One of these goddesses was named Virtue, and the other Pleasure, but it was the first whom Hercules followed all his life. [2]THE PYGMIES. A great while ago, in the days of the myths, there lived an earth-born Giant named Antaeus, and a race of little earth-born people who were called Pygmies. This Giant and these Pygmies, being children of the same Mother Earth, lived together in a very friendly way far off in the middle of hot Africa. It must have been very curious to behold the Pygmies' little cities with streets two or three feet wide paved with the smallest pebbles and bordered by habitations about as big as a squirrel's cage. If one of the Pygmies grew to the height of six or eight inches he was reckoned a prodigiously tall man and there were so many sandy deserts and high mountains between them and the rest of mankind that nobody could get a peep at them oftener than once in a hundred years. The king's palace was about as tall as a dolls' house and this and the rest of their houses were built neither of stone or wood. They were neatly plastered together by the Pygmy workmen, pretty much like birds' nests, out of straw, feathers, egg shells, and other bits of small stuff with stiff clay instead of mortar. And when the sun had dried them they were just as snug and comfortable as a Pygmy could desire. Their giant friend, Antaeus, was so very tall that he carried a pine tree for a walking stick. It took a far-sighted Pygmy to see the top of his head on a cloudy day. But at noonday, when the sun shone brightly over him, Antaeus presented a very grand spectacle. There he used to stand, a perfect mountain of a man, with his great countenance smiling down on his little brothers and his one eye, which was as big as a cart wheel and placed right in the centre of his forehead, giving a friendly wink to the whole nation at once. In spite of the difference in their size, it seemed as if Antaeus needed the Pygmies for his friend as much as they did him for the protection he was to them. No creature of his own size had ever talked with him. When he stood with his head among the clouds, he was quite alone and had been so for hundreds of years and would be forever. Even if he had met one of the other Giants, Antaeus would have fancied the earth not large enough for them both and would have fought with him. But with the Pygmies he was the most merry and sweet tempered old Giant who ever washed his face in a cloud.