 
 as verdant and elastic as if the frost and thaw 
 had not alternately tried their force upon its 
 texture. Of these twigs of laurel she twined a 
 wreath, and took off the student's cap, in order 
 to place it on his brow. 
 
 " Nobody else is likely to crown you for your 
 stories," observed saucy Primrose, "so take this 
 from me." 
 
254 A WONDER-BOOK. 
 
 "Do not be too sure," answered Eustace, 
 looking really like a youthful poet, with the 
 laurel among his glossy curls, "that I shall not 
 win other wreaths by these wonderful and 
 admirable stories. I mean to spend all my 
 leisure, during the rest of the vacation, and 
 throughout the summer term at college, in 
 writing them out for the press. In about five 
 months from this moment, I make no doubt of 
 being reckoned among the lights of the age!" 
 
 "Poor boy!" said Primrose, half aside. 
 "What a disappointment awaits him!" 
 
 Descending a little lower, Bruin began to bark, 
 and was answered by the graver bow-wow of 
 the respectable Ben. They soon saw the good 
 old dog, keeping careful watch over Dandelion, 
 Sweet Fern, Cowslip, and Squash-Blossom. These 
 little people, quite recovered from their fatigue, 
 had set about gathering checker-berries, and 
 now came clambering to meet their playfellows. 
 Thus reunited, the whole party went down 
 through Luther Butler's orchard, and made the 
 best of their way home to Tanglewood. 
 
 THE END. 
 
■ 
 
 m\ 
 
 
 
 V**" 
 
 r 
 
w 
 
 .ti* 
 
 A' 
 
 ™ 
 
 **^' 
 
 l 
 
 ^H 
 
 IVIpI 
 
 > - 
 
 
 ■ %-•■ ^A'l 
 
 P '■ 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 ¥ 
 
m 
 
 msm 
 
 mm 
 
 ems 
 
 — — B 
 
 ■HP" 
 
 '. ■V:;--: 'v." ■;■■•■£:■• ;V.V^ 
 ' ; ■' ■■ : ' "' '.''' ' ' ■'■' ?"» ■'■', 'r< >;•!»!