TANGLEWOOD TALES & WONDER BOOK (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne

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СКАЧАТЬ till April; and this was to have been my first day upon it! Don’t you pity me, Primrose?”

      “Oh, to be sure!” answered Primrose, laughing. “But, for your comfort, we will listen to another of your old stories, such as you told us under the porch, and down in the hollow, by Shadow Brook. Perhaps I shall like them better now, when there is nothing to do, than while there were nuts to be gathered, and beautiful weather to enjoy.”

      Hereupon, Periwinkle, Clover, Sweet Fern, and as many others of the little fraternity and cousinhood as were still at Tanglewood, gathered about Eustace, and earnestly besought him for a story. The student yawned, stretched himself, and then, to the vast admiration of the small people, skipped three times back and forth over the top of a chair, in order, as he explained to them, to set his wits in motion.

      “Well, well, children,” said he, after these preliminaries, “since you insist, and Primrose has set her heart upon it, I will see what can be done for you. And, that you may know what happy days there were before snowstorms came into fashion, I will tell you a story of the oldest of all old times, when the world was as new as Sweet Fern’s bran-new humming-top. There was then but one season in the year, and that was the delightful summer; and but one age for mortals, and that was childhood.”

      “I never heard of that before,” said Primrose.

      “Of course, you never did,” answered Eustace. “It shall be a story of what nobody but myself ever dreamed of, — a Paradise of children, — and how, by the naughtiness of just such a little imp as Primrose here, it all came to nothing.”

      So Eustace Bright sat down in the chair which he had just been skipping over, took Cowslip upon his knee, ordered silence throughout the auditory, and began a story about a sad naughty child, whose name was Pandora, and about her playfellow Epimetheus.

      You may read it, word for word, in the pages that come next.

      LONG, long ago, when this old world was in its tender infancy, there was a child, named Epimetheus, who never had either father or mother; and, that he might not be lonely, another child, fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent from a far country, to live with him, and be his playfellow and helpmate. Her name was Pandora.

      The first thing that Pandora saw, when she entered the cottage where Epimetheus dwelt, was a great box. And almost the first question which she put to him, after crossing the threshold, was this, —

      “Epimetheus, what have you in that box?”

      “My dear little Pandora,” answered Epimetheus, “that is a secret, and you must be kind enough not to ask any questions about it. The box was left here to be kept safely, and I do not myself know what it contains.”

      “But who gave it to you?” asked Pandora. “And where did it come from?”

      “That is a secret, too,” replied Epimetheus.

      “How provoking!” exclaimed Pandora, pouting her lip. “I wish the great ugly box were out of the way!”

      “Oh come, don’t think of it any more,” cried Epimetheus. “Let us run out of doors, and have some nice play with the other children.”

      It is thousands of years since Epimetheus and Pandora were alive; and the world, nowadays, is a very different sort of thing from what it was in their time. Then, everybody was a child. There needed no fathers and mothers to take care of the children; because there was no danger, nor trouble of any kind, and no clothes to be mended, and there was always plenty to eat and drink. Whenever a child wanted his dinner, he found it growing on a tree; and, if he looked at the tree in the morning, he could see the expanding blossom of that night’s supper; or, at eventide, he saw the tender bud of tomorrow’s breakfast. It was a very pleasant life indeed. No labor to be done, no tasks to be studied; nothing but sports and dances, and sweet voices of children talking, or carolling like birds, or gushing out in merry laughter, throughout the livelong day.

      What was most wonderful of all, the children never quarreled among themselves; neither had they any crying fits; nor, since time first began, had a single one of these little mortals ever gone apart into a corner, and sulked. Oh, what a good time was that to be alive in! The truth is, those ugly little winged monsters, called Troubles, which are now almost as numerous as mosquitoes, had never yet been seen on the earth. It is probable that the very greatest disquietude which a child had ever experienced was Pandora’s vexation at not being able to discover the secret of the mysterious box.

      This was at first only the faint shadow of a Trouble; but, every day, it grew more and more substantial, until, before a great while, the cottage of Epimetheus and Pandora was less sunshiny than those of the other children.

      “Whence can the box have come?” Pandora continually kept saying to herself and to Epimetheus. “And what in the world can be inside of it?”

      “Always talking about this box!” said Epimetheus, at last; for he had grown extremely tired of the subject. “I wish, dear Pandora, you would try to talk of something else. Come, let us go and gather some ripe figs, and eat them under the trees, for our supper. And I know a vine that has the sweetest and juiciest grapes you ever tasted.”

      “Always talking about grapes and figs!” cried Pandora, pettishly.

      “Well, then,” said Epimetheus, who was a very good-tempered child, like a multitude of children in those days, “let us run out and have a merry time with our playmates.”

      “I am tired of merry times, and don’t care if I never have any more!” answered our pettish little Pandora. “And, besides, I never do have any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with thinking about it all the time. I insist upon your telling me what is inside of it.”

      “As I have already said, fifty times over, I do not know!” replied Epimetheus, getting a little vexed. “How, then, can I tell you what is inside?”

      “You might open it,” said Pandora, looking sideways at Epimetheus, “and then we could see for ourselves.”

      “Pandora, what are you thinking of?” exclaimed Epimetheus.

      And his face expressed so much horror at the idea of looking into a box, which had been confided to him on the condition of his never opening it, that Pandora thought it best not to suggest it any more. Still, however, she could not help thinking and talking about the box.

      “At least,” said she, “you can tell me how it came here.”

      “It was just left at the door,” replied Epimetheus, “just before you came, by a person who looked very smiling and intelligent, and who could hardly forbear laughing as he put it down. He was dressed in an odd kind of a cloak, and had on a cap that seemed to be made partly of feathers, so that it looked almost as if it had wings.”

      “What sort of a staff had he?” asked Pandora.

      “Oh, the most curious staff you ever saw!” cried Epimetheus. “It was like two serpents twisting around a stick, and was carved so naturally that I, at first, thought the serpents were alive.”

      “I know him,” said Pandora, thoughtfully. “Nobody else has such a staff. It was Quicksilver; and he brought me hither, as well as the box. No doubt he intended it for me; and, most probably, it contains pretty dresses for СКАЧАТЬ