Not , as Eustace hinted , that there was any real necessity for my services as introducer , inasmuch as his own name had become established in some good degree of favor with the literary world . But the connection with myself , he was kind enough to say , had been highly agreeable ; nor was he by any means desirous , as most people are , of kicking away the ladder that had perhaps helped him to reach his present elevation . My young friend was willing , in short , that the fresh verdure of his growing reputation should spread over my straggling and half-naked boughs ; even as I have sometimes thought of training a vine , with its broad leafiness , and purple fruitage , over the worm-eaten posts and rafters of the rustic summer house . I was not insensible to the advantages of his proposal , and gladly assured him of my acceptance . Merely from the title of the stories I saw at once that the subjects were not less rich than those of the former volume ; nor did I at all doubt that Mr. Bright 's audacity -LRB- so far as that endowment might avail -RRB- had enabled him to take full advantage of whatever capabilities they offered . Yet , in spite of my experience of his free way of handling them , I did not quite see , I confess , how he could have obviated all the difficulties in the way of rendering them presentable to children . These old legends , so brimming over with everything that is most abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense some of them so hideous , others so melancholy and miserable , amid which the Greek tragedians sought their themes , and moulded them into the sternest forms of grief that ever the world saw ; was such material the stuff that children 's playthings should be made of ! How were they to be purified ? How was the blessed sunshine to be thrown into them ? But Eustace told me that these myths were the most singular things in the world , and that he was invariably astonished , whenever he began to relate one , by the readiness with which it adapted itself to the childish purity of his auditors . The objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth , having no essential connection with the original fable . They fall away , and are thought of no more , the instant he puts his imagination in sympathy with the innocent little circle , whose wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him . Thus the stories -LRB- not by any strained effort of the narrator 's , but in harmony with their inherent germ -RRB- transform themselves , and re-assume the shapes which they might be supposed to possess in the pure childhood of the world . When the first poet or romancer told these marvellous legends -LRB- such is Eustace Bright 's opinion -RRB- , it was still the Golden Age . Evil had never yet existed ; and sorrow , misfortune , crime , were mere shadows which the mind fancifully created for itself , as a shelter against too sunny realities ; or , at most , but prophetic dreams to which the dreamer himself did not yield a waking credence . Children are now the only representatives of the men and women of that happy era ; and therefore it is that we must raise the intellect and fancy to the level of childhood , in order to re-create the original myths . I let the youthful author talk as much and as extravagantly as he pleased , and was glad to see him commencing life with such confidence in himself and his performances . A few years will do all that is necessary towards showing him the truth in both respects . Meanwhile , it is but right to say , he does really appear to have overcome the moral objections against these fables , although at the expense of such liberties with their structure as must be left to plead their own excuse , without any help from me . Indeed , except that there was a necessity for it -- and that the inner life of the legends can not be come at save by making them entirely one 's own property -- there is no defense to be made .
Eustace informed me that he had told his stories to the children in various situations -- in the woods , on the shore of the lake , in the dell of Shadow Brook , in the playroom , at Tanglewood fireside , and in a magnificent palace of snow , XXXXX ice windows , which he helped his little friends to build .
amid as at by in into of over towards with