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The King of the Golden River

by

John Ruskin




PREFACE

"The King of the Golden River" is a delightful fairy tale told with all
Ruskin's charm of style, his appreciation of mountain scenery, and with
his usual insistence upon drawing a moral.  None the less, it is quite
unlike his other writings.  All his life long his pen was busy
interpreting nature and pictures and architecture, or persuading to
better views those whom he believed to be in error, or arousing, with
the white heat of a prophet's zeal, those whom he knew to be
unawakened. There is indeed a good deal of the prophet about John
Ruskin.  Though essentially an interpreter with a singularly fine
appreciation of beauty, no man of the nineteenth century felt more
keenly that he had a mission, and none was more loyal to what he
believed that mission to be.

While still in college, what seemed a chance incident gave occasion and
direction to this mission. A certain English reviewer had ridiculed the
work of the artist Turner.  Now Ruskin held Turner to be the greatest
landscape painter the world had seen, and he immediately wrote a
notable article in his defense.  Slowly this article grew into a
pamphlet, and the pamphlet into a book, the first volume of "Modern
Painters."  The young man awoke to find himself famous.  In the next
few years four more volumes were added to "Modern Painters," and the
other notable series upon art, "The Stones of Venice" and "The Seven
Lamps of Architecture," were sent forth.

Then, in 1860, when Ruskin was about forty years old, there came a
great change.  His heaven-born genius for making the appreciation of
beauty a common possession was deflected from its true field.  He had
been asking himself what are the conditions that produce great art, and
the answer he found declared that art cannot be separated from life,
nor life from industry and industrial conditions.  A civilization
founded upon unrestricted competition therefore seemed to him
necessarily feeble in appreciation of the beautiful, and unequal to its
creation. In this way loyalty to his mission bred apparent disloyalty.
Delightful discourses upon art gave way to fervid pleas for humanity.
For the rest of his life he became a very earnest, if not always very
wise, social reformer and a passionate pleader for what he believed to
be true economic ideals.

There is nothing of all this in "The King of the Golden River." Unlike
his other works, it was written merely to entertain.  Scarcely that,
since it was not written for publication at all, but to meet a
challenge set him by a young girl.

The circumstance is interesting.  After taking his degree at Oxford,
Ruskin was threatened with consumption and hurried away from the chill
and damp of England to the south of Europe.  After two years of
fruitful travel and study he came back improved in health but not
strong, and often depressed in spirit.  It was at this time that the
Guys, Scotch friends of his father and mother, came for a visit to his
home near London, and with them their little daughter Euphemia.  The
coming of this beautiful, vivacious, light-hearted child opened a new
chapter in Ruskin's life.  Though but twelve years old, she sought to
enliven the melancholy student, absorbed in art and geology, and bade
him leave these and write for her a fairy tale.  He accepted, and after
but two sittings, presented her with this charming story. The incident
proved to have awakened in him a greater interest than at first
appeared, for a few years later "Effie" Grey became John Ruskin's wife.
Meantime she had given the manuscript to a friend.  Nine years after it
was written, this friend, with John Ruskin's permission, gave the story
to the world.

It was published in London in 1851, with illustrations by the
celebrated Richard Doyle, and at once became a favorite.  Three
editions were printed the first year, and soon it had found its way
into German, Italian, and Welsh.  Since then countless children have
had cause to be grateful for the young girl's challenge that won the
story of Gluck's golden mug and the highly satisfactory handling of the
Black Brothers by Southwest Wind, Esquire.

For this edition new drawings have been prepared by Mr. Hiram P.
Barnes.  They very successfully preserve the spirit of Doyle's
illustrations, which unfortunately are not technically suitable for
reproduction here.

In the original manuscript there was an epilogue bearing the heading
"Charitie"--a morning hymn of Treasure Valley, whither Gluck had
returned to dwell, and where the inheritance lost by cruelty was
regained by love:

The beams of morning are renewed The valley laughs their light to see
And earth is bright with gratitude And heaven with charitie.


R.H. COE




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

HOW THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF THE BLACK BROTHERS WAS INTERFERED WITH
BY SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE


CHAPTER II

OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THREE BROTHERS AFTER THE VISIT OF SOUTHWEST
WIND, ESQUIRE; AND HOW LITTLE GLUCK HAD AN INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF
GOLDEN RIVER


CHAPTER III

HOW MR. HANS SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW HE
PROSPERED THEREIN


CHAPTER IV

HOW MR. SCHWARTZ SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW
HE PROSPERED THEREIN


CHAPTER V

HOW LITTLE GLUCK SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW
HE PROSPERED THEREIN, WITH OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST





THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER




CHAPTER I

HOW THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF THE BLACK BROTHERS WAS INTERFERED WITH
BY SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE


In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old time a
valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility.  It was
surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains rising into peaks
which were always covered with snow and from which a number of torrents
descended in constant cataracts.  One of these fell westward over the
face of a crag so high that when the sun had set to everything else,
and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this
waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold.  It was therefore
called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River.  It was
strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself.  They
all descended on the other side of the mountains and wound away through
broad plains and by populous cities.  But the clouds were drawn so
constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular
hollow, that in time of drought and heat, when all the country round
was burned up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops
were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its
grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it
was a marvel to everyone who beheld it and was commonly called the
Treasure Valley.

The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called
Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck.  Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers,
were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes
which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into THEM and
always fancied they saw very far into YOU.  They lived by farming the
Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were.  They killed
everything that did not pay for its eating.  They shot the blackbirds
because they pecked the fruit, and killed the hedgehogs lest they
should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs
in the kitchen, and smothered the cicadas which used to sing all summer
in the lime trees.  They worked their servants without any wages till
they would not work any more, and then quarreled with them and turned
them out of doors without paying them.  It would have been very odd if
with such a farm and such a system of farming they hadn't got very
rich; and very rich they DID get.  They generally contrived to keep
their corn by them till it was very dear, and then sell it for twice
its value; they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors, yet it
was never known that they had given so much as a penny or a crust in
charity; they never went to Mass, grumbled perpetually at paying
tithes, and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper as to
receive from all those with whom they had any dealings the nickname of
the "Black Brothers."

The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both
appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined
or desired.  He was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and
kind in temper to every living thing.  He did not, of course, agree
particularly well with his brothers, or, rather, they did not agree
with HIM.  He was usually appointed to the honorable office of
turnspit, when there was anything to roast, which was not often, for,
to do the brothers justice, they were hardly less sparing upon
themselves than upon other people.  At other times he used to clean the
shoes, floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what was
left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome quantity of dry
blows by way of education.

Things went on in this manner for a long time.  At last came a very wet
summer, and everything went wrong in the country round.  The hay had
hardly been got in when the haystacks were floated bodily down to the
sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the
corn was all killed by a black blight.  Only in the Treasure Valley, as
usual, all was safe.  As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else,
so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else.  Everybody came to buy
corn at the farm and went away pouring maledictions on the Black
Brothers.  They asked what they liked and got it, except from the poor
people, who could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their
very door without the slightest regard or notice.

It was drawing towards winter, and very cold weather, when one day the
two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual warning to little
Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that he was to let nobody in and
give nothing out.  Gluck sat down quite close to the fire, for it was
raining very hard and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or
comfortable-looking.  He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and
brown.  "What a pity," thought Gluck, "my brothers never ask anybody to
dinner.  I'm sure, when they've got such a nice piece of mutton as
this, and nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, it would
do their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them."

Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet heavy
and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up--more like a puff than
a knock.

"It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock
double knocks at our door."

No, it wasn't the wind; there it came again very hard, and, what was
particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be in a hurry and not to
be in the least afraid of the consequences.  Gluck went to the window,
opened it, and put his head out to see who it was.

It was the most extraordinary-looking little gentleman he had ever seen
in his life.  He had a very large nose, slightly brass-colored; his
cheeks were very round and very red, and might have warranted a
supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last
eight-and-forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long, silky
eyelashes; his mustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each
side of his mouth; and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt
color, descended far over his shoulders.  He was about four feet six in
height and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude,
decorated with a black feather some three feet long.  His doublet was
prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of
what is now termed a "swallowtail," but was much obscured by the
swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must
have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling
round the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer's shoulders
to about four times his own length.

Gluck was so perfectly paralyzed by the singular appearance of his
visitor that he remained fixed without uttering a word, until the old
gentleman, having performed another and a more energetic concerto on
the knocker, turned round to look after his flyaway cloak.  In so doing
he caught sight of Gluck's little yellow head jammed in the window,
with its mouth and eyes very wide open indeed.

"Hollo!" said the little gentleman;