Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/8

 8 cern other beings than gods and kings the authors of these ancient days told of wondrous characters endowed with marvelous powers; knights with giant strength and magic swords; princes with wondrous palaces and heaps of gold; travelers that met marvelous beasts and slew them in extraordinary ways; giants with forms like mountains and strength like oxen, who vanquished all but little dwarfs. Railroads were not yet invented in those early days, but travel was facilitated by the use of seven league boots. Balloons and telescopes were not yet known, but this did not keep favored heroes from peering at the stars or looking down from on high upon the earth; they, had but to plant a magic bean before they went to bed at night, and in the morning it had grown so tall that it reached up to the sky; and the hero, although not skilled in climbing, needed to simply grasp the stock and say, "Hitchety, hatchety, up I go. Hitchety, hatchety, up I go," and by this means soon vanish in the clouds. Tales of this sort used once to delight the world, and the readers half believed them true. We give them to the children now, and the best of these view them with a half contempt.

The modern man does not enjoy these myths. He relishes a lie, but it must not be too big; it must be so small that, although he knows in his