THE FLOOD.


In those very early times there was a man named Deucalion, and he was
the son of Prometheus. He was only a common man and not a Titan like his
great father, and yet he was known far and wide for his good deeds and
the uprightness of his life. His wife's name was Pyrrha, and she was one
of the fairest of the daughters of men.

After Jupiter had bound Prometheus on Mount Caucasus and had sent
diseases and cares into the world, men became very, very wicked. They no
longer built houses and tended their flocks and lived together in peace;
but every man was at war with his neighbor, and there was no law nor
safety in all the land. Things were in much worse case now than they had
been before Prometheus had come among men, and that was just what
Jupiter wanted. But as the world became wickeder and wickeder every day,
he began to grow weary of seeing so much bloodshed and of hearing the
cries of the oppressed and the poor.

"These men," he said to his mighty company, "are nothing but a source of
trouble. When they were good and happy, we felt afraid lest they should
become greater than ourselves; and now they are so terribly wicked that
we are in worse danger than before. There is only one thing to be done
with them, and that is to destroy them every one."

So he sent a great rain-storm upon the earth, and it rained day and