Stories of long ago in a new dress
Grace H. Kupfer
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, June 20, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...side of some cliffs that overhung the sea. The boy, not noticing his uncle's gloomy face, was talking happily about all the great things he meant to do by and by, when suddenly Daedalus grasped his arm and pushed him over the edge of the cliff into the sea below. Perdix would surely have been drowned, had he not been rescued by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who loved him because he was so skillful. She changed him into a partridge, and he flew off across the waters. Daedalus soon became afraid of what the people of Athens might do if they learned of his crime. So taking with him his young son, Icarus, he left Athens in the night and fled to the island of Crete, where King Minos received him very kindly. But before long, Daedalus got himself into trouble by interfering with the king's household, and Minos made both father and son prisoners on the island. Daedalus grew very weary of that life, and thought and thought of some means of escaping from the island; but he could not get a boat, though day after day he looked at the whitesailed vessels on the water, and longed to have one ot them for his own. One day Icarus was looking now up into the sky where many birds were flying to and fro, and then down at the sea which was covered with sail boats, when suddenly he said, "Oh, father, the vessels look like great, white-winged birds skimming lightly over the waves. They seem to fly just as their sister birds in the sky do." The child's words gave the father a sudden happy thought. He would try to make wings for himself and his son, and fly from this island in which he had so long been an unwilling prisoner. The same evening, he set to work to make two pair of wings. He joined feathers of different lengths, and, with his deft fingers, shaped t...