The Project Gutenberg eBook, Youth and the Bright Medusa, by Willa Cather
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Youth and the Bright Medusa
Author: Willa Cather
Release Date: September 30, 2004 [eBook #13555]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Project Gutenberg Beginners
Projects, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA
by
WILLA CATHER
1920
“We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?”
CONTENTS
COMING, APHRODITE!
THE DIAMOND MINE
A GOLD SLIPPER
SCANDAL
PAUL’S CASE
A WAGNER MATINEE
THE SCULPTOR’S FUNERAL
“A DEATH IN THE DESERT”
The author wishes to thank
Magazine_ and
the re-publication of three stories in this collection.
The last four stories in the volume,
the author’s first book of stories, entitled “The Troll Garden,”
published in 1905.
Coming, Aphrodite!
I
Don Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of an old house on
the south side of Washington Square, and nobody had ever disturbed him.
He occupied one big room with no outside exposure except on the north,
where he had built in a many-paned studio window that looked upon a court
and upon the roofs and walls of other buildings. His room was very
cheerless, since he never got a ray of direct sunlight; the south corners
were always in shadow. In one of the corners was a clothes closet, built
against the partition, in another a wide divan, serving as a seat by day
