Part 12 (2/2)
”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 s.h.i.+ft 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!”
”Pis.h.!.+ 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 cus.h.i.+on 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 aged 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 rumbles about its summit, we may imagine it to be the voice of Giant Atlas, bellowing after Hercules!
[Ill.u.s.tration]
TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE
[Ill.u.s.tration]
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 that 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!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 authors.h.i.+p. Pray let me advise you never more to meddle with a cla.s.sical 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 ma.s.s 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 remodeled 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 pa.s.sion or affection, any human or divine morality, into a cla.s.sic 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.”
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