Title: The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys")
Author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Language: English
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                 A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS

                     By Nathaniel Hawthorne


                     THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES



CONTENTS:

  TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE--Introductory to “The Three Golden Apples”
   THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
  TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE--After the Story



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
windowpanes 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 peepholes with their finger-nails, and saw with
vast delight that--unless it were one or two bare patches on a
precipitous hillside, 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 it 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 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, floundered 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 midwinter.  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 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 that had got
amongst his brown curls.  And then, to punish Cousin Eustace 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 overhanging 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 be 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), 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 between 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 student, rather vexed.  “I don’t
believe I can tell one of my stories in the presence of grown 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
admirable 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 re-inventor 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 tip-top of literature, if once they could be known.
Accordingly, without much more resistance, Eustace suffered Primrose
and Periwinkle to drag him into the drawing-room.

It was a large handsome apartment, with a semicircular 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 astrallamp, 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 exercise of your gifts of narrative.  Primrose 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, therefore.”

“Sympathy, methinks, should have some little share in the critic’s
qualifications,” murmured Eustace Bright.  “However, sir, if you will
find patience, I will find stories.  But be 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 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 fierceness 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, 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 lines, 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 with
astonishment.

“The garden of the Hesperides!” cried one.  “We thought mortals had been
weary of seeking 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 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 at 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 reasonably 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 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 crushed 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 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 of them.

“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 vary 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.

The traveller proceeded to tell how he had chased a very swift stag, for
a twelve-month 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 monstrous 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 Hippolyta, 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.

“Was it the girdle of Venus,” inquired the prettiest of the damsels,
“which makes women beautiful?”

“No,” answered the stranger.  “It had formerly been the sword-belt of
Mars; and it can only make the wearer valiant and courageous.”

“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 adventure 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 attentive faces of the maidens.

“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 brightest, 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 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 beautiful; but we do
not think it proper to be acquainted 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 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 immediately 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 solitary 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 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 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 never seen a stick of timber, that has been
long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown 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 accident 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 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 astonishment 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 Geryou 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 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, webfooted sort of personage, with
something like a tuft of sea-weed at his chin.

“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 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 Antreus.  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 be 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, 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 continued 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 something, 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
discovered 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 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,
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 soothing 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 Antreus;
greater than anything that was ever 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 earth to
those who let themselves be weighed down by them.  And whenever men
undertake what is beyond the just measure of their abilities, they
encounter precisely 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 Hercules, 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 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 immeasurable 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 thunder-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 standing 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?”

“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 Hesperides, and gather the golden apples.  If it were not
for this little business of holding up the sky, I would make half a
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 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?”

“O, that will be done in a few moments,” 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 opportunity
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 shoulders
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 spectacle
be 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 again
with a shock that made the earth tremble.  Then he laughed--Ho! ho!
ho!--with a thunderous 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 mid-leg 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 immersed nearly to his waist.  This was
the greatest 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 beads, which guarded the
golden apples of the Hesperides.  If any such misfortune were to happen,
how could he ever get rid of the sky?  And, by the by, its weight began
already to be a little irksome to his head and shoulders.

“I really pity the poor giant,” thought Hercules.  “If it wearies me so
much in ten minutes, how must it have wearied him in a thousand years!”

O 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 acknowledged to
himself that it was a far happier kind of life to be a shepherd at the
foot of a mountain, 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!

I 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 sea.
At his nearer approach, Atlas held up his hand, in which Hercules could
perceive three magnificent golden apples, as big as pumpkins, all
banging from one branch.

“I am glad to see you again,” shouted Hercules, 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 Hesperides.  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 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.

“O, 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
centuries.  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 opportunity
to prove it.  Posterity will talk of you, I warrant it!”

“Pish! a fig for its talk!” cried Hercules, 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 inconvenience 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 belonged.  And Hercules picked
up the three golden apples, that were as big or bigger than pumpkins,
and straightway set out on his journey 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 again betwixt his enormous toes.

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
rumples about its summit, we may imagine it to be the voice of Giant
Atlas, bellowing 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 yardstick?  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 ecstasy at
the precision of these measurements.  “And how broad, I wonder, were the
shoulders of Hercules?”

“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 inevitably 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 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 modern 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 putting
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 meditation; “and, to be sure, at first thought, the
idea of a Gothic Apollo strikes one rather ludicrously.  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.





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