Children's Literature Part 89

At last, after wandering over all the earth in her fruitless search, Ceres returned to Sicily. One day, as she was pa.s.sing a river, suddenly a little swell of water carried something to her feet. Stooping to see what it was, she picked up the girdle which Proserpine had long ago thrown to the water nymph.

While she was looking at it, with tears in her eyes, she heard a fountain near her bubbling louder and louder, until at last it seemed to speak. And this is what it said:

"I am the nymph of the fountain, and I come from the inmost parts of the earth, O Ceres, great mother! There I saw your daughter seated on a throne at the dark king's side. But in spite of her splendor, her cheeks were pale and her eyes were heavy with weeping. I can stay no longer now, O Ceres, for I must leap into the suns.h.i.+ne. The bright sky calls me, and I must hasten away."

Then Ceres arose and went to Jupiter and said, "I have found the place where my daughter is hidden. Give her back to me, and the earth shall once more be fruitful, and the people shall have food."

Jupiter was moved, both by the mother's sorrow and by the prayers of the people on earth; and he said that Proserpine might return to her home if she had tasted no food while in Pluto's kingdom.

So the happy mother hastened down into Hades. But alas! that very day Proserpine had eaten six pomegranate seeds; and for every one of those seeds she was doomed each year to spend a month underground.

For six months of the year Ceres is happy with her daughter. At Proserpine's coming, flowers bloom and birds sing and the earth everywhere smiles its welcome to its young queen.

Some people say that Proserpine really is the springtime, and that while she is with us all the earth seems fair and beautiful. But when the time comes for Proserpine to rejoin King Pluto in his dark home underground, Ceres hides herself and grieves through all the weary months until her daughter's return.

Then the earth, too, is somber and sad. The leaves fall to the ground, as though the trees were weeping for the loss of the fair, young queen; and the flowers hide underground, until the eager step of the maiden, returning to earth, awakens all nature from its winter sleep.

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Because of his beautiful idealism and the artistic nature of his work, Hawthorne (1804-1864) is one of America's most loved story-tellers. His stories are never idle tales, for each one reveals secret motives and impulses that determine human action. This characteristic makes his works wholesome and inspiring for both children and adults. Four volumes of his short stories, intended primarily for children, are cla.s.sics for the upper grades. _Grandfather's Chair_ is a group of stories about life in New England in early times. _True Stories from History and Biography_ makes the child acquainted with such historical characters as Franklin and Newton.

_A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys_ and _Tanglewood Tales_ are Hawthorne's versions of old Greek myths.

In his two volumes of Greek myths, Hawthorne does not hold to the plot or style of the original stories; but here, as in all his work, he shows how incidents in life determine human character. The following quotation from the Preface to _A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys_ explains in Hawthorne's own words the nature of his version of the myths: "He [the author] does not plead guilty to a sacrilege in having sometimes shaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity 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 certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality."

The story "The Paradise of Children," taken from _A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys_, is Hawthorne's version of the Greek myth of Pandora's Box, which is an attempt to explain how pain and suffering came to humanity.

According to the Greek myth, Jupiter was angry when he learned that Prometheus, one of the t.i.tans, had given men fire stolen from heaven.

That men might not have this blessing without an affliction to compensate, the G.o.ds filled a box with ills, but put Hope also in the box.

Then, fearing that neither Prometheus nor his brother Epimetheus would open the box, they created Pandora. Mercury, the messenger of Jupiter, carried Pandora and the box as a gift to Epimetheus, and the curiosity of Pandora led her to open the box.

THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Long, long ago, when this old world was in its tender infancy, there was a child named Epimetheus, 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 question which she put to him, after crossing the threshold, was this,--

"Epimetheus, what have you in that box?"

"My dear little Pandora," answered Epimetheus, "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, pouting her lip. "I wish the great, ugly box were out of the way!"

"Oh, come, don't 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, nowadays, is a very different sort of thing from what it was in their time. Then, everybody was a child. There 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 caroling like birds, or gus.h.i.+ng out in merry laughter, throughout the livelong day.

What was most wonderful of all, the children never quarreled 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, 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 numerous 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 mysterious 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 suns.h.i.+ny than those of the other children.

"Whence can the box have come?" Pandora continually kept saying to herself and to Epimetheus. "And what in the world can be inside of it!"

"Always talking about this box!" said Epimetheus, 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 mult.i.tude of 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 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 Pandora.

"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. "n.o.body else has such a staff.

It was Quicksilver; 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, Epimetheus had gone out without asking Pandora to accompany him. He went to gather figs and grapes by himself, or to seek whatever amus.e.m.e.nt he could find, in other society than his little playfellow's. He was tired to death of 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 perseveringly 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 continually stumbling over it, and making Epimetheus stumble over it likewise, and bruising all four of their s.h.i.+ns.

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 spreading over its surface, which was so highly polished that little Pandora could see her face in it. As the child had no other looking-gla.s.s, it is odd that she did not value the box, merely on this account.