Newspaper Page Text
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editorial Section of Rearst s Sunday American, Atlanta, may 4, io».
In YOUR Head Is the Gorgon’s Head
Cbpjright. 1D13, by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved.
HE Gorgon sisters—the dreadful
gray women—lived by the
great ocean far away in the
West.
That was the story that the
old Greeks believed, the story
that was written in the days
when no man had sailed on the
Atlantic Ocean, unless driven by accident from
the shore to death.
Fearful old women were those three monster
sisters. And a hard task it was when Perseus
was told by the wicked King of Seriphus that he
must go and bring back the head of Medusa.
The other two sisters, could not be separated
from their heads, for they were immortal. Only
Medusa was mortal and could be killed. And
her head Perseus must bring back.
This is the kind of a story that in these days
we tell to children about fairies. It is a story
that the simple Greeks believed, just as simple
minded people in our day, believe in similar
stories of a little different kind.
Perseus DID find the gray women, miracu
lously guided by Hermes and Athene.
He did not like the look of them when he
saw them, sitting together on the ocean's edge.
Dreadful hags they were, and among them the
whole three had only one eye and one tooth.
The eye and the tooth they handed from one
to the other. If one hag wanted to bite she got
the tooth and used it to bite.
Or if a hag wanted to see she got the eye and
looked with it.
Perseus—just exactly how we do not know—
stole the eye and the tooth, and then the three
Gorgon ladies were in a very bad condition. It
is no exaggeration to say that with their only
eye and their only tooth gone they were as
helpless as the woman of to-day who hasn't any
vote.
With the eye in one hand and the tooth in the
other, Perseus defied the gray women. And he
said, “You can get back the eye and the tooth if
you will guide me to the Nymphs.”
So the gray women guided him to the Nymphs
—how they managed to do that without their
eye to see the way the story does not tell.
The stories of religion are sometimes lacking
in detail.
Perseus found the Nymphs. And he got from
them the winged sandals, the wallet, and the cap
of invisibility.
He put these on, and with Hermes still guid
ing him, and with a sharp sword in his hand,
crept upon the gray women as they slept—
rather an ungrateful thing to do—and cut off
Medusa’s head.
You must remember that he had to cut off
the head very carefully. For if you looked
straight at these Gorgon ladies you were immedi
ately turned into stone.
Perseus had a plan of his own. He kept
looking at the image on the shield w hile he was
chopping off the Gorgon’s woman’s head.
Having cut off the head, he put it in the wallet
he had got from the Nymphs, made himself
invisible once more, and with the winged sandals
he hurried home at high speed, to be very much
praised.
That is the interesting story of the old Greeks
—the story that men and women of old days
told to their children, and that they themselves
believed.
Poets have told the story, artists have painted
it, and shown it in marble, and in bronze.
Here, on this page, you see the story brought
up to date—AND YOU, THE READER, ARE
MR. PERSEUS IN THIS MODERN CARTOON,
HOLDING OUT YOUR GORGON HEAD,
WHICH YOU ACTUALLY POSSESS. AND
TURNING YOUR SPIRITUAL ENEMIES TO
STONE.
You must know' that after Perseus got home
with the Gorgon head in his wallet—history does
not say whether he let the other two remaining
sisters have the use of their tooth and the eye, or
brought the tooth and the eye with him—when
Perseus Visited the Terrible Gray Women That Lived By the Sea. And With
the Head of One of Them He Turned His Enemies to Stone. He Turned a
Whole Island Into Stone, With Its King, Its Court, and Even Its Frogs.
What This Mythical Son of Zeus and Danae Did to His Enemies With
the Head of Medusa, You Can Do to Your Enemies WITH THE WILL
POWER INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD.
Perseus got home with that Gorgon head, every
thing was easy for him.
The King was unfriendly. And the court of
Seriphus was very unfriendly, also.
Perseus rescued his mother, and then hold
ing up the Gorgon’s head, turned the King to
stone, his w'hole court, and the island upon
which the court lived “remained still and lonely
ever afterward,” and the frogs remained forever
dumb.
Perseus, as a reward to Athene for being his
guide, gave her the head, which she put on her
shield—then he hastened off to continue his in
terest in life, which included the rescuing of An
dromeda from the monster.
The idea of this editorial, and in this picture,
where YOU ARE SHOWN AS PERSEUS UP TO
DATE, holding up the Gorgon head, is to remind
you that what Perseus was supposed to do, but
didn’t do, THE RIGHT KIND OF A MAN
ACTUALLY CAN DO.
In order to possess the Gorgon head now and
use it, you don’t have to steal an eye or a tooth
from any old, gray woman at the ocean’s edge.
And you don’t have to do miraculous things.
YOU SIMPLY HAVE TO USE YOUR WILL.
The will is the Gorgon head for the man who
knows how to use it.
Tad, our artist, shows young Perseus of the
brand of 1913, holding up a head labelled knowl
edge.
Knowledge is part of the Gorgon head that the
wise man uses in his own defense. BUT WILL
POWER IS MORE IMPORTANT EVEN THAN
KNOWLEDGE.
You have got in you only one real force, which
is your intelligence. And in that intelligence the
first and most important power is THE POWER
OF THE WILL.
If you WILL, you can control yourself and
defy the enemies that oppose you.
We do not say that you can turn into stone the
man you don’t like.
Human beings of to-day no longer WANT to
turn their enemies into stune. What they want
is to forget them and think of something else.
With the Gorgon head of WILL POWER you
can turn into stone the spiritual enemy, the ene
mies of your success, and of your usefulness, the
enemies that really OUGHT TO TURN TO
STONE.
In planning your own life, whether to make
yourself successful or to prevent defeat which
threatens, or to overcome some particular diffi
culty, WILL POWER is the force and IMAGIN
ATION is the guide.
Your imagination makes you see that which
is not actually in your presence.
With it,' you see the success that may be yours
if the will does its work.
And you see miserable failure, the monotony,
dullness, humiliation, disappointed old age that
stretch ahead of you, if your will sleeps and
fails to do its work.
* * *
There is no Perseus, miraculously born of
Jupiter and a goddess in our day.
There are no three gray women living by the
ocean with one eye and one tooth among them.
There is no head that you can hold aloft, to
turn islands and kings and frogs into solid stone.
But the story of Perseus still lives, and the im
aginary things that he was supposed to do are,
in another form, the realities, the necessarv
things that the average mortal, the Perseus of
to-day, actually can do.
Poverty, drink and disease are not actual old,
gray women, hags living on the Western ocean’s
edge. But they are actual monsters, Gorgons of
to-day. And with your imagination you can see
them, as the imagination of the old Greek story
teller saw the three gray women on the edge of
the ocean.
You can imagine these things Gorgons of to
day—DRINK, DISEASE AND POVERTY’, with
one eye and one tooth, which they hand to each
other and use.
They are not sisters, but mother and daugh
ters. Sometimes drink is the mother of pov
erty and disease.
And sometimes poverty is the mother of drink
and disease.
And sometimes disease gives birth to poverty
and to drink.
But in every case the man of will power can
destroy them. -
Don’t look at this picture as simply a feature
—more or less curious—in a big Sunday news
paper.
And don’t read this editorial merely as a sort
of sermon to be looked through.
Skip it entirely, or sav to yourself that you
will make it USEFUL TO YOURSELF.
Ask yourself whether or not it is true that
with the power inside of yourself, WILL POW
ER, you can turn your most dangerous enemy
to stone.
AND THEN USE THE POWER.
You can do it. If with real WILL you can
say NO to drink, you can turn that particular
Gorgon to stone, to trouble you no more.
If you can meet with strength of character
and will that will not bend to the temptations
and follies in your path, you can turn them into
stone and render them harmless, just as the
mythical Perseus held up the ghastly head,
toothless, with no eyes in the sockets, and mak
ing the King look upon it turned him into a
block of marble.
The old mythology and the old miracles in the
fairy stories disappear.
But every story that the human race has told
has been a story of truth. Every religion, with
its miraculous birth from Jupiter or the other
gods, every childish tale to hold and control
childish human beings, has had its solid founda
tion of truth.
Lucky for you if you can find in the Gorgon
story which Tad selects for his cartoon the foun
dation of truth, and make up your mind to be
the Perseus in an up-to-date story of Gorgon
and of conquest.