iscus flew from his hand like a bolt from the hand of Zeus. The
watchers held their breath and made ready for a shout of delight as
they saw it speed on, further than mortal man had ever hurled before.
But joy died in their hearts when a gust of wind caught the discus as
it sped and hurled it against Acrisius, the king. And with a sigh like
the sigh that passes through the leaves of a tree as the woodman fells
it and it crashes to the earth, so did Acrisius fall and lie prone. To
his side rushed Perseus, and lifted him tenderly in his arms. But the
spirit of Acrisius had fled. And with a great cry of sorrow Perseus
called to the people:

"Behold me! I am Perseus, grandson of the man I have slain! Who can
avoid the decree of the gods?"

For many a year thereafter Perseus reigned as king, and to him and to
his fair wife were born four sons and three daughters. Wisely and well
he reigned, and when, at a good old age, Death took him and the wife
of his heart, the gods, who had always held him dear, took him up
among the stars to live for ever and ever. And there still, on clear
and starry nights, we may see him holding the Gorgon's head. Near him
are the father and mother of Andromeda--Cepheus and Cassiopeia, and
close beside him stands Andromeda with her white arms spread out
across the blue sky as in the days when she stood chained to the rock.
And those who sail the watery ways look up for guidance to one whose
voyaging is done and whose warfare is accomplished, and take their
bearings from the constellation of Cassiopeia.

NIOBE

"... Like Niobe, all tears."

Shakespeare.

The quotation is an overworked quotation, like many another of those
from _Hamlet_; yet, have half of those whose lips utter it more than
the vaguest acquaintance with the story of Niobe and the cause of her
tears? The noble group--attributed to Praxiteles--of Niobe and her
last remaining child, in the Uffizi Palace at Florence, has been so
often reproduced that it also has helped to make the anguished figure
of the Theban queen a familiar one in pictorial tragedy, so that as
long as the works of those Titans of art, Shakespeare and Praxiteles,
endure, no other monument is wanted for the memory of Niobe.

Like many of the tales of mythology, her tragedy is a story of
vengeance wreaked upon a mortal by an angry god. She was the daughter
of Tantalus, and her husband was Amphion, King of Thebes, himself a
son of Zeus. To her