FullReads

“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 points,–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 Eustace; “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 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 tunes 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
grandmother, 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.”

“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 authorities, 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 Polydectes, who happened to be the fisherman’s brother.