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.
JASON AND THE TALKING OAK
(From the original in the collection of Austin M. Purves, Esqu'rePhiladelphia)
Preface
The author has long been of opinion that many of the classical mythswere capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children.In the little volume here offered to the public, he has worked up half adozen of them, with this end in view. A great freedom of treatment wasnecessary to his plan; but it will be observed by every one who attemptsto render these legends malleable in his intellectual furnace, that theyare marvellously independent of all temporary modes and circumstances.They remain essentially the same, after changes that would affect theidentity of almost anything else.
He does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimesshaped anew, as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed byan antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claima copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made;and certainly, so long as man exists, they can never perish; but, bytheir indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for everyage to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and toimbue with its own morality. In the present version they may have lostmuch of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has notbeen careful to preserve it), and have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic orromantic guise.
In performing this pleasant task,—for it has been really a task fit forhot weather, and one of the most agreeable, of a literary kind, whichhe ever undertook,—the author has not always thought it necessary towrite downward, in order to meet the comprehension of children. He hasgenerally 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 onlythe artificial and the complex that bewilder them.
Lenox, July 15, 1851.
Contents
Preface
A WONDER BOOK
THE GORGON'S HEAD
THE GOLDEN TOUCH
THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER
THE CHIMÆRA
TANGLEWOOD TALES
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