s this story of the Golden Age develops – with Eustace’s charming descrip-tions of meals growing on trees, carefree fun, and the bright aura – it in fact reveals the sinister myth of Pandora, here a “playfellow” sent by the gods to the boy Epimetheus, in whose household “a great box” menacingly awaits. Even though in Hawthorne’s version the girl is not responsible for bringing the box to Earth (it had been deposited by Mercury in person much earlier2), it is still hers to release the evils and, as a result, to put an end to this Paradise of Chil-dren, “who before had seemed immortal in their childhood, now grew older, day by day, and came soon to be youths and maidens, and men and women by and by, and then aged people, before they dreamed of such a thing” (104–105).The horror that follows the opening of the box by Pandora is foreshadowed in the moment she lifts the lid – by a change in the weather: there was a heavy thunderclap, “the black cloud had now swept quite over the sun, and seemed to have buried it alive” (102); it was so dark that Pandora could hardly see a thing. But she heard. Hawthorne’s emphasis on the sense of hearing enhances the dreadful atmosphere of the scene: the ears of Pandora were hit by “a dis-agreeable buzzing, as if a great many huge flies or gigantic mosquitoes [...] were darting about” (103). As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw “a crowd of ugly little shapes, with bats’ wings, looking abominably spiteful, and armed with terribly long stings in their tails” (103). They were “the whole family of earthly Troubles”, including evil Passions, Cares, Sorrows, and Diseas-es. And they attacked and strung first Epimetheus and next Pandora. The girl, distressed, opened the windows and the doors to drive them out of their house-hold, and thus they scattered and began tormenting people all over the world.