e seated himself on Taconic, and
had Monument Mountain for a footstool."

"Dear me!" ejaculated the good little boy, with a contented sort of a
grunt, "that was a giant, sure enough! And how long was his little
finger?"

"As long as from Tanglewood to the lake," said Eustace.

"Sure enough, that was a giant!" repeated Sweet Fern, in an ecstasy at
the precision of these measurements. "And how broad, I wonder, were
the shoulders of Hercules?"

"That is what I have never been able to find out," answered the
student. "But I think they must have been a great deal broader than
mine, or than your father's, or than almost any shoulders which one
sees nowadays."

"I wish," whispered Sweet Fern, with his mouth close to the student's
ear, "that you would tell me how big were some of the oak-trees that
grew between the giant's toes."

"They were bigger," said Eustace, "than the great chestnut-tree which
stands beyond Captain Smith's house."

"Eustace," remarked Mr. Pringle, after some deliberation, "I find it
impossible to express such an opinion of this story as will be likely
to gratify, in the smallest degree, your pride of authorship. Pray let
me advise you never more to meddle with a classical myth. Your
imagination is altogether Gothic, and will inevitably Gothicize
everything that you touch. The effect is like bedaubing a marble
statue with paint. This giant, now! How can you have ventured to
thrust his huge, disproportioned mass among the seemly outlines of
Grecian fable, the tendency of which is to reduce even the extravagant
within limits, by its pervading elegance?"

"I described the giant as he appeared to me," replied the student,
rather piqued. "And, sir, if you would only bring your mind into such
a relation with these fables as is necessary in order to remodel them,
you would see at once that an old Greek had no more exclusive right
to them than a modern Yankee has. They are the common property of the
world, and of all time. The ancient poets remodeled them at pleasure,
and held them plastic in their hands; and why should they not be
plastic in my hands as well?"

Mr. Pringle could not forbear a smile.

"And besides," continued Eustace, "the moment you put any warmth of
heart, any passion or affection, any human or divine morality, into a
classic mould, you make it quite another thing from what it was
before. My own opinion is, that the Greeks, by taking possession of
these legends (which were the imme