Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax of the stressful day behind you and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I would be reading more Greek stories by James Baldwin, the other James Baldwin.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

The Story of Atalanta

The Bear on the Mountain

In a sunny land in Greece called Arcadia, there lived a king and a queen who had no children.

They wanted very much to have a son who might live to rule over Arcadia when the king was dead.

And so, as the years went by, they prayed to great Jupiter

on the mountaintop that he would send them a son. After a while, a child was born to them,

but it was a little girl. The father was in a great rage with Jupiter and everybody else.

What is a girl good for, he said?

She can never do anything but sing and spin and spend money.

If the child had been a boy, he might have learned to do many things, to ride and to hunt,

and to fight in the wars, and by and by he would have been king of

Arcadia, but this girl can never be a king.

Then he called to one of his men, and bad him take the babe out to a mountain, where there was

nothing but rocks and thick woods, and leave it there to be eaten up by the wild bears that lived in the caves

...