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r 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.