born to our mother, Metaneira, and she would greatly rejoice to have one as wise as you mind little Demophoon."All the time that she watched them and listened to their [pg 66] voices Demeter felt that the grace and youth of the maidens made them like Persephone. She thought that it would ease her heart to be in the house where these maidens were, and she was not loath
to have them go and ask of their mother to have her come to nurse the infant child.
Swiftly they ran back to their home, their hair streaming behind them like crocus flowers; kind and lovely girls whose names are
well remembered--Callidice and Cleisidice, Demo and Callithoe. They went to their mother and they told her of the stranger-wom- an whose name was Doso. She would make a wise and a kind nurse for little Demophoon, they said. Their mother, Metaneira, rose up from the couch she was sitting on to welcome the stranger. But when she saw her at the doorway, awe came over her, so majestic she seemed.
Metaneira would have her seat herself on the couch but the goddess took the lowliest stool, saying in greeting: "May the gods give you all good, lady."
"Sorrow has set you wandering from your good home," said Metaneira to the goddess, "but now that you have come to this place you shall have all that this house can bestow if you will rear up to youth the infant Demophoon, child of many hopes and prayers."
The child was put into the arms of Demeter; she clasped him to her breast, and little Demophoon looked up into her face and smiled. Then Demeter's heart went out to the child and to all who were in the household.
[pg 67] He grew in strength and beauty in her charge. And little Demophoon was not nourished as other children are nourished, but even as the gods in their childhood were nourished. Demeter fed him on ambrosia, breathing on him with her divine breath the
while. And at night she laid him on the hearth, amongst the embers, with the fire all around him. This she did that she might make
him immortal, and like to the gods.
But one night Metaneira looked out from the chamber where she lay, and she saw the nurse take little Demophoon and lay him in a place on the hearth with the burning brands all around him. Then Metaneira started up, and she sprang to the hearth, and she snatched the child from beside the burning brands. "Demophoon, my son," she cried, "what would this stranger-woman do to you, bringing bitter grief to me that ever I let her take you in her arms?"
Then said Demeter: "Foolish indeed are you mortals, and not able to foresee what is to come to you of good or of evil! Foolish
indeed are you, Metaneira, for in your heedlessness you have cut off this child from an immortality like to the immortality of the gods themselves. For he had lain in my bosom and had become dear to me and I would have bestowed upon him the greatest gift that the Divine Ones can bestow, for I would have made him deathless and unaging. All this, now, has gone by. Honor he shall have indeed, but Demophoon will know age and death."
The seeming old age that was upon her had fallen from [pg 68] Demeter; beauty and stature were hers, and from her robe there came a heavenly fragrance. There came such light from her body that the chamber shone. Metaneira remained trembling and speech-less, unmindful even to take up the child that had been laid upon the ground.
It was then that his sisters heard Demophoon wail; one ran from her chamber and took the child in her arms; another kindled
again the fire upon the hearth, and the others made ready to bathe and care for the infant. All night they cared for him, holding him
in their arms and at their breasts, but the child would not be comforted, because the nurses who handled him now were less skillful than was the goddess-nurse.
And as for Demeter, she left the house of Celeus and went upon her way, lonely in her heart, and unappeased. And in the world that she wandered through, the plow went in vain through the ground; the furrow was sown without any avail, and the race of men saw themselves near perishing for lack of bread.
But again Demeter came near the Well of the Maiden. She thought of the daughters of Celeus as they came toward the well that day, the bronze pitchers in their hands, and with kind looks for the stranger--she thought of them as she sat by the well again. And then she thought of little Demophoon, the child she had held at her breast. No stir of living was in the land near their home, and
only weeds grew in their fields. As she sat there and looked around her there came into Demeter's heart a pity for the people in
whose house she had dwelt.
[pg 69] She rose up and she went to the house of Celeus. She found him beside his house measuring out a little grain. The god-
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