For instance, as he says, the old myth told nothing about any daughter of Midas’s, and yet I think we are all ready to admit that we should not love the story half so well without dear little Marygold.

Then too, the talk about Midas’s spectacles and about his trotting his grandchildren on his knee is but a little pleasant fooling on the part of Hawthorne, for spectacles were not even thought of for centuries after the time of old King Midas, and it is much more than unlikely that any old Greek ever trotted children on his knee.

Hawthorne had a perfect right to make these changes in the story; for the old myths have come down to us from so long ago that they seem to belong to everybody, and every one forms his own ideas of them.

Thus you will see that while the author of this story thought of Marygold as a little child who climbed up onto her father’s knee, the artists in dealing with the subject have thought of her as almost a young woman.  Which of these two ideas do you like better?

THE CHILD’S WORLD

By W. B. Rands

Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast—­
World, you are beautifully dressed.

The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree;
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

You, friendly Earth! how far do you go
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities and gardens, and cliffs, and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles?

Ah, you are so great, and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say: 

“You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot—­
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!”

THE FIR TREE

By Hans Christian Andersen

Out in the forest stood a pretty little Fir Tree.  It had a good place; it could have sunlight, air there was in plenty, and all around grew many larger comrades—­pines as well as firs.  But the little Fir Tree wished ardently to become greater.  It did not care for the warm sun and the fresh air; it took no notice of the peasant children, who went about talking together, when they had come out to look for strawberries and raspberries.  The children often came with a whole basketful, or with a string of berries which they had strung on a straw.  Then they would sit down by the little Fir Tree and say, “How pretty and small this one is!” The Fir Tree did not like that at all.

Next year he had grown bigger, and the following year he was taller still.

“Oh, if I were only as tall as the others!” sighed the little Fir.  “Then I would spread my branches far around and look out from my crown into the wide world.  The birds would then build nests in my boughs, and when the wind blew I would nod grandly.”