o
dress her hair, and in which, every night, the moon and the stars behold
themselves. Look into that water, and see what manner of man you are!"

Narcissus kneeled down and looked into the lake. And, better than in any
common looking-glass, he saw the reflected image of his own face--and he
looked, and looked, and could not take his eyes away.

But Echo at last grew tired of waiting. "Have you forgotten what you
promised me?" asked she. "Are you content now? Do you see now that what
I told you is true?"

He lifted his eyes at last. "Oh, beautiful creature that I am!" said he.
"I am indeed the most divine creature in the whole wide world. I love
myself madly. Go away. I want to be with my beautiful image, with
myself, all alone. I can't marry you. I shall never love anybody but
myself for the rest of my days." And he kneeled down and gazed at
himself once more, while poor Echo had to go weeping away.

Narcissus had spoken truly. He loved himself and his own face so much
that he could think of nothing else: he spent all his days and nights by
the lake, and never took his eyes away. But unluckily his image, which
was only a shadow in the water, could not love him back again. And so he
pined away until he died. And when his friends came to look for his
body, they found nothing but a flower, into which his soul had turned.
So they called it the Narcissus, and we call it so still. And yet I
don't know that it is a particularly conceited or selfish flower.

As for poor Echo, she pined away too. She faded and faded until nothing
was left of her but her voice. There are many places where she can even
now be heard. And she still has the same trick of saying to vain and
foolish people whatever they say to themselves, or whatever they would
like best to hear said to them. If you go where Echo is, and call out
loudly, "I am beautiful!"--she will echo your very words.

259

"The Apple of Discord" is also taken, by
permission of the publishers, from Francillon's
_Gods and Heroes_. It is the story of how the
world's first great war was brought about.
Teachers who wish to use some of the stories
from Homer's _Iliad_ might well follow this
story with some selected episodes from that
work. The prose translation of the _Iliad_ by
Lang, Leaf, and Myers is the most satisfactory.
Of versions adapted for children, Church's
_Story of the Iliad