built for him, they sought it in vain. For the
Olympians had turned Narcissus into a white flower, the flower that
still bears his name and keeps his memory sweet.

"A lonely flower he spied,
A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride,
Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness,
To woo its own sad image into nearness;
Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move,
But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love."

Keats.

ICARUS

Fourteen years only have passed since our twentieth century began. In
those fourteen years how many a father's and mother's heart has bled
for the death of gallant sons, greatly-promising, greatly-daring, who
have sought to rule the skies? With wings not well enough tried, they
have soared dauntlessly aloft, only to add more names to the tragic
list of those whose lives have been sacrificed in order that the
groping hands of science may become sure, so that in time the sons of
men may sail through the heavens as fearlessly as their fathers sailed
through the seas.

High overhead we watch the monoplane, the great, swooping thing, like
a monster black-winged bird, and our minds travel back to the story of
Icarus, who died so many years ago that there are those who say that
his story is but a foolish fable, an idle myth.

Daedalus, grandson of a king of Athens, was the greatest artificer of
his day. Not only as an architect was he great, but as a sculptor he
had the creative power, not only to make men and women and animals
that looked alive, but to cause them to move and to be, to all
appearances, endowed with life. To him the artificers who followed him
owed the invention of the axe, the wedge, the wimble, and the
carpenter's level, and his restless mind was ever busy with new
inventions. To his nephew, Talus, or Perdrix, he taught all that he
himself knew of all the mechanical arts. Soon it seemed that the
nephew, though he might not excel his uncle, equalled Daedalus in his
inventive power. As he walked by the seashore, the lad picked up the
spine of a fish, and, having pondered its possibilities, he took it
home, imitated it in iron, and so invented the saw. A still greater
invention followed this. While those who had always thought that there
could be none greater than Daedalus were still acclaiming the lad,
there came to him the idea of putting two pieces of iron together,
connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpeni