5 IO He had several very bad falls; he lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long time to rest on the grass, after he had got over, and began to climb the hill just in the hottest part of the day. When he had climbed for an hour, he grew dreadfully thirsty, and was about to drink, when he saw an old man coming down the path above him, looking very feeble, and leaning on a staff. "My son, ," said the old man, "I am faint with thirst. Give me some of that water." Then Gluck looked at him, and when he saw that he was pale and weary, he gave him the water. "Only, pray, don't drink it all," said Gluck. But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the bottle two-thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and Gluck 15 went on again merrily. The path now seemed easier to his feet, and two or three blades of grass appeared upon it. Some grasshoppers began to sing on the bank beside it; and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry music. He went on for another hour, and his thirst increased so that he 20 thought he must drink. But, as he raised the flask, he saw a little child lying panting by the roadside, and it cried out piteously for water. Then Gluck struggled with himself and determined to bear the thirst a little longer; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, and it drank all but a few drops. 25 The child smiled on him, and got up, and ran down the hill. Gluck looked after it, till it became as small as a little star; then he turned and began climbing again. And then there were all kinds of flowers growing on the rocks; bright green moss with pale, pink, starry flowers, and soft-belled 30 gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest; and pure, white transparent lilies. Crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and thither, and the sky sent down such pure light, that Gluck had never felt so happy in his life. Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst became 35 unbearable again. He looked at his bottle, and saw that there were only five or six drops left in it. He could not venture to drink but as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath, just as Hans had seen it on the day of his ascent. 10 Gluck stopped and looked at it, and then at the Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he thought of the dwarf's words, that no one could succeed, except in the first attempt. So he tried to pass the dog, but it whined so piteously, that Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead when I come down again, if I don't help it." 5 He looked closer and closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully, that he could not bear it. "Confound the king and his gold, too!" said Gluck; and he opened the flask, and poured all the water into the poor dog's mouth. The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disapIo peared; its ears become long, longer, silky, golden; its nose became very red; its eyes became very twinkling. In three seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his old friend, the King of the Golden River. "Thank you," said the King; "but don't be frightened, it's 15 all right. Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending those rascally brothers of yours, and giving me the trouble of turning them into stones? Very hard stones they make, too." 20 25 30 35 40 "Oh, dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel ?" "Cruel!" said the dwarf, "they poured unholy water into my stream. Do you suppose I am going to allow that? Water, and his face grew stern as he spoke, "which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, but the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy." So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet. On its white leaves there hung three drops of clear dew. The dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the river," he said; "then go down on the other side of the mountains into the Treasure Valley. And so, good speed. As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The colors of his robe formed themselves into a mist of dewy light. He stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose into the air, the King had disappeared. Then Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River. Its waves were as clear as crystal, and as bright as the sun. And, when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell a small whirl-pool, into which the waters rushed with a musical noise. Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed. Not only was the river not turned into gold, but its waters seemed to grow much less in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend, the dwarf, and went down on the other side of the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley. As he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley behold, 5 a river like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in many streams among the dry heaps of red sand. As Gluck gazed, behold, fresh grass sprang up beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew and climbed among the moistening 10 soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the riversides, as stars leap out when twilight is deeepening; and thickets of myrtle and tendrils of vine cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. Thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the in15 heritance which had been lost by cruelty was regained by love. 20 Gluck went and dwelt in the valley. The poor were never driven from his door. His barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And for him, the river had, even as the dwarf had promised, become a River of Gold. And, to this day, the people of the valley point out the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream. They trace the course of the Golden River under the ground, until it comes out in the Treasure Valley. And at the top of the waterfall of the Golden River are still to 25 be seen two black stones, round which the waters howl mournfully every day at sunset. These stones are still called by the people of the valley, The Black Brothers. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH HOLMES Oliver Wendell Holmes was born August 29, 1809, the son of Abdiel Holmes, who was then minister of the "First Church in Cambridge." On both sides Holmes was descended from old New England families with traditions of high position and culture. Anne Bradstreet, the forgotten poetess of early New England, was among his ancestors. His own father was a learned man. In The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Holmes himself says, "I was born and bred among books, and those who knew what was in books." At sixteen, Holmes entered Harvard College, graduating in 1829. For a year he studied law, and then turned to medicine, studying in Paris and London, and taking his degree of M.D. at Harvard in 1836. He practised for two years and then for a year was Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College. But in 1840, the year of his marriage to Amelia Lee Jackson, he settled down as a general practitioner in Boston. In 1847, he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at Harvard, a position he retained for thirty-five years. He lived in Boston, on Charles Street, near the Charles River, and later moved to Beacon Street, where his windows also looked over the river. Here he died October 7, 1894, While Dr. Holmes was gaining professional fame by his reforming methods and medical lectures, Oliver Wendell Holmes was gaining fame as a poet. Before 1857, much of his best known verse was written, among it "Old Ironsides." In 1857, the Atlantic Monthly was started with James Russell Lowell as editor. He invited Holmes to contribute and published the twelve papers of The Autocat in the first twelve numbers of that magazine which once embodied the spirit of the "Boston school" of American literature. Of this school, Holmes is a foremost member. He belonged to the famous Saturday club with Emerson, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, Thoreau, Bayard Taylor, and the publisher, James T. Fields, to name only the best known. To know intimately the men of that Saturday Club was enough to keep a man's mind growing even without wide travel and knowledge of the world. And Holmes, with his love of fun, his insight into human nature, his power of depicting life, is by no means a narrow man, despite his localism. Every child has learned "Old Ironsides," the poem that saved the frigate Constitution for the nation. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table contains much of the good poetry written by Holmes. Of his humorous and most frequent verse, "My Sunday Breeches" and "The Deacon's Masterpiece: or the Wonderful 'One-Horse-Shay"" are known throughout the country. Of his serious verse, "The Chambered Nautilus" is probably most familiar. Elsie Venner is the best of his fiction, 5 IO 15 20 25 30 35 THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings, In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold seamaids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born While on mine ear its rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" |