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Read books online » Fiction » The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin (reading like a writer TXT) 📖

Book online «The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin (reading like a writer TXT) 📖». Author John Ruskin



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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

CHAPTER I

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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