The King of the Golden River, John Ruskin [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗
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The King of the Golden River
by John Ruskin
PREFACE“The King of the Golden River” is a delightful fairy tale told
with all Ruskin’s charm of style, his appreciation of mountain
scenery, and with his usual insistence upon drawing a moral.
None the less, it is quite unlike his other writings. All his
life long his pen was busy interpreting nature and pictures and
architecture, or persuading to better views those whom he
believed to be in error, or arousing, with the white heat of a
prophet’s zeal, those whom he knew to be unawakened. There is
indeed a good deal of the prophet about John Ruskin. Though
essentially an interpreter with a singularly fine appreciation
of beauty, no man of the nineteenth century felt more keenly that
he had a mission, and none was more loyal to what he believed
that mission to be.
While still in college, what seemed a chance incident gave
occasion and direction to this mission. A certain English
reviewer had ridiculed the work of the artist Turner. Now Ruskin
held Turner to be the greatest landscape painter the world had
seen, and he immediately wrote a notable article in his defense.
Slowly this article grew into a pamphlet, and the pamphlet into a
book, the first volume of “Modern Painters.” The young man awoke
to find himself famous. In the next few years four more volumes
were added to “Modern Painters,” and the other notable series
upon art, “The Stones of Venice” and “The Seven Lamps of
Architecture,” were sent forth.
Then, in 1860, when Ruskin was about forty years old, there came
a great change. His heaven-born genius for making the
appreciation of beauty a common possession was deflected from
its true field. He had been asking himself what are the
conditions that produce great art, and the answer he found
declared that art cannot be separated from life, nor life from
industry and industrial conditions. A civilization founded upon
unrestricted competition therefore seemed to him necessarily
feeble in appreciation of the beautiful, and unequal to its
creation. In this way loyalty to his mission bred apparent
disloyalty. Delightful discourses upon art gave way to fervid
pleas for humanity. For the rest of his life he became a very
earnest, if not always very wise, social reformer and a
passionate pleader for what he believed to be true economic
ideals.
There is nothing of all this in “The King of the Golden River.”
Unlike his other works, it was written merely to entertain.
Scarcely that, since it was not written for publication at all,
but to meet a challenge set him by a young girl.
The circumstance is interesting. After taking his degree at
Oxford, Ruskin was threatened with consumption and hurried away
from the chill and damp of England to the south of Europe.
After two years of fruitful travel and study he came back
improved in health but not strong, and often depressed in spirit.
It was at this time that the Guys, Scotch friends of his father
and mother, came for a visit to his home near London, and with
them their little daughter Euphemia. The coming of this
beautiful, vivacious, light-hearted child opened a new chapter in
Ruskin’s life. Though but twelve years old, she sought to
enliven the melancholy student, absorbed in art and geology, and
bade him leave these and write for her a fairy tale. He
accepted, and after but two sittings, presented her with this
charming story. The incident proved to have awakened in him a
greater interest than at first appeared, for a few years later
“Effie” Grey became John Ruskin’s wife. Meantime she had given
the manuscript to a friend. Nine years after it was written,
this friend, with John Ruskin’s permission, gave the story to the
world.
It was published in London in 1851, with illustrations by the
celebrated Richard Doyle, and at once became a favorite. Three
editions were printed the first year, and soon it had found its
way into German, Italian, and Welsh. Since then countless
children have had cause to be grateful for the young girl’s
challenge that won the story of Gluck’s golden mug and the
highly satisfactory handling of the Black Brothers by Southwest
Wind, Esquire.
For this edition new drawings have been prepared by Mr. Hiram P.
Barnes. They very successfully preserve the spirit of Doyle’s
illustrations, which unfortunately are not technically suitable
for reproduction here.
In the original manuscript there was an epilogue bearing the
heading “Charitie”—a morning hymn of Treasure Valley, whither
Gluck had returned to dwell, and where the inheritance lost by
cruelty was regained by love:
The beams of morning are renewed The valley laughs their light to
see And earth is bright with gratitude And heaven with charitie.
R.H. COE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I HOW THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF THE BLACK BROTHERS WAS
INTERFERED WITH BY SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE
CHAPTER II OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THREE BROTHERS AFTER THE
VISIT OF SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE; AND HOW LITTLE GLUCK HAD AN
INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF GOLDEN RIVER
CHAPTER III HOW MR. HANS SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN
RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN
CHAPTER IV HOW MR. SCHWARTZ SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN
RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN
CHAPTER V HOW LITTLE GLUCK SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN
RIVER, AND HOW HE PROSPERED THEREIN, WITH OTHER MATTERS OF
INTEREST
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
HOW THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF THE BLACK BROTHERS WAS INTERFERED
WITH BY SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE
In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old
time a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility.
It was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains
rising into peaks which were always covered with snow and from
which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. One
of these fell westward over the face of a crag so high that when
the sun had set to everything else, and all below was darkness,
his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked
like a shower of gold. It was therefore called by the people of
the neighborhood the Golden River. It was strange that none of
these streams fell into the valley itself. They all descended on
the other side of the mountains and wound away through broad
plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn so
constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the
circular hollow, that in time of drought and heat, when all the
country round was burned up, there was still rain in the little
valley; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its
apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and
its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to everyone who beheld
it and was commonly called the Treasure Valley.
The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers,
called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two
elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and
small, dull eyes which were always half shut, so that you
couldn’t see into THEM and always fancied they saw very far into
YOU. They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good
farmers they were. They killed everything that did not pay for
its eating. They shot the blackbirds because they pecked the
fruit, and killed the hedgehogs lest they should suck the cows;
they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen,
and smothered the cicadas which used to sing all summer in the
lime trees. They worked their servants without any wages till
they would not work any more, and then quarreled with them and
turned them out of doors without paying them. It wouuld have
been very odd if with such a farm and such a system of farming
they hadn’t got very rich; and very rich they DID get. They
generally contrived to keep their corn by them till it was very
dear, and then sell it for twice its value; they had heaps of
gold lying about on their floors, yet it was never known that
they had given so much as a penny or a crust in charity; they
never went to Mass, grumbled perpetually at paying tithes, and
were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper as to receive
from all those with whom they had any dealings the nickname of
the “Black Brothers.”
The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both
appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be
imagined or desired. He was not above twelve years old, fair,
blue-eyed, and kind in temper to every living thing. He did
not, of course, agree particularly well with his brothers, or,
rather, they did not agree with HIM. He was usually appointed to
the honorable office of turnspit, when there was anything to
roast, which was not often, for, to do the brothers justice, they
were hardly less sparing upon themselves than upon other people.
At other times he used to clean the shoes, floors, and sometimes
the plates, occasionally getting what was left on them, by way of
encouragement, and a wholesome quantity of dry blows by way of
education.
Things went on in this manner for a long time. At last came a
very wet summer, and everything went wrong in the country round.
The hay had hardly been got in when the haystacks were floated
bodily down to the sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to
pieces with the hail; the corn was all killed by a black blight.
Only in the Treasure Valley, as usual, all was safe. As it had
rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there
was sun nowhere else. Everybody came to buy corn at the farm
and went away pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers. They
asked what they liked and got it, except from the poor people,
who could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their
very door without the slightest regard or notice.
It was drawing towards winter, and very cold weather, when one
day the two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual warning
to little Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that he was to
let nobody in and give nothing out. Gluck sat down quite close
to the fire, for it was raining very hard and the kitchen walls
were by no means dry or comfortable-looking. He turned and
turned, and the roast got nice and brown. “What a pity,”
thought Gluck, “my brothers never ask anybody to dinner. I’m
sure, when they’ve got such a nice piece of mutton as this, and
nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, it would do
their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them.”
Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet
heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up—more like
a puff than a knock.
“It must be the wind,” said Gluck; “nobody else would venture to
knock double knocks at our door.”
No, it wasn’t the wind; there it came
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