The Project Gutenberg eBook, Youth and the Bright Medusa, by Willa Cather

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Title: Youth and the Bright Medusa

Author: Willa Cather

Release Date: September 30, 2004 [eBook #13555]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA

by

WILLA CATHER

1920

"We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?"

CONTENTS

COMING, APHRODITE!

THE DIAMOND MINE

A GOLD SLIPPER

SCANDAL

PAUL'S CASE

A WAGNER MATINEE

THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL

"A DEATH IN THE DESERT"

The author wishes to thank _McClure's Magazine_, _The Century
Magazine_ and _Harper's Magazine_ for their courtesy in permitting
the re-publication of three stories in this collection.

The last four stories in the volume, _Paul's Case_, _A Wagner Matinee_,
_The Sculptor's Funeral_, "_A Death in the Desert_," are re-printed from
the author's first book of stories, entitled "The Troll Garden,"
published in 1905.

Coming, Aphrodite!

I

Don Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of an old house on
the south side of Washington Square, and nobody had ever disturbed him.
He occupied one big room with no outside exposure except on the north,
where he had built in a many-paned studio window that looked upon a court
and upon the roofs and walls of other buildings. His room was very
cheerless, since he never got a ray of direct sunlight; the south corners
were always in shadow. In one of the corners was a clothes closet, built
against the partition, in another a wide divan, serving as a seat by day
and a bed by night. In the front corner, the one farther from the window,
was a sink, and a table with two gas burners where he sometimes cooked
his food. There, too, in the perpetual dusk, was the dog's bed, and often
a bone or two for his comfort.

The dog was a Boston bull terrier, and Hed