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                            A WONDER BOOK

                                 AND

                           TANGLEWOOD TALES

                          FOR GIRLS AND BOYS

                        BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


    WITH PICTURES BY
    MAXFIELD PARRISH

    NEW YORK
    DUFFIELD & COMPANY
    MCMX

    COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY

    THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.




[Illustration: JASON AND THE TALKING OAK

(From the original in the collection of Austin M. Purves, Esqu're
Philadelphia)]




Preface

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_.




Contents


A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys


The Gorgon's Head

The Golden Touch

The Paradise of Children

The Three Golden Apples

The Miraculous Pitcher

The Chimaera


Tanglewood Tales


The Wayside--_Introductory_

The Minotaur

The Pygmies

The Dragon's Teeth

Circe's Palace

The Pomegranate Seeds

The Golden Fleece




Illustrations


JASON AND THE TALKING OAK

PANDORA

ATLAS

BELLEROPHON BY THE FOUNTAIN OF PIRENE

THE FOUNTAIN OF PIRENE

CADMUS SOWING THE DRAGON'S TEETH

CIRCE'S PALACE

PROSERPINA

JASON AND HIS TEACHER

THE ARGONAUTS IN QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE




A Wonder Book




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-<DW72>s,
and for the sun to pour the warmth of the Indian summer over the fields
and pastures, and into the nooks of the many- 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 loft