"I will not bend my head," said the buckwheat.

Then the old willow-tree spoke: "Close your flowers and bend your leaves.
Do not look at the lightning when the cloud bursts. Even men cannot do
that; the sight of heaven would strike them blind. Much less can we who
are so inferior to them!"

"'Inferior,' indeed!" said the buckwheat. "Now I _will_ look!" And he
looked straight up, while the lightning flashed across the sky.

When the dreadful storm had passed, the flowers and the wheat raised their
drooping heads, clean and refreshed in the pure, sweet air. The
willow-tree shook the gentle drops from its leaves.

But the buckwheat lay like a weed in the field, scorched black by the
lightning.


THE JUDGMENT OF MIDAS[1]

[Footnote 1: Adapted from _Old Greek Folk-Stories_, by Josephine Preston
Peabody. (Harrap & Co. 9d.)]

The Greek God Pan, the god of the open air, was a great musician. He
played on a pipe of reeds. And the sound of his reed-pipe was so sweet
that he grew proud, and believed himself greater than the chief musician
of the gods, Apollo, the sun-god. So he challenged great Apollo to make
better music than he.

Apollo consented to the test, for he wished to punish Pan's vanity, and