m other stories and legends
because it is an explanation of something that happened in earth, sea,
or sky.

If the men who created the myths had set to work to make wonder tales as
stories are sometimes made to instruct while they entertain children,
they would have left a mass of very dull tales which few people would
have cared to read. They had no idea of doing anything so artificial and
mechanical; they made these old stories because all life was a story to
them, full of splendid or terrible figures moving across the sky or
through the sea and in the depths of the woods, and whichever way they
looked they saw or thought they saw mysterious and wonderful things
going on. They were as much interested in their world as we are in ours;
we write hundreds of scientific books every year to explain our world;
they told hundreds of stories every year to explain theirs.

This selection represents the work of several authors, and does not,
therefore, preserve uniformity of style. It is probably better for the
young reader that the Greek Myths should come from one hand, and the
Norse Myths from another. The classical work of Hawthorne has been
generously drawn upon. No change of any kind has been made in the text,
but the introductions connecting one myth with another have been
omitted.

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE.

Myths That Every Child Should Know

CHAPTER I

THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES

Did you ever hear of the golden apples that grew in the garden of the
Hesperides? Ah, those were such apples as would bring a great price, by
the bushel, if any of them could be found growing in the orchards of
nowadays! But there is not, I suppose, a graft of that wonderful fruit
on a single tree in the wide world. Not so much as a seed of those
apples exists any longer.

And, even in the old, old, half-forgotten times, before the garden of
the Hesperides was overrun with weeds, a great many people doubted
whether there could be real trees that bore apples of solid gold upon
their branches. All had heard of them, but nobody remembered to have
seen any. Children, nevertheless, used to listen, open-mouthed, to
stories of the golden apple tree, and resolved to discover it, when they
should be big enough. Adventurous young men, who desired to do a braver
thing than any of their fellows, set out in quest of this fruit. Many of
them returned no more; none of them brought back the apples. No wonder
that they found it impossible t