"It is no foe who follows you. Why should you flee as the trembling doe from the lion, the lamb from the hungry wolf, the dove from the pursuing falcon? It is a god who loves and follows. It is a god you flee from, a god who loves, and will not be denied."
Still she fled and still he followed; he the loving, she the loath, he pleading and she deaf to his prayers. As a hare doubles to elude the greyhound that is gaining on her, the flying maid turned back and sought thus to elude her pursuer. In vain she strove against a god. Terror winged her feet, but there is no escape from Love. He gained ground upon her, and now she felt his hot breath on her hair; his arm was just outstretched to clasp her.
The nymph grew pale with mortal terror. Spent with her long, hard race for freedom, she cast a despairing look around her. No help was to be seen, but near by ran the waters of a little brook. "Oh, help!" she cried, "if water gods are deities indeed. Earth, I adjure you, gape and entomb this unhappy wretch; or change my form, the cause of all my fear!"
The kind earth heard her frenzied prayer. The frightened nymph found her feet benumbed with cold and rooted to the ground. As Apollo's arms were flung about her a filmy rind grew over her body, her outflung arms were changed to leafy boughs, her hair, her fingers, all were turned to shuddering leaves; only the smoothness of her skin remained.
"Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!" For a maiden he clasped a laurel tree, and his hot lips were pressed upon the cold and senseless bark.
Yet Apollo is a gracious god, and presently, when his passion had cooled, he repented him of his mad pursuit and its desperate ending. The idea of the coy maiden, roaming the forest fancy-free, crept into his imagination, more delicate and lovely than when she lived in deed. So he vowed that the laurel should be his peculiar tree. Her leaves should be bound for poet's brow, should crown the victor in the chariot race, and the conqueror as he marched in the great triumph.
Secure from thunder should she stand, unfading as the immortal gods; and as the locks of Apollo are unshorn, her boughs should be decked in perpetual green through all the changing seasons.
And the grateful tree could only bend her fair boughs above him and wave the leafy burden of her head.
DEUCALION AND PYRRHA
BY M. M. BIRD
To the golden age of innocence, when the world was young and men a race of happy children, succeeded an age of silver, and then an age of brass. Last came an age of iron, when every man's hand was against his neighbor, and Justice fled affrighted to the sky. Then the sons of earth, the giants, no longer curbed by law or fear of the gods, waxed bold and wanton. Piling mountain upon mountain they essayed to scale the heavens and hurl its monarch from his throne. These Jupiter blasted with his red lightnings and transfixed with his winged bolts. But from their blood, as from seed that the sower scatters, there arose a race of men, a feeble folk, but no less godless and lawless than their sires. Then Jupiter, beholding the ways of men that they were evil and that none was righteous in his eyes, determined to destroy this world and people it with a new race unlike the first. He was minded at first to destroy it by fire, and made ready his artillery of thunderbolts, but then he bethought him that the vast conflagration might blaze up to heaven itself and scorch the gods on their golden thrones. So he dropped the bolts from his hand.
"Water," he cried, "as my poet has sung 'is the best of all elements'; by water I will drown the world."
First he bound the North Wind that freezes floods by its icy breath, then loosed the South Wind that brings fog and darkness and horror on its wings. From his beard and eyebrows he rained showers, from his robe and mantle the unceasing floods streamed down and wreathing mists encircled his frowning brow.
He swept above the earth, wringing the waters from the high clouds, while peal on peal of thunder rolled about him.
The bearded corn bent before the driving rain, and the farmers lamented their ruined crops. But not alone in the skies was Jupiter content to open the watergates. He summoned to his aid the powers of Neptune. The ocean, the natural enemy of the fruitful earth, swelled with pride at this request, and rushed inland to meet the swollen torrents that gushed from the hills across the sodden plains. The floods gathered deep over the lowlands, the fields were drowned, the ruined grain was submerged. Sheep and cattle, peasants and their plows, trees and wild beasts, were all borne out upon the resistless waters. Even the houses, sapped by the water, fell into the angry flood, and all the household goods were swallowed up. Some climbed high cliffs to escape the general doom, other launched out in little boats and floated above the submerged chimneys of their homes or cast anchor among their vines. Hills and valleys were alike engulfed by the heaving waters; those who had sought safety on the hilltops died of starvation, and those in boats were swamped.
Jupiter, looking down from his starry heights, saw nothing but a lake of troubled waters where the blooming earth had been. The destruction was complete. Then he unloosed the North Wind, and set fierce Boreas to drive away the clouds. Neptune he commanded to lay his trident on the rough waves and smooth out their furrows. And he bade Triton, who appeared above the waves, give the signal for the waters to retire within their proper bounds. Triton blew a blast on his shell, and the note was borne from wave to wave, from marge to marge. The waters, obedient to the summons, ran off the shores. The streams shrank by slow degrees to their accustomed level, and the green shoulders of the earth rose up from out their watery shroud. The tops of the drooping trees emerged all matted with mud, the houses lay in heaps of reeking ruin, the whole world lay desolate and wore a sickly hue.
I have said that all men were evil, yet among this sinful race were two righteous found, and though they could not save others from destruction, they themselves were saved. In a far vale of Thessaly there lived an aged couple, who had fled there to escape from the wickedness of men, Deucalion and Pyrrha his wife. When the flood came they had seen a little skiff floating by their cottage door and had embarked in it. For many days the skiff had floated like a cork above the surging flood, and when the flood abated they found themselves stranded on the heights of Parnassus.
They were the sole survivors, and they blessed the gods for their deliverance, but as they looked upon the scene of desolation they were sad at heart. It was a silent world. No human voice to greet them, no sound of beast or bird. They were childless and without hope of children, and if one of them were to die, how could the other live on?
Yet in their misery they forgot not to pay their reverent vows to Jupiter, the God of Deliverance, and then together made their way down from Parnassus and sought the now ruined shrine of Themis. The roofs were green with moss and slime; no fire burned on the deserted altar.
They fell prostrate and implored the goddess: "O righteous Themis, if the gods can be moved to love or pity by our prayers; if the miseries of men can touch them; if there is forgiveness and renewed favor to be found in them, tell how we may restore mankind, and by a miracle repeople all the world!"
The gracious goddess bowed to them and said: "Depart! Veil your heads and cast each behind you the bones of your mighty mother."
The pair stood amazed and dumb with wonder.
Pyrrha could not bring herself to obey the dire and seemingly impious command.
"Forbid it, Heaven," she cried, "that I should tear those sacred relics from their sepulcher!"
But
