Then the old willow-tree spoke: "Close your flowers and bend your leaves. Do not look at the lightning when the cloud bursts. Even men cannot do that; the sight of heaven would strike them blind. Much less can we who are so inferior to them!"
"'Inferior,' indeed!" said the buckwheat. "Now I will look!" And he looked straight up, while the lightning flashed across the sky.
When the dreadful storm had passed, the flowers and the wheat raised their drooping heads, clean and refreshed in the pure, sweet air. The willow-tree shook the gentle drops from its leaves.
But the buckwheat lay like a weed in the field, scorched black by the lightning.
THE JUDGMENT OF MIDAS[1]
[ [1] Adapted from Old Greek Folk-Stories, by Josephine Preston Peabody. (Harmp & Co. 9d.)
The Greek God Pan, the god of the open air, was a great musician. He played on a pipe of reeds. And the sound of his reed-pipe was so sweet that he grew proud, and believed himself greater than the chief musician of the gods, Apollo, the sun-god. So he challenged great Apollo to make better music than he.
Apollo consented to the test, for he wished to punish Pan's vanity, and they chose the mountain Tmolus for judge, since no one is so old and wise as the hills.
When Pan and Apollo came before Tmolus, to play, their followers came with them, to hear, and one of those who came with Pan was a mortal named Midas.
First Pan played; he blew on his reed-pipe, and out came a tune so wild and yet so coaxing that the birds hopped from the trees to get near; the squirrels came running from their holes; and the very trees swayed as if they wanted to dance. The fauns laughed aloud for joy as the melody tickled their furry little ears. And Midas thought it the sweetest music in the world.