Excerpt from Historical Tales the Romance of Reality

As might naturally be imagined, this elopement excited indignation not only in the hearts of Mens laus and his brother Agamemnon, but among the Greek chieftains generally, who sympathized with the husband in his grief and shared his anger against Troy. War was declared against that thith less city, and most of the chiefs pledged themselves to take part in it, and to lend their aid until Helen was recovered or restored. Had they known allthat was before them they might have hesitated, since it took ten long years to equip the expedition, for ten years more the war continued, and some of the leaders spent ten years in their return. But in those old days time does not seem to have counted for much, and besides, many of the chieitains had been suitors for the hand of Helen, and were doubt less moved by their old love in pledging themselves to her recovery.

Some of them, however, were anything but eager to take part. Achilles and Ulysses, the two most important in the subsequent war, endeavored to escape this necessity. Achilles was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, who had dipped him when an in ihnt in the river Styx, the waters of which magic stream rendered him invulnerable to any weapon except in one spot - the heel by which his mother had held him. But her love for her son made her anxious to guard him against every danger, and when the chieitains came to seek his aid in the ex pedition, she concealed him, dressed as a girl, among the maidens of the court. But the crafty Ulysses, who accompanied them, soon exposed this trick. Disguised as a pedler, be spread his goods, a shield and a spear among them, before the maidens. Then an alarm of danger being sounded, the girls fled in ed'right, but the disguised youth, with impulsive valor, seized the weapons and prepared to defend himself. His identity was thus revealed.

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