Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/189

Rh all sat in a semicircle around the large fireplace in which a big log of seasoned oak was always burning.

I had received some books from a friend of the family who lived in the capital of the country, Bucharest. Among them was Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship, translated into French. I was reading it when Murdo approached the table and said, "What a small Bible my son is reading."

"It is not a Bible, it is a book of stories, Murdo."

"Stories! Well, that's another thing."

He looked over my shoulders into the book. As I turned the page he asked:

"Is everything written in a book? I mean, is it written what the hero said and what she answered and how they said it? Is it written all about him and the villain? I mean are there signs, letters for everything; for laughter, cries, love gestures? Tell me."

I explained as best I could and he marvelled. I had to give an example, so I read a full page from a story-book.

"And is all that written in the book, my son? It is better than I thought possible, but not so good as when one tells a story. It is like cloth woven by a machine, nice and straight, but it not the kind our women weave on the loom—but it is good; it is better than I thought possible. What are the stories in the book you are reading? Of love or of sorrow?"

"Of neither, Murdo. Only about all the great heroes that have lived in this world of cowards."

"About every one of them?" he asked again. "That's good. It is good to tell the stories of the heroes."

He returned to the fireplace to light his pipe; then he came to me again.

“If it is written in this book about all the great heroes, then there must also be the record of Ghitza—the great Ghitza, our hero. The greatest that ever lived. See, son, what is there said about him?"

I turned the pages one by one to the end of the book and then reported, "Nothing, Murdo. Not even his name is mentioned."

"Then this book is not a good book. The man who wrote it did not know every hero because not Alexander of Macedon and not even Napoleon was greater than Ghitza"

I sat near him at the fireplace and watched his wrinkled face while Murdo told me the story of Ghitza as it should be written in