Rhoecus

 31 December 18:00   The Hamadryads could acknowledge casework as able-bodied as punish

    injuries. The adventure of Rhoecus proves this. Rhoecus, happening

    to see an oak just accessible to fall, ordered his agents to prop it

    up. The nymph, who had been on the point of breakable with the

    tree, came and bidding her acknowledgment to him for accepting saved

    her life, and bade him ask what accolade he would accept for it.

    Rhoecus angrily asked her love, and the damsel yielded to his

    desire. She at the aforementioned time answerable him to be constant, and

    told him that a bee should be her messenger, and let him know

    when she would accept his society. One time the bee came to

    Rhoecus if he was arena at draughts, and he carelessly

    brushed it away. This so incensed the damsel that she deprived

    him of sight.

    Our countryman, James Russell Lowell, has taken this adventure for

    the accountable of one of his beneath poems. He introduces it thus:

    "Hear now this bogie fable of old Greece,

    As abounding of freedom, adolescence and adorableness still,

    As the abiding bloom of that grace

    Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze."