Dryad

“ It must be remembered that there is a peculiar property pertaining to the kiss of a dryad. Whenever a dryad kisses a human being, that person becomes ten years younger. So all good mothers are very careful to keep their children away from large oak trees. If a girl, of a dozen years, were to sit in the shade of one of these trees, she might attract the attention of an affectionate tree dweller; and then, if this dryad should kiss her, the little toddler of two years might go home—if perchance, she remembered where she lived—and astound her parents. ”

“ It was so with Hebe. She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood. In spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of blossom for miles across the furze and scattered birches!
I might have known it was Hebe.
Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a prodigality, for it is many a day since it was uprooted. The little dryad long since fled away weeping,—fled away, said evil tongues, fled away to the town. ”

“ The eyes of the Echo-dwarf glistened. Here was a man who might help him in his plans.
“Your idea is a good one,” he said to Old Pipes, “and it does you honor. But you should know that a Dryad can make no person younger but one who lets her out of her tree. However, you can manage the affair very easily. All you need do is to find the Dryad, tell her what you want, and request her to step into her tree and be shut up for a short time. Then you will go and bring your mother to the tree; she will open it, and everything will be as you wish. ”

“ It was a white night––a night so brilliant that the village lights far below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast.
Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. ”

“ Still no answer, but a low silvery laugh was proof that the occupant of the nest was not a wraith.
“If you are a fairy,” he persisted, “won’t you come down and give me a Terpsichorean exhibition in the fairy ring on the floor of your enchanted glade?”
“I am a dryad,” came the dulcet tone of a childish voice, “and a dryad’s life is bound up in her tree. I cannot leave my arboreal bower until the hour of midnight.
“We’ll see about that,” laughed Donald as he seized the slender cedars and rocked them violently. ”

“ He courageously began, then, amidst a profound silence, which would have been formidable to any one but himself:—“Madame, by the king’s permission, I address myself, in the first place, to your royal highness, since you admit yourself to be the person present possessing the greatest curiosity. I have the honor, therefore, to inform your royal highness that the Dryad more particularly inhabits the hollows of oaks; and, as Dryads are mythological creatures of great beauty, they inhabit the most beautiful trees, in other words, the largest to be found.” ”

“ Before long they came to the great oak-tree in which the Dryad had lived, and, at a distance, they saw that beautiful creature herself coming toward them.
"How excellently well every thing happens!" said the dwarf. "Put me down, and I will go. Your business with the Dryad is more important than mine; and you need not say any thing about my having suggested your plan to you. I am willing that you should have all the credit of it yourself."
Old Pipes put the Echo-dwarf upon the ground, but the little rogue did not go away. ”

“ When the grove was empty and still, all the other Dryads would step softly from their dwelling places in the cypress, the olive and the pine trees and join hands as they danced lightly about the oak tree, singing their praises of the great Ceres who fed with her bounty the whole of Greece. The country people, and even those from the cities, came to pay their homage to Ceres' oak, bringing garlands of roses and laurel that they hung on its boughs, and carving messages of thanks and love for the Dryad on its bark. ”

“ She even began to long for the afternoon solely to be alone with it; and in the midst of the reverie it charmed into her mind, she would glance up as startled as a Dryad to see the “cook-general's” dark face fixing its still cold gaze on her from over the moss-greened wall. ”

“ People can be very grateful without kissing, you know, and I will bring you the clothes in a minute.”
When [20] the dryad had put on the frock and the little cape and the sun-bonnet, she looked very much like an ordinary person, and when she went out on the street nobody noticed her, for there were girls in that village who were so poor that they were obliged to go barefooted. ”

“ It was not long before the aged oak was a hundred years younger; strong, vigorous, clad in the brightest green and able to withstand the fiercest storm.
Now, when the villagers knew what had happened, they thought it quite right that the girl should marry and take care of the child who had been her step-mother, and when the boy who had been the constable grew up, he married this child, and there was a great deal more happiness in that village than there would have been, if the lost dryad had not come to it, looking for a tree. ”

“ That was irony.
"On what?" insisted the Dryad.
"Oh, on—something," said Jones, vaguely. "Butterflies are, no doubt, like the human species; flowers tempt some butterflies, mud-puddles attract others. One or the other will attract our Ajax some day."
That night Jones, with book open upon his knees, sat in the lamplight of the great veranda and read tales of Ajax to the Dryad ”

“ One thing, however, was plain enough: the cattle were coming down the mountain. And so the two boys and the girl did not have to go after them, and had an hour for play, for which they were very glad.
The next morning Old Pipes started down to the village with his money, and on the way he met the Dryad. “Oh, ho!” he cried, “is that you? Why, I thought my letting you out of the tree was nothing but a dream.”
“A dream!” cried the Dryad; “if you only knew how happy you have made me you would not think it merely a dream. And has it not benefited you? Do you not feel happier? ”

“ The summer days went on and passed away, the leaves were falling from the trees, and the air was becoming cold.
"Nature has ceased to be lovely," said the Dryad, "and the night-winds chill me. It is time for me to go back into my comfortable quarters in the great oak. But first I must pay another visit to the cottage of old Pipes."
She found the piper and his mother sitting side by side on the rock in front of the door. The cattle were not to go to the mountain any more that season, and he was piping them down for the last time. ”

“ Njal was so determined not to be budged that the tender-hearted Dryad took his part and pleaded against our amateur efforts at discipline.
"Poor puppy! Let him be my room-mate tonight. He's so new and scared. He can sleep over there on the lounge under that farthest window and he will not bother me one bit."
Njal consented to this transfer, but in the small hours homesickness again swept his soul and he jumped up beside the Dryad, to whom he nestled close. ”

“ The swallow gave a very good description, 'but one can see better for oneself,' she said; but how should the Dryad ever get to see these beings? She must content herself with being able to look out over the beautiful landscape and see the busy activity of men. That was lovely, but most lovely of all, when the old priest stood here under the oak, and told about France, and about the great deeds of men and women, whose names are named with admiration throughout all times. The Dryad heard of the shepherdess Joan of Arc, of Charlotte Corday ”

“ He was a young man. Grave doubts were expressed as to what vessel he came from, for it seems almost impossible he could have got to the rocks from the Dryad; and there was some wreckage visible near the rocks that did not appear to have belonged to the Dryad. The coastguards at Hallsands said distinctly that the lights they saw were a steamer's lights, whilst there is no doubt that the lights the lighthouse-keepers saw were those of the Dryad. ”

“ Dryad’s eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves laden with those countless figures––all white and finely slender, all upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before she stepped a pace away from him.
“You’ve not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn’t be frightened like that! We know, you and I, don’t we, that you never could forget? You’re just tired. Now, that’s better––that’s brave! And now––look! ”

“ The proceeds from the sale of this book will go into the construction of a children’s club-house and playground in a very poor little village, where some of the little ones wander through childhood almost as forlornly as the Lost Dryad bereft of her oak-tree. To prolong the youth and bring joy to the lives of these children is the purpose of [8] this publication of the troubles and adventures of The Lost Dryad. ”

“ We tried, at first in vain, to fix our eyes on some one dominant or typical form, while every form was clamouring, as it were, to be looked at, and a fresh Dryad gazed out of every bush and with wooing eyes asked to be wooed again. The first two plants, perhaps, we looked steadily at were the Ipomœa pes capræ, lying along the sand in straight shoots thirty feet long, and growing longer, we fancied, while we looked at it, with large bilobed green leaves at every joint, and here and there a great purple convolvulus flower ”

“ Ralston says that in Hahn’s opinion the above story is founded on the Hellenic belief in Dryads; but he himself thinks it belongs to an earlier mythological family than the Hellenic, though the Dryad and the Laurel-maiden are undoubtedly kinswomen. “Long before the Dryads and Oreads had received from the sculpturesque Greek mind their perfection of human form and face, trees were credited with woman-like inhabitants, capable of doing good and ill, and with power of their own, apart from those possessed by their supernatural tenants, of banning and blessing. ”

“ Such lovely silk and lace you are putting on it!”
“Yes,” said the girl, holding up the hat before the lamp, “I am trying to make it pretty, but this silk is tarnished; it has lost a good deal of its color. My step-mother thinks it is good enough for [17] me and so I must do the best I can with it.”
“Poor girl!” said the dryad, “she ought to give you the nicest stuffs there are in the village, you are so pretty.” And, moved by pity and affection, she was about to give the girl a kiss of sympathy, but remembering just in time that that would never do, she kissed the hat. ”

“ It does not matter to me. Another will grow out next spring. And although the good piper made me no promise, I know that when the warm days arrive next year he will come and let me out again.”
The Echo-dwarf did not stop to break the key of the tree. He was too happy to be released to think of anything else, and he hastened as fast as he could to his home on the rocky hillside.
The Dryad was not mistaken when she trusted in the piper. When the warm days came again he went to the oak-tree to let her out. But, to his sorrow and surprise, he found the great tree lying upon the ground. ”

“ Thus, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. ”

“ Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but no clew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fell into the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I was now looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spirit informed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and joy of life, stood dipt to the breast in the brake; stood so, bathing in the light ”

“ From a moral point of view, Dryden's next appearance as a poet is not creditable. To those who regard the poet as a seer with a sacred mission, and refuse the name altogether to a literary manufacturer to order, it comes with a certain shock to find Dryden, the hereditary Puritan, the panegyrist of Cromwell, hailing the return of King Charles in Astræa Redux, deploring his long absence, and proclaiming the despair with which he had seen "the rebel thrive, the loyal crost." ”

“ The “Annus Mirabilis” of Dryden—1870 a more wonderful Year in its way than 1666—Winter—Number of Killed and Wounded in the Franco-Prussian War—Battles of Langside, Tippermuir, Cappel—Carrier Pigeons—The Velocity with which Birds fly.
One of Dryden’s best poems, and in many respects one of the most curious poems in the language, is the Annus Mirabilis, an effusion of historical panegyric, which, after the lapse of two centuries, no one can read unmoved or undelighted, so beautifully is it written, so masterly is the versification, and so vividly are its events portrayed. ”