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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 render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that they
are marvellously independent of all temporary 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 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. In the present version they may have
lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, 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 undertook,–the author has not always thought it necessary to write
downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has
generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency,
and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without an effort.
Children possess an unestimated sensibility 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.

Lenox, July 15, 1851.

THE GORGON’S HEAD

TANGLEWOOD PORCH

INTRODUCTORY TO “THE GORGON’S HEAD.”

Beneath the porch of the country-seat called Tanglewood, 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 impatiently 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 pastures, 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 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 substantial 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.