Famous Stories Every Child Should Know | Page 9

WIND, ESQUIRE; AND HOW
LITTLE GLUCK HAD AN INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF THE
GOLDEN RIVER.
Southwest Wind, Esquire, was as good as his word. After the
momentous visit above related, he entered the Treasure Valley no more;
and, what was worse, he had so much influence with his relations, the
West Winds in general, and used it so effectually, that they all adopted
a similar line of conduct. So no rain fell in the valley from one year's
end to another. Though everything remained green and flourishing in
the plains below, the inheritance of the Three Brothers was a desert.
What had once been the richest soil in the kingdom, became a shifting
heap of red sand; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the
adverse skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek
some means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the
plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some
curious, old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their
ill-gotten wealth.

"Suppose we turn goldsmiths?" said Schwartz to Hans, as they entered
the large city. "It is a good knave's trade; we can put a great deal of
copper into the gold, without any one's finding it out."
The thought was agreed to be a very good one; they hired a furnace,
and turned goldsmiths. But two slight circumstances affected their trade:
the first, that people did not approve of the coppered gold; the second,
that the two elder brothers, whenever they had sold anything, used to
leave little Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out the money
in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their gold, without
making money enough to buy more, and were at last reduced to one
large drinking-mug, which an uncle of his had given to little Gluck, and
which he was very fond of, and would not have parted with for the
world; though he never drank anything out of it but milk and water.
The mug was a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed of two
wreaths of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it looked more like
silk than metal, and these wreaths descended into, and mixed with, a
beard and whiskers of the same exquisite workmanship, which
surrounded and decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest gold
imaginable, right in the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it which
seemed to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out of
the side of these eyes; and Schwartz positively averred, that once, after
emptying it, full of Rhenish, seventeen times, he had seen them wink!
When it came to the mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half broke
poor little Gluck's heart: but the brothers only laughed at him, tossed
the mug into the melting-pot, and staggered out to the ale-house:
leaving him, as usual, to pour the gold into bars, when it was all ready.
When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his old friend in
the melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone; nothing remained but
the red nose, and the sparkling eyes, which looked more malicious than
ever. "And no wonder," thought Gluck, "after being treated in that
way." He sauntered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down
to catch the fresh evening air, and escape the hot breath of the furnace.
Now this window commanded a direct view of the range of mountains,
which, as I told before, overhung the Treasure Valley, and more

especially of the peak from which fell the Golden River. It was just at
the close of the day, and when Gluck sat down at the window he saw
the rocks of the mountain tops, all crimson and purple with the sunset;
and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering
about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a waving column of
pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad
purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the
wreaths of spray.
"Ah!" said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a while, "if that
river were really all gold, what a nice thing it would be."
"No it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear, metallic voice close at his ear.
"Bless me! what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jumping up. There was
nobody there. He looked round the room, and under the table, and a
great many times behind him, but there was certainly nobody there, and
he sat down again at the window. This time he didn't speak, but he
couldn't help thinking