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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Holy Cross and Other Tales, by Eugene
+Field, Illustrated by S. W. Van Schaik
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Holy Cross and Other Tales
+
+
+Author: Eugene Field
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 11, 2007  [eBook #21807]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 21807-h.htm or 21807-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/0/21807/21807-h/21807-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/0/21807/21807-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The Works of Eugene Field
+
+Vol. V
+
+The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field
+
+THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "Presently the whole company was moved by a gentle
+pity."  Drawn by S. W. Van Schaik.]
+
+
+
+
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+New York
+1911
+
+Copyright, 1893, by
+Eugene Field.
+
+Copyright, 1896, by
+Julia Sutherland Field.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATED WITH LOVE
+
+AND GRATITUDE TO
+
+ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+To this volume as it was originally issued have been added five Tales,
+beginning with "The Platonic Bassoon," which are characteristic of the
+various moods, serious, gay, or pathetic, out of which grew the best
+work of the author's later years.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+ALAS, POOR YORICK!
+
+In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene
+Field--the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight
+with him"--one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a
+jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick.  He was
+not only,--so the writer implied,--the maker of jibes and fantastic
+devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical
+conceits; he was the laureate of children--dear for his "Wynken,
+Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover,
+withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight
+a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who collected rare
+books, and brought out his own "Little Books" of "Western Verse" and
+"Profitable Tales" in high-priced limited editions, with broad margins
+of paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which tempts
+bibliomaniacs to break through and steal.
+
+For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very forecast, in
+imaginative literature, of our various Eugene.  Surely Shakespeare
+conceived the "mad rogue" of Elsinore as made up of grave and gay, of
+wit and gentleness, and not as a mere clown or "jig maker."  It is true
+that when Field put on his cap and bells, he too was "wont to set the
+table on a roar," as the feasters at a hundred tables, from "Casey's
+Table d'Hôte" to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise to testify.
+But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick, that mirth was not
+his sole attribute,--that his motley covered the sweetest nature and
+the tenderest heart.  It could be no otherwise with one who loved and
+comprehended childhood and whom the children loved.  And what does
+Hamlet say?--"He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times . . .
+Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft!"  Of what
+is he thinking but of his boyhood, before doubts and contemplation
+wrapped him in the shadow, and when in his young grief or frolic the
+gentle Yorick, with his jest, his "excellent fancy," and his songs and
+gambols, was his comrade?
+
+Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene Field seems to
+be most like the survival, or revival, of the ideal jester of knightly
+times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior bearer
+of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of France, or of English King
+Hal, had come to life again--as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at
+the Court of Arthur; but not out of place,--for he fitted himself as
+aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood
+near Athens.  In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see,
+was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those
+he made his butt--the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the
+swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty
+itself.  And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw
+him.  Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touchstone than Le
+Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one of his brutal mockers?  Was not
+the redoubtable Chicot, with his sword and brains, the true ruler of
+France?  To come to the jesters of history--which is so much less real
+than fiction--what laurels are greener than those of Triboulet, and
+Will Somers, and John Heywood--dramatist and master of the king's merry
+Interludes?  Their shafts were feathered with mirth and song, but
+pointed with wisdom, and well might old John Trussell say "That it
+often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is
+tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be
+delivered in jest."
+
+Yes, Field "caught on" to his time--a complex American, with the
+obstreperous _bizarrerie_ of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of
+our oldest culture always at odds within him--but he was, above all, a
+child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in
+any time or country.  Fortune had given him that unforgettable mummer's
+face,--that clean-cut, mobile visage,--that animated natural mask!  No
+one else had so deep and rich a voice for the rendering of the music
+and pathos of a poet's lines, and no actor ever managed both face and
+voice better than he in delivering his own verses merry or sad.  One
+night, he was seen among the audience at "Uncut Leaves," and was
+instantly requested to do something towards the evening's
+entertainment.  As he was not in evening dress, he refused to take the
+platform, but stood up in the lank length of an ulster, from his corner
+seat, and recited "Dibdin's Ghost" and "Two Opinions" in a manner which
+blighted the chances of the readers that came after him.  It is true
+that no clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness of his practical
+jokes.  Above all, every friend that he had--except the Dean of his
+profession, for whom he did exhibit unbounded and filial reverence--was
+soon or late a victim of his whimsicality, or else justly distrusted
+the measure of Field's regard for him.  Nor was the friendship
+perfected until one bestirred himself to pay Eugene back in kind.  As
+to this, I am only one of scores now speaking from personal experience.
+There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim of his fun,
+even when it outraged common sensibilities, _must_ enjoy it as much as
+he.  Who but Eugene, after being the welcome guest, at a European
+capital, of one of our most ambitious and refined ambassadors, would
+have written a lyric, sounding the praises of a German "onion pie,"
+ending each stanza with
+
+  Ach, Liebe!  Ach, mein Gott!
+
+and would have printed it in America, with his host's initials affixed?
+
+My own matriculation at Eugene's College of Unreason was in this wise.
+In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, the Boston publisher, was complaining that he
+needed some new and promising authors to enlarge his book-list.  The
+New York "Sun" and "Tribune" had been copying Field's rhymes and prose
+extravaganzas--the former often very charming, the latter the broadest
+satire of Chicago life and people.  I suggested to Mr. Ticknor that he
+should ask the poet-humorist to collect, for publication in book-form,
+the choicest of his writings thus far.  To make the story brief, Mr.
+Field did so, and the outcome--at which I was somewhat taken aback--was
+the remarkable book, "Culture's Garland," with its title imitated from
+the sentimental "Annuals" of long ago, and its cover ornamented with
+sausages linked together as a coronal wreath!  The symbol certainly
+fitted the greater part of the contents, which ludicrously scored the
+Chicago "culture" of that time, and made Pullman, Armour, and other
+commercial magnates of the Lakeside City special types in illustration.
+All this had its use, and many of the sufferers long since became the
+_farceur's_ devoted friends.  The Fair showed the country what Chicago
+really was and is.  Certainly there is no other American city where the
+richest class appear so enthusiastic with respect to art and
+literature.  "The practice of virtue makes men virtuous," and even if
+there was some pretence and affectation in the culture of ten years
+ago, it has resulted in as high standards of taste as can elsewhere be
+found.  Moreover, if our own "four hundred" had even affected, or made
+it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes for real culture,
+the intellectual life of this metropolis would not now be so far apart
+from the "social swim."  There were scattered through "Culture's
+Garland" not a few of Field's delicate bits of verse.  In some way he
+found that I had instigated Mr. Ticknor's request, and, although I was
+thinking solely of the publisher's interests, he expressed unstinted
+gratitude.  Soon afterwards I was delighted to receive from him a
+quarto parchment "breviary," containing a dozen ballads, long and
+short, engrossed in his exquisitely fine handwriting, and illuminated
+with colored borders and drawings by the poet himself.  It must have
+required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly I would not
+now exchange it for its weight in diamonds.  This was the way our
+friendship began.  It was soon strengthened by meetings and
+correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
+
+Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture, at the
+invitation of its famous social and literary "Twentieth Century Club."
+This was Eugene's opportunity, and I ought not to have been as
+dumfounded as I was, one day, when our evening papers copied from the
+"Chicago Record" a "very pleasant joke" at the expense of his town and
+myself!  It was headed: "Chicago Excited!  Tremendous Preparations for
+His Reception," and went on to give the order and route of a procession
+that was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort me to my
+quarters--stopping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries on
+the way.  It included the "Twentieth Century Club" in carriages, the
+"Browning Club" in busses, and the "Homer Club" in drays; ten
+millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn
+by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred Chicago poets
+afoot!  I have no doubt that Eugene thought I would enjoy this kind of
+advertisement as heartily as he did.  If so, he lacked the gift of
+putting himself in the other man's place.  But his sardonic face,
+a-grin like a school-boy's, was one with two others which shone upon me
+when I did reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to
+prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to which he bore me
+off in triumph.  I did promise to square accounts with him, in time,
+and this is how I fulfilled my word.  The next year, at a meeting of a
+suburban "Society of Authors," a certain lady-journalist was chaffed as
+to her acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of addressing him as
+"Gene."  At this she took umbrage, saying: "It's true we worked
+together on the same paper for five years, but he was always a perfect
+gentleman.  I _never_ called him 'Gene.'"  This was reported by the
+press, and gave me the refrain for a skit entitled "Katharine and
+Eugenio:"
+
+  Five years she sate a-near him
+    Within that type-strewn loft;
+  She handed him the paste-pot,
+    He passed the scissors oft;
+  They dipped in the same inkstand
+    That crowned their desk between,
+  Yet--he never called her Katie,
+    She never called him "Gene."
+
+  Though close--ah! close--the droplight
+    That classic head revealed,
+  She was to him Miss Katharine,
+    He--naught but Mister Field;
+  Decorum graced his upright brow
+    And thinned his lips serene,
+  And, though he wrote a poem each hour,
+    Why should she call him "Gene?"
+
+  She gazed at his sporadic hair--
+    She knew his hymns by rote;
+  They longed to dine together
+    At Casey's table d'hôte;
+  Alas, that Fortune's "hostages"--
+    But let us draw a screen!
+  He dared not call her Katie;
+    How _could_ she call him "Gene?"
+
+I signed my verses "By one of Gene's Victims"; they appeared in _The
+Tribune_, and soon were copied by papers in every part of the country.
+Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by the funny men of
+the southern and western press, and it was months before 'Gene' saw the
+last of them.  The word "Eugenio," which was the name by which I always
+addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no doubt as to the
+initiator of the series, and so our "Merry War" ended, I think, with a
+fair quittance to either side.
+
+Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's premature death, it is a
+solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last interchange of
+written words.  Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, but
+recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me a sweetly serious
+letter--with here and there a sparkle in it--but in a tone sobered by
+illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship with his
+friends.  At the same time he sent me the first editions, long ago
+picked up, of all my earlier books, and begged me to write on their
+fly-leaves.  This I did; with pains to gratify him as much as possible,
+and in one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain:
+
+  TO EUGENE FIELD
+
+  Death thought to claim you in this year of years,
+    But Fancy cried--and raised her shield between--
+  "Still let men weep, and smile amid their tears;
+    Take any two beside, but spare Eugene!"
+
+In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such there was, might
+well be pardoned, and it touched Eugene so manifestly that--now that
+the eddy indeed has swept him away, and the Sabine Farm mourns for its
+new-world Horace--I cannot be too thankful that such was my last
+message to him.
+
+Eugene Field was so mixed a compound that it will always be impossible
+quite to decide whether he was wont to judge critically of either his
+own conduct or his literary creations.  As to the latter, he put the
+worst and the best side by side, and apparently cared alike for both.
+That he did much beneath his standard, fine and true at times,--is
+unquestionable, and many a set of verses went the rounds that harmed
+his reputation.  On the whole, I think this was due to the fact that he
+got his stated income as a newspaper poet and jester, and had to
+furnish his score of "Sharps and Flats" with more or less regularity.
+For all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact of the rarer
+elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him a unique place among
+America's most original characters, scholarly wits, and poets of
+brightest fancy.  Yorick is no more!  But his genius will need no
+chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance.  When all is
+sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than to decline.
+
+EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
+
+
+[Originally contributed to the "Souvenir Book" of the N.Y. Hebrew Fair,
+December, 1895.]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THE HOLY CROSS
+
+THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH
+
+THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE
+
+FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND
+
+THE TOUCH IN THE HEART
+
+DANIEL AND THE DEVIL
+
+METHUSELAH
+
+FÉLICE AND PETIT-POULAIN
+
+THE RIVER
+
+FRANZ ABT
+
+MISTRESS MERCILESS
+
+THE PLATONIC BASSOON
+
+HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES
+
+LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM
+
+JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS
+
+THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLY CROSS
+
+
+Whilst the noble Don Esclevador and his little band of venturesome
+followers explored the neighboring fastnesses in quest for gold, the
+Father Miguel tarried at the shrine which in sweet piety they had hewn
+out of the stubborn rock in that strangely desolate spot.  Here, upon
+that serene August morning, the holy Father held communion with the
+saints, beseeching them, in all humility, to intercede with our beloved
+Mother for the safe guidance of the fugitive Cortes to his native
+shores, and for the divine protection of the little host, which,
+separated from the Spanish army, had wandered leagues to the northward,
+and had sought refuge in the noble mountains of an unknown land.  The
+Father's devotions were, upon a sudden, interrupted by the approach of
+an aged man who toiled along the mountain-side path,--a man so aged and
+so bowed and so feeble that he seemed to have been brought down into
+that place, by means of some necromantic art, out of distant centuries.
+His face was yellow and wrinkled like ancient parchment, and a beard
+whiter than Samite streamed upon his breast, whilst about his withered
+body and shrunken legs hung faded raiment which the elements had
+corroded and the thorns had grievously rent.  And as he toiled along,
+the aged man continually groaned, and continually wrung his palsied
+hands, as if a sorrow, no lighter than his years, afflicted him.
+
+"In whose name comest thou?" demanded the Father Miguel, advancing a
+space toward the stranger, but not in threatening wise; whereat the
+aged man stopped in his course and lifted his eyebrows, and regarded
+the Father a goodly time, but he spake no word.
+
+"In whose name comest thou?" repeated the priestly man.  "Upon these
+mountains have we lifted up the cross of our blessed Lord in the name
+of our sovereign liege, and here have we set down a tabernacle to the
+glory of the Virgin and of her ever-blessed son, our Redeemer and
+thine,--whoso thou mayest be!"
+
+"Who is thy king I know not," quoth the aged man, feebly; "but the
+shrine in yonder wall of rock I know; and by that symbol which I see
+therein, and by thy faith for which it stands, I conjure thee, as thou
+lovest both, give me somewhat to eat and to drink, that betimes I may
+go upon my way again, for the journey before me is a long one."
+
+These words spake the old man in tones of such exceeding sadness that
+the Father Miguel, touched by compassion, hastened to meet the
+wayfarer, and, with his arms about him, and with whisperings of sweet
+comfort, to conduct him to a resting-place.  Coarse food in goodly
+plenty was at hand; and it happily fortuned, too, that there was a
+homely wine, made by Pietro del y Saguache himself, of the wild grapes
+in which a neighboring valley abounded.  Of these things anon the old
+man partook, greedily but silently, and all that while he rolled his
+eyes upon the shrine; and then at last, struggling to his feet, he made
+as if to go upon his way.
+
+"Nay," interposed the Father Miguel, kindly; "abide with us a season.
+Thou art an old man and sorely spent.  Such as we have thou shalt have,
+and if thy soul be distressed, we shall pour upon it the healing balm
+of our blessed faith."
+
+"Little knowest thou whereof thou speakest," quoth the old man, sadly.
+"There is no balm can avail me.  I prithee let me go hence, ere,
+knowing what manner of man I am, thou hatest me and doest evil unto
+me."  But as he said these words he fell back again even then into the
+seat where he had sat, and, as through fatigue, his hoary head dropped
+upon his bosom.
+
+"Thou art ill!" cried the Father Miguel, hastening to his side.  "Thou
+shalt go no farther this day!  Give me thy staff,"--and he plucked it
+from him.
+
+Then said the old man: "As I am now, so have I been these many hundred
+years.  Thou hast heard tell of me,--canst thou not guess my name;
+canst thou not read my sorrow in my face and in my bosom?  As thou art
+good and holy through thy faith in that symbol in yonder shrine,
+hearken to me, for I will tell thee of the wretch whom thou hast
+succored.  Then, if it be thy will, give me thy curse and send me on my
+way."
+
+Much marvelled the Father Miguel at these words, and he deemed the old
+man to be mad; but he made no answer.  And presently the old man,
+bowing his head upon his hands, had to say in this wise:--
+
+"Upon a time," he quoth, "I abided in the city of the Great
+King,--there was I born and there I abided.  I was of good stature, and
+I asked favor of none.  I was an artisan, and many came to my shop, and
+my cunning was sought of many,--for I was exceeding crafty in my trade;
+and so, therefore, speedily my pride begot an insolence that had
+respect to none at all.  And once I heard a tumult in the street, as of
+the cries of men and boys commingled, and the clashing of arms and
+staves.  Seeking to know the cause thereof, I saw that one was being
+driven to execution,--one that had said he was the Son of God and the
+King of the Jews, for which blasphemy and crime against our people he
+was to die upon the cross.  Overcome by the weight of this cross, which
+he bore upon his shoulders, the victim tottered in the street and
+swayed this way and that, as though each moment he were like to fall,
+and he groaned in sore agony.  Meanwhile about him pressed a multitude
+that with vast clamor railed at him and scoffed him and smote him, to
+whom he paid no heed; but in his agony his eyes were alway uplifted to
+heaven, and his lips moved in prayer for them that so shamefully
+entreated him.  And as he went his way to Calvary, it fortuned that he
+fell and lay beneath the cross right at my very door, whereupon,
+turning his eyes upon me as I stood over against him, he begged me that
+for a little moment I should bear up the weight of the cross whilst
+that he wiped the sweat from off his brow.  But I was filled with
+hatred, and I spurned him with my foot, and I said to him: 'Move on,
+thou wretched criminal, move on.  Pollute not my doorway with thy
+touch,--move on to death, I command thee!'  This was the answer I gave
+to him, but no succor at all.  Then he spake to me once again, and he
+said: 'Thou, too, shalt move on, O Jew!  Thou shalt move on forever,
+but not to death!'  And with these words he bore up the cross again and
+went upon his way to Calvary.
+
+"Then of a sudden," quoth the old man, "a horror filled my breast, and
+a resistless terror possessed me.  So was I accursed forevermore.  A
+voice kept saying always to me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on forever!'
+From home, from kin, from country, from all I knew and loved I fled;
+nowhere could I tarry,--the nameless horror burned in my bosom, and I
+heard continually a voice crying unto me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forever!'  So, with the years, the centuries, the ages, I have fled
+before that cry and in that nameless horror; empires have risen and
+crumbled, races have been born and are extinct, mountains have been
+cast up and time hath levelled them,--still I do live and still I
+wander hither and thither upon the face of the earth, and am an
+accursed thing.  The gift of tongues is mine,--all men I know, yet
+mankind knows me not.  Death meets me face to face, and passes me by;
+the sea devours all other prey, but will not hide me in its depths;
+wild beasts flee from me, and pestilences turn their consuming breaths
+elsewhere.  On and on and on I go,--not to a home, nor to my people,
+nor to my grave, but evermore into the tortures of an eternity of
+sorrow.  And evermore I feel the nameless horror burn within, whilst
+evermore I see the pleading eyes of him that bore the cross, and
+evermore I hear his voice crying: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forevermore!'"
+
+"Thou art the Wandering Jew!" cried the Father Miguel.
+
+"I am he," saith the aged man.  "I marvel not that thou dost revolt
+against me, for thou standest in the shadow of that same cross which I
+have spurned, and thou art illumined with the love of him that went his
+way to Calvary.  But I beseech thee bear with me until I have told thee
+all,--then drive me hence if thou art so minded."
+
+"Speak on," quoth the Father Miguel.
+
+Then said the Jew: "How came I here I scarcely know; the seasons are
+one to me, and one day but as another; for the span of my life, O
+priestly man! is eternity.  This much know you: from a far country I
+embarked upon a ship,--I knew not whence 't was bound, nor cared I.  I
+obeyed the voice that bade me go.  Anon a mighty tempest fell upon the
+ship and overwhelmed it.  The cruel sea brought peace to all but me; a
+many days it tossed and buffeted me, then with a cry of exultation cast
+me at last upon a shore I had not seen before, a coast far, far
+westward whereon abides no human thing.  But in that solitude still
+heard I from within the awful mandate that sent me journeying onward,
+'Move on, O Jew! move on;' and into vast forests I plunged, and mighty
+plains I traversed; onward, onward, onward I went, with the nameless
+horror in my bosom, and--that cry, that awful cry!  The rains beat upon
+me; the sun wrought pitilessly with me; the thickets tore my flesh; and
+the inhospitable shores bruised my weary feet,--yet onward I went,
+plucking what food I might from thorny bushes to stay my hunger, and
+allaying my feverish thirst at pools where reptiles crawled.  Sometimes
+a monster beast stood in my pathway and threatened to devour me; then
+would I spread my two arms thus, and welcome death, crying: 'Rend thou
+this Jew in twain, O beast! strike thy kindly fangs deep into this
+heart,--be not afeard, for I shall make no battle with thee, nor any
+outcry whatsoever!'  But, lo, the beast would cower before me and skulk
+away.  So there is no death for me; the judgment spoken is irrevocable;
+my sin is unpardonable, and the voice will not be hushed!"
+
+Thus and so much spake the Jew, bowing his hoary head upon his hands.
+Then was the Father Miguel vastly troubled; yet he recoiled not from
+the Jew,--nay, he took the old man by the hand and sought to soothe him.
+
+"Thy sin was most heinous, O Jew!" quoth the Father; "but it falleth in
+our blessed faith to know that whoso repenteth of his sin, what it
+soever may be, the same shall surely be forgiven.  Thy punishment hath
+already been severe, and God is merciful, for even as we are all his
+children, even so his tenderness to us is like unto the tenderness of a
+father unto his child--yea, and infinitely tenderer and sweeter, for
+who can estimate the love of our heavenly Father?  Thou didst deny thy
+succor to the Nazarene when he besought it, yet so great compassion
+hath he that if thou but callest upon him he will forget thy
+wrong,--leastwise will pardon it.  Therefore be thou persuaded by me,
+and tarry here this night, that in the presence of yonder symbol and
+the holy relics our prayers may go up with thine unto our blessed
+Mother and to the saints who haply shall intercede for thee in
+Paradise.  Rest here, O sufferer,--rest thou here, and we shall
+presently give thee great comfort."  The Jew, well-nigh fainting with
+fatigue, being persuaded by the holy Father's gentle words, gave
+finally his consent unto this thing, and went anon unto the cave beyond
+the shrine, and entered thereinto, and lay upon a bed of skins and
+furs, and made as if to sleep.  And when he slept his sleep was
+seemingly disturbed by visions, and he tossed as doth an one that sees
+full evil things, and in that sleep he muttered somewhat of a voice he
+seemed to hear, though round about there was no sound whatsoever, save
+only the soft music of the pine-trees on the mountain-side.  Meanwhile
+in the shrine, hewn out of those rocks, did the Father Miguel bow
+before the sacred symbol of his faith and plead for mercy for that same
+Jew that slumbered anear.  And when, as the deepening blue mantle of
+night fell upon the hilltops and obscured the valleys round about, Don
+Esclevador and his sturdy men came clamoring along the mountain-side,
+the holy Father met them a way off and bade them have regard to the
+aged man that slept in yonder cave.  But when he told them of that Jew
+and of his misery and of the secret causes thereof, out spake the noble
+Don Esclevador, full hotly,--
+
+"By our sweet Christ," he cried, "shall we not offend our blessed faith
+and do most impiously in the Virgin's sight if we give this harbor and
+this succor unto so vile a sinner as this Jew that hath denied our dear
+Lord!"
+
+Which words had like to wrought great evil with the Jew, for instantly
+the other men sprang forward as if to awaken the Jew and drive him
+forth into the night.  But the Father Miguel stretched forth his hands
+and commanded them to do no evil unto the Jew, and so persuasively did
+he set forth the godliness and the sweetness of compassion that
+presently the whole company was moved with a gentle pity toward that
+Jew.  Therefore it befell anon, when night came down from the skies and
+after they had feasted upon their homely food as was their wont, that
+they talked of the Jew, and thinking of their own hardships and
+misfortunes (whereof it is not now to speak), they had all the more
+compassion to that Jew, which spake them passing fair, I ween.
+
+Now all this while lay the Jew upon the bed of skins and furs within
+the cave, and though he slept (for he was exceeding weary), he tossed
+continually from side to side, and spoke things in his sleep, as if his
+heart were sorely troubled, and as if in his dreams he beheld grievous
+things.  And seeing the old man, and hearing his broken speech, the
+others moved softly hither and thither and made no noise soever lest
+they should awaken him.  And many an one--yes, all that valiant company
+bowed down that night before the symbol in the shrine, and with sweet
+reverence called upon our blessed Virgin to plead in the cause of that
+wretched Jew.  Then sleep came to all, and in dreams the noble Don
+Esclevador saw his sovereign liege, and kneeled before his throne, and
+heard his sovereign liege's gracious voice; in dreams the heartweary
+soldier sailed the blue waters of the Spanish main, and pressed his
+native shore, and beheld once again the lovelight in the dark eyes of
+her that awaited him; in dreams the mountain-pines were kissed of the
+singing winds, and murmured drowsily and tossed their arms as do little
+children that dream of their play; in dreams the Jew swayed hither and
+thither, scourged by that nameless horror in his bosom, and seeing the
+pleading eyes of our dying Master, and hearing that awful mandate:
+"Move on, O Jew! move on forever!"  So each slept and dreamed his
+dreams,--all slept but the Father Miguel, who alone throughout the
+night kneeled in the shrine and called unto the saints and unto our
+Mother Mary in prayer.  And his supplication was for that Jew; and the
+mists fell upon that place and compassed it about, and it was as if the
+heavens had reached down their lips to kiss the holy shrine.  And
+suddenly there came unto the Jew a quiet as of death, so that he tossed
+no more in his sleep and spake no word, but lay exceeding still,
+smiling in his sleep as one who sees his home in dreams, or his mother,
+or some other such beloved thing.
+
+It came to pass that early in the morning the Jew came from the cavern
+to go upon his way, and the Father Miguel besought him to take with him
+a goodly loaf in his wallet as wise provision against hunger.  But the
+Jew denied this, and then he said: "Last night while I slept methought
+I stood once more in the city of the Great King,--ay, in that very
+doorway where I stood, swart and lusty, when I spurned him that went
+his way to Calvary.  In my bosom burned the terror as of old, and my
+soul was consumed of a mighty anguish.  None of those that passed in
+that street knew me; centuries had ground to dust all my kin.  'O God!'
+I cried in agony, 'suffer my sin to be forgotten,--suffer me to sleep,
+to sleep forever beneath the burden of the cross I sometime spurned!'
+As I spake these words there stood before me one in shining raiment,
+and lo! 't was he who bore the cross to Calvary!  His eyes that had
+pleaded to me on a time now fell compassionately upon me, and the voice
+that had commanded me move on forever, now broke full sweetly on my
+ears: 'Thou shalt go on no more, O Jew, but as thou hast asked, so
+shall it be, and thou shalt sleep forever beneath the cross.'  Then
+fell I into a deep slumber, and, therefrom but just now awaking, I feel
+within me what peace bespeaketh pardon for my sin.  This day am I
+ransomed; so suffer me to go my way, O holy man."
+
+So went the Jew upon his way, not groaningly and in toilsome wise, as
+was his wont, but eagerly, as goeth one to meet his bride, or unto some
+sweet reward.  And the Father Miguel stood long, looking after him and
+being sorely troubled in mind; for he knew not what interpretation he
+should make of all these things.  And anon the Jew was lost to sight in
+the forest.
+
+But once, a little space thereafter, while that José Conejos, the
+Castilian, clambered up the yonder mountain-side, he saw amid the
+grasses there the dead and withered body of an aged man, and thereupon
+forthwith made he such clamor that Don Esclevador hastened thither and
+saw it was the Jew; and since there was no sign that wild beasts had
+wrought evil with him, it was declared that the Jew had died of age and
+fatigue and sorrow, albeit on the wrinkled face there was a smile of
+peace that none had seen thereon while yet the Jew lived.  And it was
+accounted to be a most wondrous thing that, whereas never before had
+flowers of that kind been seen in those mountains, there now bloomed
+all round about flowers of the dye of blood, which thing the noble Don
+Esclevador took full wisely to be a symbol of our dear Lord's most
+precious blood, whereby not only you and I but even the Jew shall be
+redeemed to Paradise.
+
+Within the spot where they had found the Jew they buried him, and there
+he sleeps unto this very day.  Above the grave the Father Miguel said a
+prayer; and the ground of that mountain they adjudged to be holy
+ground; but over the grave wherein lay the Jew they set up neither
+cross nor symbol of any kind, fearing to offend their holy faith.
+
+But that very night, when that they were returned unto their camp half
+a league distant, there arose a mighty tempest, and there was such an
+upheaval and rending of the earth as only God's hand could make; and
+there was a crashing and a groaning as if the world were smitten in
+twain, and the winds fled through the valleys in dismay, and the trees
+of the forest shrieked in terror and fell upon their faces.  Then in
+the morning when the tempest ceased and all the sky was calm and
+radiant they saw that an impassable chasm lay between them and that
+mountain-side wherein the Jew slept the sleep of death; that God had
+traced with his finger a mighty gulf about that holy ground which held
+the bones of the transgressor.  Between heaven and earth hung that
+lonely grave, nor could any foot scale the precipice that guarded it;
+but one might see that the spot was beautiful with kindly mountain
+verdure and that flowers of blood-red dye bloomed in that lonely place.
+
+This was the happening in a summer-time a many years ago; to the mellow
+grace of that summer succeeded the purple glory of the autumn, and then
+came on apace the hoary dignity of winter.  But the earth hath its
+resurrection too, and anon came the beauteous spring-time with warmth
+and scents and new life.  The brooks leapt forth once more from their
+hiding-places, the verdure awaked, and the trees put forth their
+foliage.  Then from the awful mountain peaks the snow silently and
+slowly slipped to the valleys, and in divers natural channels went
+onward and ever downward to the southern sea, and now at last 't was
+summer-time again and the mellow grace of August brooded over the
+earth.  But in that yonder mountain-side had fallen a symbol never to
+be removed,--ay, upon that holy ground where slept the Jew was
+stretched a cross, a mighty cross of snow on which the sun never fell
+and which no breath of wind ever disturbed.  Elsewhere was the tender
+warmth of verdure and the sacred passion of the blood-red flowers, but
+over that lonely grave was stretched the symbol of him that went his
+way to Calvary, and in that grave slept the Jew.
+
+Mightily marvelled Don Esclevador and his warrior host at this thing;
+but the Father Miguel knew its meaning; for he was minded of that
+vision wherein it was foretold unto the Jew that, pardoned for his sin,
+he should sleep forever under the burden of the cross he spurned.  All
+this the Father Miguel showed unto Don Esclevador and the others, and
+he said: "I deem that unto all ages this holy symbol shall bear witness
+of our dear Christ's mercy and compassion.  Though we, O exiled
+brothers, sleep in this foreign land in graves which none shall know,
+upon that mountain height beyond shall stretch the eternal witness to
+our faith and to our Redeemer's love, minding all that look thereon,
+not of the pains and the punishments of the Jew, but of the exceeding
+mercy of our blessed Lord, and of the certain eternal peace that cometh
+through his love!"
+
+How long ago these things whereof I speak befell, I shall not say.
+They never saw--that Spanish host--they never saw their native land,
+their sovereign liege, their loved ones' faces again; they sleep, and
+they are dust among those mighty mountains in the West.  Where is the
+grave of the Father Miguel, or of Don Esclevador, or of any of the
+valiant Spanish exiles, it is not to tell; God only knoweth, and the
+saints: all sleep in the faith, and their reward is certain.  But where
+sleepeth the Jew all may see and know; for on that awful mountain-side,
+in a spot inaccessible to man, lieth the holy cross of snow.  The winds
+pass lightly over that solemn tomb, and never a sunbeam lingereth
+there.  White and majestic it lies where God's hands have placed it,
+and its mighty arms stretch forth as in a benediction upon the fleeting
+dust beneath.
+
+So shall it bide forever upon that mountain-side, and the memory of the
+Jew and of all else human shall fade away and be forgotten in the
+surpassing glory of the love and the compassion of him that bore the
+redeeming burden to Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH
+
+There was none other in the quiet valley so happy as the
+rose-tree,--none other so happy unless perchance it was the thrush who
+made his home in the linden yonder.  The thrush loved the rose-tree's
+daughter, and he was happy in thinking that some day she would be his
+bride.  Now the rose-tree had many daughters, and each was beautiful;
+but the rose whom the thrush loved was more beautiful than her sisters,
+and all the wooers came wooing her until at last the fair creature's
+head was turned, and the rose grew capricious and disdainful.  Among
+her many lovers were the south wind and the fairy Dewlove and the
+little elf-prince Beambright and the hoptoad, whom all the rest called
+Mr. Roughbrown.  The hoptoad lived in the stone-wall several yards
+away; but every morning and evening he made a journey to the rose-tree,
+and there he would sit for hours gazing with tender longings at the
+beautiful rose, and murmuring impassioned avowals.  The rose's disdain
+did not chill the hoptoad's ardor.  "See what I have brought you, fair
+rose," he would say.  "A beautiful brown beetle with golden wings and
+green eyes!  Surely there is not in all the world a more delicious
+morsel than a brown beetle!  Or, if you but say the word, I will fetch
+you a tender little fly, or a young gnat,--see, I am willing to undergo
+all toils and dangers for your own sweet sake."
+
+Poor Mr. Roughbrown!  His wooing was very hopeless.  And all the time
+he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her
+home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as
+ever you saw, and her eyes were full of envy.
+
+"If Mr. Roughbrown had any sense," she said to herself, "he would waste
+no time on that vain and frivolous rose.  He is far too good a catch
+for _her_."
+
+The south wind was forever sighing and sobbing about.  He lives, you
+know, very many miles from here.  His home is beyond a great sea; in
+the midst of a vast desert there is an oasis, and it is among the
+palm-trees and the flowers of this oasis that the south wind abides.
+When spring calls from the North, "O south wind, where are you?  Come
+hither, my sunny friend!" the south wind leaps from his couch in the
+far-off oasis, and hastens whither the spring-time calls.  As he speeds
+across the sea the mermaids seek to tangle him in their tresses, and
+the waves try to twine their white arms about him; but he shakes them
+off and laughingly flies upon his way.  Wheresoever he goes he is
+beloved.  With their soft, solemn music the pine-trees seek to detain
+him; the flowers of earth lift up their voices and cry, "Abide with us,
+dear spirit,"--but to all he answers: "The spring-time calls me in the
+North, and I must hasten whither she calls."  But when the south wind
+came to the rose-tree he would go no farther; he loved the rose, and he
+lingered about her with singing and sighing and protestations.
+
+It was not until late in the evening that Dewlove and the elf-prince
+appeared.  Just as the moon rolled up in the horizon and poured a broad
+streak of silver through the lake the three crickets went "Chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," and then out danced Dewlove and Beambright
+from their hiding-places.  The cunning little fairy lived under the
+moss at the foot of the oak-tree; he was no bigger than a cambric
+needle,--but he had two eyes, and in this respect he had quite the
+advantage of the needle.  As for the elf-prince, his home was in the
+tiny, dark subterranean passage which the mole used to live in; he was
+plump as a cupid, and his hair was long and curly, although if you
+force me to it I must tell you that the elf-prince was really no larger
+than your little finger,--so you will see that so far as physical
+proportions were concerned Dewlove and Beambright were pretty well
+matched.  Merry, merry fellows they were, and I should certainly fail
+most lamentably did I attempt to tell you how prettily they danced upon
+the greensward of the meadowlands throughout the summer nights.
+Sometimes the other fairies and elves joined them,--delicate little
+lady fairies with gossamer wings, and chubby little lady elves clad in
+filmy spider webs,--and they danced and danced and danced, while the
+three crickets went "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," all night
+long.  Now it was very strange--was it not?--that instead of loving one
+of these delicate little lady fairies, or one of these chubby little
+lady elves, both Dewlove and Beambright loved the rose.  Yet, she was
+indeed very beautiful.
+
+The thrush did not pester the rose with his protestations of love.  He
+was not a particularly proud fellow, but he thought too much of the
+rose to vex her with his pleadings.  But all day long he would perch in
+the thicket and sing his songs as only a thrush can sing to the
+beautiful rose he loves.  He sung, we will say, of the forests he had
+explored, of the famous river he had once seen, of the dew which the
+rose loved, of the storm-king that slew the old pine and made his cones
+into a crown,--he sung of a thousand things which we might not
+understand, but which pleased the rose because she understood them.
+And one day the thrush swooped down from the linden upon a monstrous
+devil's darning-needle that came spinning along and poised himself to
+stab the beautiful rose.  Yes, like lightning the thrush swooped down
+on this murderous monster, and he bit him in two, and I am glad of it,
+and so are you if your heart be not wholly callous.
+
+"How comes it," said the rose-tree to the thrush that day,--"how comes
+it that you do not woo my daughter?  You have shown that you love her;
+why not speak to her?"
+
+"No, I will wait," answered the thrush.  "She has many wooers, and each
+wooes her in his own way.  Let me show her by my devotion that I am
+worthy of her, and then perchance she will listen kindly to me when I
+speak to her."
+
+The rose-tree thought very strange of this; in all her experience of
+bringing out her fair daughters into society she had never before had
+to deal with so curious a lover as the thrush.  She made up her mind to
+speak for him.
+
+"My daughter," said she to the rose, "the thrush loves you; of all your
+wooers he is the most constant and the most amiable.  I pray that you
+will hear kindly to his suit."
+
+The rose laughed carelessly,--yes, merrily,--as if she heeded not the
+heartache which her indifference might cause the honest thrush.
+
+"Mother," said the rose, "these suitors are pestering me beyond all
+endurance.  How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is
+forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy
+wheezing?  And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,--why, it is a
+husband I want, not a father!"
+
+"Prince Beambright pleases you, then?" asked the rose-tree.
+
+"He is a merry, capering fellow," said the daughter, "and so is his
+friend Dewlove; but I do not fancy either.  And as for the thrush who
+sends you to speak for him,--why, he is quite out of the question, I
+assure you.  The truth is, mother, that I am to fill a higher station
+than that of bride to any of these simple rustic folk.  Am I not more
+beautiful than any of my companions, and have I not ambitions above all
+others of my kind?"
+
+"Whom have you seen that you talk so vain-gloriously?" cried the
+rose-tree in alarm.  "What flattery has instilled into you this fatal
+poison?"
+
+"Have you not seen the poet who comes this way every morning?" asked
+the rose.  "His face is noble, and he sings grandly to the pictures
+Nature spreads before his eyes.  I should be his bride.  Some day he
+will see me; he will bear me away upon his bosom; he will indite to me
+a poem that shall live forever!"
+
+These words the thrush heard, and his heart sank within him.  If his
+songs that day were not so blithe as usual it was because of the words
+that the rose had spoken.  Yet the thrush sang on, and his song was
+full of his honest love.
+
+It was the next morning that the poet came that way.  He lived in the
+city, but each day he stole away from the noise and crowd of the city
+to commune with himself and with Nature in the quiet valley where
+bloomed the rose-tree, where the thrush sung, and where dwelt the fays
+and the elves of whom it has been spoken.  The sun shone fiercely;
+withal the quiet valley was cool, and the poet bared his brow to the
+breeze that swept down the quiet valley from the lake over yonder.
+
+"The south wind loves the rose!  Aha, aha, foolish brother to love the
+rose!"
+
+This was what the breeze said, and the poet heard it.  Then his eyes
+fell upon the rose-tree and upon her blooming daughters.
+
+"The hoptoad loves the rose!  Foolish old Roughbrown to love the rose,
+aha, aha!"
+
+There was a malicious squeakiness in this utterance,--of course it came
+from that envious Miss Dormouse, who was forever peeping out of her
+habitation in the hedge.
+
+"What a beautiful rose!" cried the poet, and leaping over the old
+stone-wall he plucked the rose from the mother-tree,--yes, the poet
+bore away this very rose who had hoped to be the poet's bride.
+
+Then the rose-tree wept bitterly, and so did her other daughters; the
+south wind wailed, and the old hoptoad gave three croaks so dolorous
+that if you had heard them you would have said that his heart was truly
+broken.  All were sad,--all but the envious dormouse, who chuckled
+maliciously, and said it was no more than they deserved.
+
+The thrush saw the poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the
+fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader?
+What could he do but twitter in anguish?  So there are tragedies and
+heartaches in lives that are not human.
+
+As the poet returned to the city he wore the rose upon his breast.  The
+rose was happy, for the poet spoke to her now and then, and praised her
+loveliness, and she saw that her beauty had given him an inspiration.
+
+"The rose despised my brother!  Aha, aha, foolish rose,--but she shall
+wither!"
+
+It was the breeze that spake; far away from the lake in the quiet
+valley its voice was very low, but the rose heard and trembled.
+
+"It's a lie," cried the rose.  "I shall not die.  The poet loves me,
+and I shall live forever upon his bosom."
+
+Yet a singular faintness--a faintness never felt before--came upon the
+rose; she bent her head and sighed.  The heat--that was all--was very
+oppressive, and here at the entrance to the city the tumult aroused an
+aggravating dust.  The poet seemed suddenly to forget the rose.  A
+carriage was approaching, and from the carriage leaned a lady, who
+beckoned to the poet.  The lady was very fair, and the poet hastened to
+answer her call.  And as he hastened the rose fell from his bosom into
+the hot highway, and the poet paid no heed.  Ascending into the
+carriage with the lady (I am sure she must have been a princess!) the
+poet was whirled away, and there in the stifling dust lay the fainting
+rose, all stained and dying.
+
+The sparrows flew down and pecked at her inquisitively; the cruel
+wagons crushed her beneath their iron wheels; careless feet buffeted
+her hither and thither.  She was no longer a beautiful rose; no, nor
+even a reminiscence of one,--simply a colorless, scentless, ill-shapen
+mass.
+
+But all at once she heard a familiar voice, and then she saw familiar
+eyes.  The voice was tender and the eyes were kindly.
+
+"O honest thrush," cried the rose, "is it you who have come to reproach
+me for my folly?"
+
+"No, no, dear rose," said the thrush, "how should I speak ill to you?
+Come, rest your poor head upon my breast, and let me bear you home."
+
+"Let me rather die here," sighed the rose, "for it was here that my
+folly brought me.  How could I go back with you whom I never so much as
+smiled upon?  And do they not hate and deride me in the valley?  I
+would rather die here in misery than there in shame!"
+
+"Poor, broken flower, they love you," urged the thrush.  "They grieve
+for you; let me bear you back where the mother-tree will shade you, and
+where the south wind will nurse you--for--for he loves you."
+
+So the thrush bore back the withering rose to her home in the quiet
+valley.
+
+"So she has come back, has she?" sneered the dormouse.  "Well, she has
+impudence, if nothing else!"
+
+"She was pretty once," said the old hoptoad; "but she lost her
+opportunity when I made up my mind to go wooing a certain glossy damsel
+in the hedge."
+
+The rose-tree reached out her motherly arms to welcome her dying
+daughter, and she said: "Rest here, dear one, and let me rock you to
+repose."
+
+It was evening in the quiet valley now.  Where was the south wind that
+he came not with his wooing?  He had flown to the North, for that day
+he had heard the spring-time's voice a-calling, and he went in answer
+to its summons.  Everything was still.  "Chirp-chirp,  chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp," piped the three crickets, and forthwith the fairy boy and
+the elf-prince danced from their habitations.  Their little feet
+tinkled over the clover and the daisies.
+
+"Hush, little folk," cried the rose-tree.  "Do not dance to-night,--the
+rose is dying."
+
+But they danced on.  The rose did not hear them; she heard only the
+voice of the thrush, who perched in the linden yonder, and, with a
+breaking heart, sung to the dying flower.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE[1]
+
+It is to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib; comely was
+he to look upon, and a braver than he lived not in these islands, nor
+one more beloved of all people.  But it chanced upon a time, while he
+was still in early manhood, that a grievous sorrow befell him; for on a
+day his mother Eleanor came to her end in this full evil wise.  It was
+her intent to go unto the neighboring island, where grazed the goats
+and the kine, and it fortuned that, as she made her way thither in the
+boat, she heard sweet music, as if one played upon a harp in the
+waters, and, looking over the side of the boat, she beheld down in the
+waters a sea-maiden making those exceeding pleasant sounds.  And the
+sea-maiden ceased to play, and smiled up at Eleanor, and stretched up
+her hands and besought Eleanor to pluck her from the sea into the boat,
+which seeking to do, Eleanor fell headlong into the waters, and was
+never thereafter seen either alive or dead by any of her kin.  Now
+under this passing heavy grief Egbert, the son of Ib, being old and
+spent by toil, brake down, and on a night died, making with his latest
+breath most heavy lamentation for Eleanor, his wife; so died he, and
+his soul sped, as they tell, to that far northern land where the souls
+of the departed make merry all the night, which merriment sendeth forth
+so vast and so beautiful a light that all the heavens are illumined
+thereby.  But Harold, the son of Egbert and of Eleanor, was left alone,
+having neither brother, nor sister, nor any of kin, save an uncle
+abiding many leagues distant in Jutland.  Thereupon befell a wonderful
+thing; if it had not happened it would not be told.  It chanced that,
+on a certain evening in the summer-time, Harold walked alone where a
+Druid circle lay coiled like a dark serpent on a hillside; his heart
+was filled with dolor, for he thought continually of Eleanor, his
+mother, and he wept softly to himself through love of that dear mother.
+While thus he walked in vast heaviness of soul, he was beheld of
+Membril, the fairy that with her goodly subjects dwelt in the ruin of
+the Pict's house hard by the Druid circle.  And Membril had compassion
+upon Harold, and upon the exceeding fine down of a tiny sea-bird she
+rode out to meet him, and it was before his eyes as if a star shined
+out of a mist in his pathway.  So it was that Membril the fairy made
+herself known to him, and having so done, she said and she sung:
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,
+  That would charm thy grief away!
+  Thou art like the little bark
+  Drifting in the cold and dark,--
+  Drifting through the tempest's roar
+  To a rocky, icy shore;
+  All the torment dost thou feel
+  Of the spent and fearful seal
+  Wounded by the hunter's steel.
+  I am Membril,--hark to me:
+  Better times await on thee!
+  Wouldst thou clasp thy mother dear,--
+  Strange things see and stranger hear?
+  Straight betake thee to thy boat
+  And to yonder haven float,--
+  Go thy way, and silent be,--
+  It is Membril counsels thee;
+  Go thy way, and thou shalt see!
+
+
+Great marvel had Harold to this thing; nevertheless he did the bidding
+of Membril the fairy, and it was full wisely done.  And presently he
+came to where his boat lay, half on the shore and half in the waters,
+and he unloosed the thong that held it, and entered into the boat; but
+he put neither hand to the oars thereof, for he was intent to do the
+bidding of Membril the fairy.  Then as if of its own accord, or as if
+the kindly waves themselves bore it along, the boat moved upon the
+waters and turned toward the yonder haven whereof it was said and sung.
+Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows fell
+from the hilltops in their sleep and lay, as they had been little weary
+children, in the valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in
+the cradles of those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung
+softly to them.  Upon the one side lay the island where grazed the
+goats and the kine, and upon the other side lay the island where Harold
+and other people abode; between these islands crept the sea with its
+gentle murmurings, and upon this sea drifted the boat bearing Harold to
+the yonder haven.  Now the haven whereunto the course lay brooded
+almost beneath the shadow of the Stennis stones, and the waters thereof
+were dark, as if, forsooth, the sea frowned whensoever it saw those
+bloody stones peering down into its tranquil bosom.  And some said that
+the place was haunted, and that upon each seventh night came thereunto
+the spirits of them that had been slain upon those stones, and waved
+their ghostly arms and wailed grievously; but of latter times none
+believeth this thing to be true.
+
+It befell that, coming into the haven and bearing toward the shore
+thereof, Harold was 'ware of sweet music, and presently he saw figures
+as of men and women dancing upon the holm; but neither could he see who
+these people were, nor could he tell wherefrom the music came.  But
+such fair music never had he heard before, and with great marvel he
+came from the boat into the cluster of beech-trees that stood between
+the haven and that holm where the people danced.  Then of a sudden
+Harold saw twelve skins lying upon the shore in the moonlight; and they
+were the comeliest and most precious sealskins that ever he saw, and he
+coveted them.  So presently he took up one of the sealskins and bore it
+with him into his boat, and pushed the boat from the shore into the
+waters of the haven again, and, so doing, there was such plashing of
+the waters that those people dancing upon the fair green holm became
+'ware of Harold's presence, and were afeared, so that, ceasing from
+their sport, they made haste down to the shore and did on the skins and
+dived into the waters with shrill cries.  But there was one of them
+that could not do so, because Harold bore off that skin wherewith she
+was wont to begird herself, and when she found it not she wailed and
+wept and besought Harold to give her that skin again,--and, lo! it was
+Eleanor, the wife of Egbert!  Now when Harold saw that it was his
+mother that so entreated him he was filled with wonder, and he drew
+nearer the shore to regard her and to hear her words, for he loved her
+passing well.  But he denied her that skin, knowing full well that so
+soon as she possessed it she would leave him and he should never again
+behold her.  Then Eleanor related to him how that she had been drowned
+in the sea through treachery of the harp-maiden, and how that the souls
+of drowned people entered into the bodies of seals, nor were permitted
+to return to earth, save only one night in every month, at which time
+each recovered his human shape and was suffered to dance in the
+moonlight upon the fair green holm from the hour of sunset unto the
+hour of sunrise.
+
+"Give me the skin, I pray thee," she cried, "for if the sun came upon
+me unawares I should crumble into dust before thine eyes, and that
+moment would a curse fall upon you.  I am happy as I am; the sea and
+those who dwell therein are good to me,--give me the skin, I beseech
+thee, that I may return whence I came, and thereby shall a great
+blessing accrue to thee and thine."
+
+But Harold said: "Nay, mother, I were a fool to part so cheerfully with
+one whom I love dearer than life itself!  I shall not let you go so
+easily; you shall come with me to our home, where I have lived alone
+too long already.  I shall be alone no longer,--come with me, I say,
+for I will not deliver up this skin, nor shall any force wrest it from
+me!"
+
+Then Eleanor, his mother, reasoned a space with him, and anon she
+showed him the folly of his way; but still he hung his head upon his
+breast and was loath to do her bidding, until at last she sware unto
+him that if he gave to her that skin he should, upon the next dancing
+night, have to wife the most beautiful maiden in the world, and
+therefore should be alone in the world no more.  To this presently
+Harold gave assent, and then Eleanor, his mother, bade him come to that
+same spot one month hence, and do what she should then bid him do.
+Receiving, therefore, the skin from him, she folded it about her and
+threw herself into the sea, and Harold betook himself unto his home.
+
+Now wit ye well that full wearily dragged the days and the nights until
+that month was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and
+upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting.
+It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from
+his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of
+the moon from out the silver waters yonder.  While thus he stood there
+appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him she said and
+she sung:--
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,
+  Come to urge thee on thy way;
+  Haste to yonder haven-side
+  Where awaits thy promised bride;
+  Daughter of a king is she,--
+  Many leagues she comes to thee,
+  Thine and only thine to be.
+  Haste and see, then come again
+  To thy pretty home, and, when
+  Smiles the sun on earth once more,
+  Will come knocking at thy door;
+  Open then, and to thy breast
+  Clasp whom thou shalt love the best!
+  It is Membril counsels thee,--
+  Haste and see what thou shalt see!
+
+
+Now by this thing was Harold mightily rejoiced, and he believed it to
+be truth that great good was in store for him; for he had seen pleasant
+things in the candle a many nights, and the smoke from his fire blew
+cheerily and lightly to the westward, and a swan had circled over his
+house that day week, and in his net each day for twice seven days had
+he drawn from the sea a fish having one golden eye and one silver eye:
+which things, as all men know, portend full goodly things, or else they
+portend nothing at all whatsoever.  So, being pleasantly minded, Harold
+returned in kind unto Membril, the fairy queen, that bespoke him so
+courteously, and to her and to them that bore her company he said and
+he sung:--
+
+  Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!
+    For thou speakest pleasing words;
+  Thou shalt have a gill of whey
+    And a thimblefull of curds;
+  In this rose is honey-dew
+  That a bee hath brought for you!
+
+  Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!
+    Call thy sisters from the gloam,
+  And, whilst I am on my way,
+    Feast and frolic in my home,--
+  Kiss the moonbeams, blanching white,
+  Shrinking, shivering with affright!
+
+  Welcome, all, and have no fear,--
+    There is flax upon the sill,
+  No foul sprite can enter here,--
+    Feast and frolic as you will;
+  Feast and frisk till break of day,--
+  Welcome, little folk of Fay!
+
+
+Thus having said and thus having sung, Harold went upon his way, and
+came to his boat and entered into it and journeyed to the haven where
+some time he had seen and discoursed with Eleanor, his mother.  His
+course to this same haven lay, as before, over the waters that stole in
+between the two islands from the great sea beyond.  Fair shone the
+moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows rolled from the
+hilltops in their sleep and lay like little weary children in the
+valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in the cradles of
+those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung softly to them.
+Upon this hand lay the island where the goats and the kine found sweet
+pasturage, and upon the other hand stretched the island where people
+abode, and where the bloody Stennis stones rebuked the smiling sky, and
+where ghosts walked and wailed and waved their white arms in the
+shadows of those haunted ruins where once upon a time the Picts had
+dwelt.  And Harold's heart was full of joy, the more in especial when,
+as he bore nigh unto the haven, he heard sweet music and beheld a
+goodly company of people that danced in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  Then, when presently his boat touched the inner shore of
+the haven, and he departed therefrom and drew the boat upon the shore,
+he saw wherefrom issued the beautiful music to which the people danced;
+he saw that the waters reached out their white fingers and touched the
+kale and the fair pebbles and the brittle shells and the moss upon the
+beach, and these things gave forth sweet sounds, which were as if a
+thousand attuned harps vied with the singing of the summer-night winds.
+Then, as before, Harold saw sealskins lying upon the shore, and
+presently came Eleanor, his mother, and pointing to a certain fair
+velvet skin, she said: "Take that fair velvet skin into thy boat and
+speed with all haste to thy home.  To-morrow at sunrise thy bride shall
+come knocking at thy door.  And so, farewell, my son,--oh, Harold, my
+only son!"  Which saying, Eleanor, the wife of Egbert, drew a skin
+about her and leapt into the sea; nor was she ever thereafter beholden
+of human eyes.
+
+Then Harold took up the fair velvet skin to which his mother had
+directed him, and he bore it away with him in his boat.  So softly went
+he upon the waters that none of them that danced upon the fair green
+holm either saw or heard him.  Still danced they on to the sweet music
+made by the white fingers of the waves, and still shone the white moon
+upon the fair green holm where they so danced.
+
+Now when came Harold to his home, bearing the precious skin with him,
+he saw the fairies at play upon the floor of his hut, and they feared
+no evil, for there was barley strewn upon the sill so that no wicked
+sprite could enter there.  And when Membril, the fairy queen, saw him
+bringing the skin that he had found upon the shore, she bade him good
+welcome, and she said and she sung:--
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,--
+  Ponder well what words I say;
+  Hide that fair and velvet skin
+  Some secluded spot within;
+  In the tree where ravens croak,--
+  In the hollow of the oak,
+  In the cave with mosses lined,
+  In the earth where none may find;
+  Hide it quick and hide it deep,--
+  So secure shall be thy sleep,
+  Thine shall bride and blessings be,
+  Thine a fair posterity,--
+  So doth Membril counsel thee!
+
+
+So, pondering upon this counsel and thinking well of it, Harold took
+the fair velvet skin and hid it, and none knew where it was hid,--none
+save only the raven that lived in the hollow oak.  And when he had so
+done he returned unto his home and lay upon his bed and slept.  It came
+to pass that early upon the morrow, when the sun made all the eastward
+sky blush for the exceeding ardor of his morning kiss, there came a
+knocking at the door of Harold's hut, and Harold opened the door, and
+lo! there stood upon the threshold the fairest maiden that eyes ever
+beheld.  Unlike was she to maidens dwelling in those islands, for her
+hair was black as the waters of the long winter night, and her eyes
+were as the twin midnight rocks that look up from the white waves of
+the moonlit sea in yonder reef; withal was she most beautiful to look
+upon, and her voice was as music that stealeth to one over pleasant
+waters.
+
+The maiden's name was Persis, and she was the daughter of a Pagan king
+that ruled in a country many, many--oh, many leagues to the southward
+of these islands, in a country where unicorns and dragons be, and where
+dwelleth the phoenix and hippogriffins and the cockatrix, and where
+bloometh a tree that runneth blood, and where mighty princes do
+wondrous things.  Now it fortuned that the king was minded to wed his
+daughter Persis unto a neighboring prince, a high and mighty prince,
+but one whom Persis loved not, neither could she love.  So for the
+first time Persis said, "Nay, I will not," unto her father's mandate,
+whereat the king was passing wroth, and he put his daughter in a place
+that was like a jail to her, for it was where none might see her, and
+where she might see none,--none but those that attended upon her.  This
+much told Persis, the Pagan princess, unto Harold, and then,
+furthermore, she said: "The place wherein I was put by the king, my
+father, was hard by the sea, and oftentimes I went thereon in my little
+boat, and once, looking down from that boat into the sea, I saw the
+face of a fair young man within a magic mirror that was held up in the
+waters of the sea by two ghostly hands, and the fair young man moved
+his lips and smiled at me, and methought I heard him say: 'Come, be my
+bride, O fair and gentle Persis!'  But, vastly afeared, I cried out and
+put back again to shore.  Yet in my dreams I saw that face and heard
+that voice, nor could I find any rest until I came upon the sea again
+in hope to see the face and hear the voice once more.  Then, that
+second time, as I looked into the sea, another face came up from below
+and lifted above the waters, and a woman's voice spake thus to me: 'I
+am mother of him that loveth thee and whom thou lovest; his face hast
+thou seen in the mirror, and of thee I have spoken to him; come, let me
+bear thee as a bride to him!'  And in that moment a faintness came upon
+me and I fell into her arms, and so was I drowned (as men say), and so
+was I a seal a little space until last dancing night, when, lo! some
+one brought me to life again, and one that said her name was Membril
+showed me the way unto thy door.  And now I look upon thy face in
+truth, and thou art he who shall have me to his wife, for thou art he
+whose face I saw within the mirror which the ghostly hands bore up to
+me that day upon the sea!"
+
+Great then was Harold's joy, and he folded her in his arms, and he
+spake sweet words to her, and she was content.  So they were wed that
+very day, and there came to do them honor all the folk upon these
+islands: Dougal and Tam and Ib and Robbie and Nels and Gram and Rupert
+and Rolf and many others and all their kin, and they made merry, and it
+was well.  And never spake the Pagan princess of that soft velvet skin
+which Harold had hid away,--never spake she of it to him or to any
+other one.
+
+It is to tell that to Harold and to Persis were born these children,
+and in this order: Egbert and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) and
+Harold and Joan and Tam and Annie and Rupert the Fair and Flocken and
+Elsa and Albert and Theodoric,--these eleven children were born unto
+them in good time; and right fair children were they to see, comely and
+stout, yet sweetly minded withal.  And prosperous times continually
+befell Harold; his herds multiplied, and the fish came into his nets,
+so that presently there was none other richer than he in all that
+country, and he did great good with his riches, for he had compassion
+to the poor.  So Harold was beloved of all, and all spake full fairly
+of his wife,--how that she cared for his little ones, and kept the
+house, and did deeds of sweet charity among the needy and
+distressed,--ay, so was Persis, the wife of Harold, beloved of all, and
+by none other more than by Harold, who was wont to say that Persis had
+brought him all he loved best: his children, his fortune, his
+happiness, and, best of all, herself.  So now they were wed twice seven
+years, and in that time was Persis still as young and fair to look upon
+as when she came to Harold's door for the first time and knocked.  This
+I account to be a marvel, but still more a marvel was it that in all
+these years spake she never a word of that soft velvet skin which
+Harold took and hid,--never a word to him nor to any one else.  But the
+soft velvet skin lay meanwhile in the hollow of the oak, and in the
+branches of that tree perched a raven that croaked and croaked and
+croaked.
+
+Now it befell upon a time that a ship touched at that island, and there
+came therefrom men that knelt down upon the shore and made strange
+prayers to a strange God, and forthwith uplifted in that island a
+symbol of wood in the similitude of a cross.  Straightway went Harold
+with the rest to know the cause thereof, being fearful lest for this
+impiety their own gods, whom they served diligently, should send hail
+and fire upon them and their herds.  But those that had come in the
+ship spake gently with them and showed themselves to be peaceful folk
+whose God delighted not in wars, but rather in gentleness and love.
+How it was, I, knowing not, cannot say, but presently the cause of that
+new God, whose law was gentleness and love, waxed mightily, and the
+people came from all around to kiss that cross and worship it.  And
+among them came Harold, for in his heart had dawned the light of a new
+wisdom, and he knew the truth as we know it, you and I.  So Harold was
+baptized in the Christian faith, he and his children; but Persis, his
+wife, was not baptized, for she was the daughter of a Pagan king, and
+she feared to bring evil upon those she loved by doing any blasphemous
+thing.  Right sorely grieved was Harold because of this, and oftentimes
+he spake with her thereof, and oftentimes he prayed unto his God and
+ours to incline her mind toward the cross, which saveth all alike.  But
+Persis would say: "My best beloved, let me not do this thing in haste,
+for I fear to vex thy God since I am a Pagan and the daughter of a
+Pagan king, and therefore have not within me the light that there is in
+thee and thy kind.  Perchance (since thy God is good and gracious) the
+light will come to me anon, and shine before mine eyes as it shineth
+before thine.  I pray thee, let me bide my time."  So spake Persis, and
+her life ever thereafter was kind and charitable, as, soothly, it had
+ever before been, and she served Harold, her husband, well, and she was
+beloved of all, and a great sweetness came to all out of her daily life.
+
+It fortuned, upon a day whilst Harold was from home, there was knocking
+at the door of their house, and forthwith the door opened and there
+stood in the midst of them one clad all in black and of rueful
+countenance.  Then, as if she foresaw evil, Persis called unto her
+little ones and stood between them and that one all in black, and she
+demanded of him his name and will.  "I am the Death-Angel," quoth he,
+"and I come for the best-beloved of thy lambs!"
+
+Now Theodoric was that best-beloved; for he was her very little one,
+and had always slept upon her bosom.  So when she heard those words she
+made a great outcry, and wrestled with the Death-Angel, and sought to
+stay him in his purpose.  But the Death-Angel chilled her with his
+breath, and overcame her, and prevailed against her; and he reached
+into the midst of them and took Theodoric in his arms and folded him
+upon his breast, and Theodoric fell asleep there, and his head dropped
+upon the Death-Angel's shoulder.  But in her battle for the child,
+Persis catched at the chain about the child's neck, and the chain brake
+and remained in her hand, and upon the chain was the little cross of
+fair alabaster which an holy man had put there when Theodoric was
+baptized.  So the Death-Angel went his way with that best-beloved lamb,
+and Persis fell upon her face and wailed.
+
+The years went on and all was well upon these islands.  Egbert became a
+mighty fisherman, and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) wrought
+wondrous things in Norroway, as all men know; Joan was wed to Cuthbert
+the Dane, and Flocken was wooed of a rich man's son of Scotland.  So
+were all things for good and for the best, and it was a marvel to all
+that Persis, the wife of Harold, looked still to be as young and
+beautiful as when she came from the sea to be her husband's bride.  Her
+life was full of gentleness and charity, and all folk blessed her.  But
+never in all these years spake she aught to any one of the fair velvet
+skin; and through all the years that skin lay hid in the hollow of the
+oak-tree, where the raven croaked and croaked and croaked.
+
+At last upon a time a malady fell upon Persis, and a strange light came
+into her eyes, and naught they did was of avail to her.  One day she
+called Harold to her, and said: "My beloved, the time draweth near when
+we twain must part.  I pray thee, send for the holy man, for I would
+fain be baptized in thy faith and in the faith of our children."  So
+Harold fetched the holy man, and Persis, the daughter of the Pagan
+king, was baptized, and she spake freely and full sweetly of her love
+to Jesus Christ, her Saviour, and she prayed to be taken into his rest.
+And when she was baptized, there was given to her the name of Ruth,
+which was most fairly done, I trow, for soothly she had been the friend
+of all.
+
+Then, when the holy man was gone, she said to her husband: "Beloved, I
+beseech thee go to yonder oak-tree, and bring me from the hollow
+thereof the fair velvet skin that hath lain therein so many years."
+
+Then Harold marvelled, and he cried: "Who told thee that the fair
+velvet skin was hidden there?"
+
+"The raven told me all," she answered; "and had I been so minded I
+might have left thee long ago,--thee and our little ones.  But I loved
+thee and them, and the fair velvet skin hath been unseen of me."
+
+"And wouldst thou leave us now?" he cried.  "Nay, it shall not be!
+Thou shalt not see that fair velvet skin, for this very day will I cast
+it into the sea!"
+
+But she put an arm about his neck and said: "This night, dear one, we
+part; but whether we shall presently be joined together in another life
+I know not, neither canst thou say; for I, having been a Pagan and the
+daughter of a Pagan king, may by my birth and custom have so grievously
+offended our true God that even in his compassion and mercy he shall
+not find pardon for me.  Therefore I would have thee fetch--since I
+shall die this night and do require of thee this last act of
+kindness--I would have thee fetch that same fair velvet skin from
+yonder oak-tree, and wrap me therein, and bear me hence, and lay me
+upon the green holm by the farther haven, for this is dancing night,
+and the seal-folk shall come from the sea as is their wont.  Thou shalt
+lay me, so wrapped within that fair velvet skin, upon that holm, and
+thou shalt go a space aside and watch throughout the night, coming not
+anear me (as thou lovest me!) until the dawn breaks, nor shalt thou
+make any outcry, but thou shalt wait until the night is sped.  Then,
+when thou comest at daybreak to the holm, if thou findest me in the
+fair velvet skin thou shalt know that my sin hath been pardoned; but if
+I be not there thou may'st know that, being a Pagan, the seal-folk have
+borne me back into the sea unto my kind.  Thus do I require of thee;
+swear so to do, and let thy beloved bless thee."
+
+So Harold swore to do, and so he did.  Straightway he went to the
+oak-tree and took from the hollow thereof the fair velvet skin; seeing
+which deed, the raven flew away and was never thereafter seen in these
+islands.  And with a heavy heart, and with full many a caress and word
+of love, did Harold bind his fair wife in that same velvet skin, and he
+bore her to his boat, and they went together upon the waters; for he
+had sworn so to do.  His course unto the haven lay as before over the
+waters that stole in between the two islands from the great troubled
+sea beyond.  Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the
+shadows lay asleep, like little weary children, in the valleys, and the
+waters moaned, and the winds rebuked the white fingers that stretched
+up from the waves to clutch them.  And when they were come to the inner
+shore of the haven, Harold took his wife and bore her up the bank and
+laid her where the light came down from the moon and slept full sweetly
+upon the fragrant sward.  Then, kissing her, he went his way and sat
+behind the Stennis stones a goodly space beyond, and there he kept his
+watch, as he had sworn to do.
+
+Now wit ye well a grievous heavy watch it was that night, for his heart
+yearned for that beloved wife that lay that while upon the fair green
+holm,--ay, never before had night seemed so long to Harold as did that
+dancing night when he waited for the seal-folk to come where the
+some-time Pagan princess lay wrapped in the fair velvet skin.  But
+while he watched and waited, Membril, the fairy queen, came and brought
+others of her kind with her, and they made a circle about Harold, and
+threw around him such a charm that no evil could befall him from the
+ghosts and ghouls that in their shrouds walked among those bloody
+stones and wailed wofully and waved their white arms.  For Membril,
+coming to Harold in the similitude of a glow-worm, made herself known
+to him, and she said and she sung:
+
+  Loving heart, be calm a space
+  In this gloomy vigil place;
+  Though these confines haunted be
+  Naught of harm can come to thee--
+  Nothing canst thou see or hear
+  Of the ghosts that stalk anear,
+  For around thee Membril flings
+  Charms of Fay and fairy rings.
+
+
+Nothing daunted was Harold by thoughts of evil monsters, and naught
+recked he of the uncanny dangers of that haunted place; but he
+addressed these words to Membril and her host, and he said and he sung:
+
+  Tell me if thy piercing eyes
+    See the inner haven shore.
+  There my Own Beloved lies,
+    With the cowslips bending o'er:
+  Speed, O gentle folk of Fay!
+  And in guise of cowslips say
+  I shall love my love for aye!
+
+
+Even so did Membril and the rest; and presently they returned, and they
+brought these words unto Harold, saying and singing them:--
+
+  We as cowslips in that place
+  Clustered round thy dear one's face,
+  And we whispered to her there
+  Those same words we went to bear;
+  And she smiled and bade us then
+  Bear these words to thee again:
+  "Die we shall, and part we may,--
+  Love is love and lives for aye!"
+
+
+Then of a sudden there was a tumult upon the waters, as if the waters
+were troubled, and there came up out of the waters a host of seals that
+made their way to the shore and cast aside their skins and came forth
+in the forms of men and of women, for they were the drowned folk that
+were come, as was their wont, to dance in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  At that moment the waters stretched out their white
+fingers and struck the kale and the pebbles and the soft moss upon the
+beach, for they sought to make music for the seal-folk to dance
+thereby; but the music that was made was not merry nor gleeful, but was
+passing gruesome and mournful.  And presently the seal-folk came where
+lay the wife of Harold wrapped in the fair velvet skin, and they knew
+her of old, and they called her by what name she was known to them,
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and there was great wailing
+among the seal-folk for a mighty space; and the seal-folk danced never
+at all that night, but wailed about the wife of Harold, and called
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and made great moan.  And at
+last all was still once more, for the seal-folk, weeping and clamoring
+grievously, went back into the sea, and the sea sobbed itself to sleep.
+
+Mindful of the oath he swore, Harold dared not go down to that shore,
+but he besought Membril, the queen of Fay, to fetch him tidings from
+his beloved, whether she still lay upon the holm, or whether the
+seal-folk had borne her away with them into the waters of the deep.
+But Membril might not go, nor any of her host, for already the dawn was
+in the east and the kine were lowing on yonder slope.  So Harold was
+left alone a tedious time, until the sun looked upon the earth, and
+then, with clamoring heart, Harold came from the Stennis stones and
+leapt downward to the holm where his beloved had lain that weary while.
+Then he saw that the fair velvet skin was still there, and presently he
+saw that within the skin his beloved still reposed.  He called to her,
+but she made no answer; with exceeding haste he kneeled down and did
+off the fair velvet skin, and folded his beloved to his breast.  The
+sun shone full upon her glorious face and kissed away the dew that
+clung to her white cheeks.
+
+"Thou art redeemed, O my beloved!" cried Harold; but her lips spake
+not, and her eyes opened not upon him.  Yet on the dead wife's face was
+such a smile as angels wear, and it told him that they should meet
+again in a love that knoweth no fear of parting.  And as Harold held
+her to his bosom and wailed, there fell down from her hand what she had
+kept with her to the last, and it lay upon the fair green holm,--the
+little alabaster cross which she had snatched from Theodoric's neck
+that day the Death-Angel bore the child away.
+
+It was to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib, and of
+Persis, his wife, daughter of the Pagan king; and it hath been told.
+And there is no more to tell, for the tale is ended.
+
+
+
+[1] Orkney Folk-Lore.
+
+
+
+
+FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND
+
+My quondam friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, are no more; they are
+dead, and with them has gone out of existence as gross an imposition as
+the moral cowardice of man were capable of inventing, constructing, and
+practising.
+
+When Alice became my wife she knew that I was a lover and collector of
+books, but, being a young thing, she had no idea of the monstrous
+proportions which bibliomania, unchecked, is almost certain to acquire.
+Indeed, the dear girl innocently and rapturously encouraged this
+insidious vice.  "Some time," she used to say, "we shall have a house
+of our own, and then your library shall cover the whole top-floor, and
+the book-cases shall be built in the walls, and there shall be a lovely
+blue-glass sky-light," etc.  Moreover, although she could not tell the
+difference between an Elzevir and a Pickering, or between a folio and
+an octavo, Alice was very proud of our little library, and I recall now
+with real delight the times I used to hear her showing off those
+precious books to her lady callers.  Alice made up for certain
+inaccuracies of information with a distinct enthusiasm and garrulity
+that never failed to impress her callers deeply.  I was mighty proud of
+Alice; I was prepared to say, paraphrasing Sam Johnson's remark about
+the Scotchman, "A wife can be made much of, if caught young."
+
+It was not until after little Grolier and little Richard de Bury were
+born to us that Alice's regard for my pretty library seemed to abate.
+I then began to realize the truth of what my bachelor friend Kinzie had
+often declared,--namely, that the chief objection to children was that
+they weaned the collector from his love of books.  Grolier was a
+mischievous boy, and I had hard work trying to convince his mother that
+he should by no means be allowed to have his sweet but destructive will
+with my Bewicks and Bedfords.  Thumb and finger marks look well enough
+in certain places, but I protested that they did not enhance the quaint
+beauty of an old wood-cut, a delicate binding, or a wide margin.  And
+Richard de Bury--a lovely little 16mo of a child--was almost as
+destructive as his older brother.  The most painful feature of it all
+to me then was that their mother actually protected the toddling knaves
+in their vandalism.  I never saw another woman change so as Alice did
+after those two boys came to us.  Why, she even suggested to me one day
+that when we did build our new house we should devote the upper story
+thereof not to library but to nursery purposes!
+
+Things gradually got to the pass that I began to be afraid to bring
+books into the house.  At first Alice used to reproach me indirectly by
+eying the new book jealously, and hinting in a subtle, womanly way that
+Grolier needed new shoes, or that Richard was sadly in need of a new
+cap.  Presently, encouraged by my lamb-like reticence, Alice began to
+complain gently of what she termed my extravagance, and finally she
+fell into the pernicious practice of berating me roundly for neglecting
+my family for the selfish--yes, the cruel--gratification of a foolish
+fad, and then she would weep and gather up the two boys and wonder how
+soon we should all be in the poorhouse.
+
+I have spoken of my bachelor friend, Kinzie; there was a philosopher
+for you, and his philosophy was all the sweeter because it had never
+been embittered by marital experience.  I had confidence in Kinzie, and
+I told him all about the dilemma I was in.  He pitied me and condoled
+with me, for he was a sympathetic man, and he was, too, as consistent a
+bibliomaniac as I ever met with.  "Be of good cheer," said he, "we
+shall find a way out of all this trouble."  And he suggested a way.  I
+seized upon it as the proverbial drowning man is supposed to clutch at
+the proverbial straw.
+
+The next time I took a bundle of books home I marched into the house
+boldly with them.  Alice fetched a deep sigh.  "Ah, been buying more
+books, have you?" she asked in a despairing tone.
+
+"No, indeed," I answered triumphantly, "they were given to me,--a
+present from judge Trask.  I'm in great luck, ain't I?"
+
+Alice was almost as pleased as I was.  The interest with which she
+inspected the lovely volumes was not feigned.  "But who is Judge
+Trask?" she asked, as she read the autographic lines upon a flyleaf in
+each book.  I explained glibly that the judge was a wealthy and
+cultured citizen who felt somewhat under obligation to me for certain
+little services I had rendered him one time and another.  I was not to
+be trapped or cornered.  I had learned my sinful lesson perfectly.
+Alice never so much as suspected me of evil.
+
+The scheme worked so well that I pursued it with more or less
+diligence.  I should say that about twice a week on an average a bundle
+of books came to the house "with the compliments" of either Judge Trask
+or Colonel Flail or Mr. Bisland.  You can understand that I could not
+hope to play the Trask deception exclusively and successfully.  I
+invented Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland, and I contrived to render them
+quite as liberal in their patronage as the mythical Judge Trask
+himself.  Occasionally a donation came in, by way of variety, from
+Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell and other solitary creations of my
+mendacious imagination, when I used to blind poor dear Alice to the
+hideous truth.  Touching myself, I gave it out that I had abandoned
+book-buying, was convinced of the folly of the mania, had reformed, and
+was repentant.  Alice loved me all the better for that, and she became
+once more the sweetest, most amiable little woman in all the world.
+She was inexpressibly happy in the fond delusion that I had become
+prudent and thrifty, and was putting money in bank for that home we
+were going to buy--sometime.
+
+Meanwhile the names of Flail, Trask, and Bisland became household words
+with us.  Occasionally Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell were mentioned
+gratefully as some fair volume bearing their autograph was inspected;
+but, after all, Flail, Trask, and Bisland were the favorites, for it
+was from them that most of my beloved books came.  Yes, Alice gradually
+grew to love those three myths; she loved them because they were good
+to me.
+
+Alice had, like most others of her sex, a strong sense of duty.  She
+determined to do something for my noble friends, and finally she
+planned a lovely little dinner whereat Judge Trask and Colonel Flail
+and Mr. Bisland were to be regaled with choicest viands of Alice's
+choice larder and with the sweetest speeches of Alice's graceful heart.
+I was authorized only to convey the invitations to this delectable
+banquet, and here was a pretty plight for a man to be in, surely
+enough!  But my bachelor friend Kinzie (ough, the Mephisto!) helped me
+out.  I reported back to Alice that Judge Trask was out of town, that
+Colonel Flail was sick abed with grip, and that Mr. Bisland was
+altogether too shy a man to think of venturing out to a dinner alone.
+Alice was dreadfully disappointed.  Still there was consolation in
+feeling that she had done her duty in trying to do it.
+
+Well, this system of deception and perjury went on a long time, Alice
+never suspecting any evil, but perfectly happy in my supposed reform
+and economy, and in the gracious liberality of those three
+Maecenas-like friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, who kept pouring in
+rare and beauteous old tomes upon me.  She was joyous, too, in the
+prospect of that new house which we would soon be able to build, now
+that I had so long quit the old ruinous mania for book-buying!  And
+I--wretch that I was--I humored her in this conceit; I heaped perjury
+upon perjury; lying and deception had become my second nature.  Yet I
+loathed myself and I hated those books; they reproached me every time I
+came into their presence.  So I was miserable and helpless; how hard it
+is to turn about when one once gets into the downward path!  The shifts
+I was put to, and the desperate devices which I was forced to
+employ,--I shudder to recall them!  Life became a constant, terrifying
+lie.
+
+Thank Heaven, it is over now, and my face is turned the right way.  A
+third little son was born to us.  Alice was, oh! so very ill.  When she
+was convalescing she said to me one day: "Hiram, I have been thinking
+it all over, and I've made up my mind that we must name the baby Trask
+Flail Bisland, after our three good friends."
+
+I did n't make any answer, went out into the hall, and communed awhile
+with my own hideous, tormented self.  How my soul revolted against the
+prospect of giving to that innocent babe a name that would serve simply
+to scourge me through the rest of my wicked life!  No, I could not
+consent to that.  I would be a coward no longer!
+
+I went back into Alice's room, and sat upon the bed beside her, and
+took one of Alice's dear little white hands in mine, and told her
+everything, told Alice the whole truth,--all about my wickedness and
+perjuries and deceptions; told her what a selfish, cruel monster I had
+been; dispelled all the sinful delusion about Flail, Trask, and
+Bisland; threw myself, penitent and hopeless, upon my deceived,
+outraged little wife's mercy.  Was it a mean advantage to take of a
+sick woman?
+
+I fancied she would reproach me, for I knew that her heart was set upon
+that new house she had talked of so often; I told her that the savings
+she had supposed were in bank, were in reality represented only by and
+in those stately folios and sumptuous quartos which the mythical Flail,
+Trask, and Bisland had presumably donated.  "But," I added, "I shall
+sell them now, and with the money I shall build the home in which we
+may be happy again,--a lovely home, sweetheart, with no library at all,
+but all nursery if you wish it so!"
+
+"No," said Alice, when I had ended my blubbering confession, "we shall
+not part with the books; they have caused you more suffering than they
+have me, and, moreover, their presence will have a beneficial effect
+upon you.  Furthermore, I myself have become attached to them,--you
+know I thought they were given to you, and so I have learned to care
+for them.  Poor Judge Trask and Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland,--so they
+are only myths?  Dear Hiram," she added with a sigh, "I can forgive you
+for everything except for taking those three good men out of our lives!"
+
+After all this I have indeed reformed.  I have actually become prudent,
+and I have a bank-account that is constantly increasing.  I do not hate
+books; I simply do not buy them.  And I eschew that old sinner, Kinzie,
+and all the sinister influences he represents.  As for our third little
+boy, we have named him Reform Meigs, after Alice's mother's
+grandfather, who built the first saw-mill in what is now the State of
+Ohio, and was killed by the Indians in 1796.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOUCH IN THE HEART
+
+Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and so was old Abel's wife, when little
+Abel came.  For this coming they had waited many years.  God had
+prospered them elsewise; this one supreme blessing only had been
+withheld.  Yet Abel had never despaired.  "I shall some time have a
+son," said he.  "I shall call him Abel.  He shall be rich; he shall
+succeed to my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my
+fortune,--all shall be his!"  Abel Dunklee felt this to be a certainty,
+and with this prospect constantly in mind he slaved and pinched and
+bargained.  So when at last the little one did come it was as heir to a
+considerable property.
+
+The joy in the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at
+large.  Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man.  Folk had the
+well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard.  If he had
+not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good
+man.  His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order.  He had
+always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in
+keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: Abel's
+idea of goodness was to owe no man any money.  He never gave a penny to
+charities, and he never spent any time sympathizing with the
+misfortunes or distresses of other people.  He was narrow, close,
+selfish, and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large said,
+and I shall not deny that the verdict was a just one.
+
+When a little one comes into this world of ours, it is the impulse of
+the people here to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant.  When
+little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained outside the austere
+Dunklee household.  Popular sentiment found vent in an expression of
+the hope that the son and heir would grow up to scatter the dollars
+which old man Dunklee had accumulated by years of relentless avarice
+and unflagging toil.  But Dr. Hardy--he who had officiated in an
+all-important capacity upon that momentous occasion in the Dunklee
+household--Dr. Hardy shook his head wisely, and perhaps sadly, as if he
+were saying to himself: "No, the child will never do either what the
+old folk or what the other folk would have him do; he is not long for
+here."
+
+Had you questioned him closely, Dr. Hardy would have told you that
+little Abel was as frail a babe as ever did battle for life.  Dr. Hardy
+would surely never have dared say that to old Dunklee; for in his
+rapture in the coming of that little boy old Dunklee would have smote
+the offender who presumed even to intimate that the babe was not the
+most vigorous as well as the most beautiful creature upon earth.  The
+old man was simply assotted upon the child,--in a selfish way,
+undoubtedly, but even this selfish love of that puny little child
+showed that the old man was capable of somewhat better than his past
+life had been.  To hear him talk you might have fancied that Mrs.
+Dunklee had no part or parcel or interest in their offspring.  It was
+always "my little boy,"--yes, old Abel Dunklee's money had a rival in
+the old man's heart at last, and that rival was a helpless, shrunken,
+sickly little babe.
+
+Among his business associates Abel Dunklee was familiarly known as Old
+Growly, for the reason that his voice was harsh and discordant, and
+sounded for all the world like the hoarse growling of an ill-natured
+bear.  Abel was not a particularly irritable person, but his slavish
+devotion to money-getting, his indifference to the amenities of life,
+his entire neglect of the tender practices of humanity, his rough,
+unkempt personality, and his deep, hoarse voice,--these things combined
+to make that sobriquet of "Old Growly" an exceedingly appropriate one.
+And presumably Abel never thought of resenting the slur implied therein
+and thereby; he was too shrewd not to see that, however disrespectful
+and evil-intentioned the phrase might be, it served him to good
+purpose; for it conduced to that very general awe, not to say terror,
+which kept people from bothering him with their charitable and
+sentimental schemes.
+
+Yes, I think we can accept it as a fact that Abel liked that sobriquet;
+it meant more money in his pocket, and fewer demands upon his time and
+patience.
+
+But Old Growly abroad and Old Growly at home were two very different
+people.  Only the voice was the same.  The homely, furrowed, wizened
+face lighted up, and the keen, restless eyes lost their expression of
+shrewdness, and the thin, bony hands that elsewhere clutched and
+clutched and pinched and pinched for possession unlimbered themselves
+in the presence of little Abel, and reached out their long fingers
+yearningly and caressingly toward the little child.  Then the hoarse
+voice would growl a salutation that was full of tenderness, for it came
+straight from the old man's heart; only, had you not known how much he
+loved the child, you might have thought otherwise, for the old man's
+voice was always hoarse and discordant, and that was why they called
+him Old Growly.  But what proved his love for that puny babe was the
+fact that every afternoon, when he came home from the factory, Old
+Growly brought his little boy a dime; and once, when the little fellow
+had a fever on him from teething, Old Growly brought him a dollar!
+Next day the tooth came through and the fever left him, but you could
+not make the old man believe but what it was the dollar that did it
+all.  That was natural, perhaps; for his life had been spent in
+grubbing for money, and he had not the soul to see that the best and
+sweetest things in human life are not to be had by riches alone.
+
+As the doctor had in one way and another intimated would be the case,
+the child did not wax fat and vigorous.  Although Old Growly did not
+seem to see the truth, little Abel grew older only to become what the
+doctor had foretold,--a cripple.  A weakness of the spine was
+developed, a malady that dwarfed the child's physical growth, giving to
+his wee face a pinched, starved look, warping his emaciated body, and
+enfeebling his puny limbs, while at the same time it quickened the
+intellectual faculties to the degree of precocity.  And so two and
+three and four years went by, little Abel clinging to life with
+pathetic heroism, and Old Growly loving that little cripple with all
+the violence of his selfish nature.  Never once did it occur to the
+father that his child might die, that death's seal was already set upon
+the misshapen little body; on the contrary, Old Growly's thoughts were
+constantly of little Abel's famous future, of the great fortune he was
+to fall heir to, of the prosperous business career he was to pursue, of
+the influence he was to wield in the world,--of dollars, dollars,
+dollars, millions of them which little Abel was some time to possess;
+these were Old Growly's dreams, and he loved to dream them!
+
+Meanwhile the world did well by the old man; despising him,
+undoubtedly, for his avarice and selfishness, but constantly pouring
+wealth, and more wealth, and even more wealth into his coffers.  As for
+the old man, he cared not for what the world thought or said, so long
+as it paid tribute to him; he wrought on as of old, industriously,
+shrewdly, hardly, but with this new purpose: to make his little boy
+happy and great with riches.
+
+Toys and picture-books were vanities in which Old Growly never
+indulged; to have expended a farthing for chattels of that character
+would have seemed to Old Growly like sinful extravagance.  The few
+playthings which little Abel had were such as his mother
+surreptitiously bought; the old man believed that a child should be
+imbued with a proper regard for the value of money from the very start,
+so his presents were always cash in hand, and he bought a large tin
+bank for little Abel, and taught the child how to put the copper and
+silver pieces into it, and he labored diligently to impress upon the
+child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by.
+Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man
+seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little
+cripple!  But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a
+pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands
+gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,--this boy of
+mine,--great genius for finance!"
+
+But on a day, coming from his factory, Old Growly was stricken with
+horror to find that during his absence from home a great change had
+come upon his child.  The doctor said it was simply the progress of the
+disease; that it was a marvel that little Abel had already held out so
+long; that from the moment of his birth the seal of death had been set
+upon him in that cruel malady which had drawn his face and warped his
+body and limbs.  Then all at once Old Growly's eyes seemed to be opened
+to the truth, and like a lightning flash it came to him that perhaps
+his pleasant dreams which he had dreamed of his child's future could
+never be realized.  It was a bitter awakening, yet amid it all the old
+man was full of hope, determination, and battle.  He had little faith
+in drugs and nursing and professional skill; he remembered that upon
+previous occasions cures had been wrought by means of money; teeth had
+been brought through, the pangs of colic beguiled, and numerous other
+ailments to which infancy is heir had by the same specific been
+baffled.  So now Old Growly set about wooing his little boy from the
+embrace of death,--sought to coax him back to health with money, and
+the dimes became dollars, and the tin bank was like to burst of
+fulness.  But little Abel drooped and drooped, and he lost all interest
+in other things, and he was content to lie, drooping-eyed and listless,
+in his mother's arms all day.  At last the little flame went out with
+hardly so much as a flutter, and the hope of the house of Dunklee was
+dissipated forever.  But even in those last moments of the little
+cripple's suffering the father struggled to call back the old look into
+the fading eyes, and the old smile into the dear, white face.  He
+brought treasure from his vaults and held it up before those fading
+eyes, and promised it all, all, all--everything he possessed, gold,
+houses, lands--all he had he would give to that little child if that
+little child would only live.  But the fading eyes saw other things,
+and the ears that were deaf to the old man's lamentations heard voices
+that soothed the anguish of that last solemn hour.  And so little Abel
+knew the Mystery.
+
+Then the old man crept away from that vestige of his love, and stood
+alone in the night, and lifted up his face, and beat his bosom, and
+moaned at the stars, asking over and over again why he had been so
+bereaved.  And while he agonized in this wise and cried there came to
+him a voice,--a voice so small that none else could hear, a voice
+seemingly from God; for from infinite space beyond those stars it sped
+its instantaneous way to the old man's soul and lodged there.
+
+"Abel, I have touched thy heart!"
+
+And so, having come into the darkness of night, old Dunklee went back
+into the light of day and found life beautiful; for the touch was in
+his heart.
+
+After that, Old Growly's way of dealing with the world changed.  He had
+always been an honest man, honest as the world goes.  But now he was
+somewhat better than honest; he was kind, considerate, merciful.
+People saw and felt the change, and they knew why it was so.  But the
+pathetic part of it all was that Old Growly would never admit--no, not
+even to himself--that he was the least changed from his old grinding,
+hard self.  The good deeds he did were not his own; they were his
+little boy's,--at least so he said.  And it was his whim when doing
+some kind and tender thing to lay it to little Abel, of whom he always
+spoke as if he were still living.  His workmen, his neighbors, his
+townsmen,--all alike felt the graciousness of the wondrous change, and
+many, ah! many a lowly sufferer blessed that broken old man for succor
+in little Abel's name.  And the old man was indeed much broken: not
+that he had parted with his shrewdness and acumen, for, as of old, his
+every venture prospered; but in this particular his mind seemed
+weakened; that, as I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was
+given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of which the burden
+seemed to be that child of his, and that his greatest pleasure appeared
+now to be watching other little ones at their play.  In fact, so
+changed was he from the Old Growly of former years, that, whereas he
+had then been wholly indifferent to the presence of those little ones
+upon earth, he now sought their company, and delighted to view their
+innocent and mirthful play.  And so, presently, the children, from
+regarding him at first with distrust, came to confide in and love him,
+and in due time the old man was known far and wide as Old Grampa
+Growly, and he was pleased thereat.  It was his wont to go every fair
+day, of an afternoon, into a park hard by his dwelling, and mingle with
+the crowd of little folk there; and when they were weary of their
+sports they used to gather about him,--some even clambering upon his
+knees,--and hear him tell his story, for he had only one story to tell,
+and that was the story that lay next his heart,--the story ever and
+forever beginning with, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy."  A very tender
+little story it was, too, told very much more sweetly than I could ever
+tell it; for it was of Old Grampa Growly's own little boy, and it came
+from that heart in which the touch--the touch of God Himself--lay like
+a priceless pearl.
+
+So you must know that the last years of the old man's life made full
+atonement for those that had gone before.  People forgot that the old
+man had ever been other than he was now, and of course the children
+never knew otherwise.  But as for himself, Old Grampa Growly grew
+tenderer and tenderer, and his goodness became a household word, and he
+was beloved of all.  And to the very last he loved the little ones, and
+shared their pleasures, and sympathized with them in their griefs, but
+always repeating that same old story, beginning with "Once ther' wuz a
+littl' boy."
+
+The curious part of it was this: that while he implied by his
+confidences to the children that his own little boy was dead, he never
+made that admission to others.  On the contrary, it was his wont, as I
+have said, to speak of little Abel as if that child still lived, and,
+humoring him in this conceit, it was the custom of the older ones to
+speak always of that child as if he lived and were known and beloved of
+all.  In this custom the old man had great content and solace.  For it
+was his wish that all he gave to and did for charity's sake should be
+known to come, not from him, but from Abel, his son, and this was his
+express stipulation at all such times.  I know whereof I speak, for I
+was one of those to whom the old man came upon a time and said: "My
+little boy--Abel, you know--will give me no peace till I do what he
+requires.  He has this sum of money which he has saved in his bank,
+count it yourselves, it is $50,000, and he bids me give it to the
+townsfolk for a hospital, one for little lame boys and girls.  And I
+have promised him--my little boy, Abel, you know--that I will give
+$50,000 more.  You shall have it when that hospital is built."  Surely
+enough, in eighteen months' time the old man handed us the rest of the
+money, and when we told him that the place was to be called the Abel
+Dunklee hospital he was sorely distressed, and shook his head, and
+said: "No, no,--not _my_ name!  Call it the _Little_ Abel hospital, for
+little Abel--my boy, you know--has done it all."
+
+The old man lived many years,--lived to hear tender voices bless him,
+and to see pale faces brighten at the sound of his footfall.  Yes, for
+many years the quaint, shuffling figure moved about our streets, and
+his hoarse but kindly voice--oh, very kindly now!--was heard repeating
+to the children that pathetic old story of "Once ther' wuz a littl'
+boy."  And where the dear old feet trod the grass grew greenest, and
+the sunbeams nestled.  But at last there came a summons for the old
+man,--a summons from away off yonder,--and the old man heard it and
+went thither.
+
+The doctor--himself hoary and stooping now--told me that toward the
+last Old Grampa Growly sunk into a sort of sleep, or stupor, from which
+they could not rouse him.  For many hours he lay like one dead, but his
+thin, creased face was very peaceful, and there was no pain.  Children
+tiptoed in with flowers, and some cried bitterly, while others--those
+who were younger--whispered to one another: "Hush, let us make no
+noise; Old Grampa Growly is sleeping."
+
+At last the old man roused up.  He had lain like one dead for many
+hours, but now at last he seemed to wake of a sudden, and, seeing
+children about him, perhaps he fancied himself in that pleasant park,
+under the trees, where so very often he had told his one pathetic story
+to those little ones.  Leastwise he made a feeble motion as if he would
+have them gather nearer, and, seeming to know his wish, the children
+came closer to him.  Those who were nearest heard him say with the
+ineffable tenderness of old, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy--"
+
+And with those last sweet words upon his lips, and with the touch in
+his heart, the old man went down into the Valley.
+
+
+
+
+DANIEL AND THE DEVIL
+
+Daniel was a very wretched man.  As he sat with his head bowed upon his
+desk that evening he made up his mind that his life had been a failure.
+"I have labored long and diligently," said he to himself, "and although I
+am known throughout the city as an industrious and shrewd business man, I
+am still a poor man, and shall probably continue so to the end of my days
+unless--unless--"
+
+Here Daniel stopped and shivered.  For a week or more he had been
+brooding over his unhappy lot.  There seemed to be but one way out of his
+trouble, yet his soul revolted from taking that step.  That was why he
+stopped and shivered.
+
+"But," he argued, "I _must_ do something!  My nine children are growing
+up into big boys and girls.  They must have those advantages which my
+limited means will not admit of!  All my life so far has been pure,
+circumspect, and rigid; poverty has at last broken my spirit.  I give up
+the fight,--I am ready to sell my soul to the Devil!"
+
+"The determination is a wise one," said a voice at Daniel's elbow.
+Daniel looked up and beheld a grim-visaged stranger in the chair beside
+him.  The stranger was arrayed all in black, and he exhaled a distinct
+odor of sulphur.
+
+"Am I to understand," asked the stranger, "that you are prepared to enter
+into a league with the Devil?"
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, firmly; and he set his teeth together after the
+fashion of a man who is not to be moved from his purpose.
+
+"Then I am ready to treat with you," said the stranger.
+
+"Are you the Devil?" asked Daniel, eying the stranger critically.
+
+"No, but I am authorized to enter into contracts for him," explained the
+stranger.  "My name is Beelzebub, and I am my master's most trusted
+agent."
+
+"Sir," said Daniel, "you must pardon me (for I am loath to wound your
+feelings), but one of the rules governing my career as a business man has
+been to deal directly with principals, and never to trust to the offices
+of middle-men.  The affair now in hand is one concerning the Devil and
+myself, and between us two and by us two only can the preliminaries be
+adjusted."
+
+"As it so happens," explained Beelzebub, "this is Friday,--commonly
+called hangman's day,--and that is as busy a time in our particular
+locality as a Monday is in a laundry, or as the first of every month is
+at a book-keeper's desk.  You can understand, perhaps, that this is the
+Devil's busy day; therefore be content to make this deal with me, and you
+will find that my master will cheerfully accept any contract I may enter
+into as his agent and in his behalf."
+
+But no,--Daniel would not agree to this; with the Devil himself, and only
+the Devil himself, would he treat.  So he bade Beelzebub go to the Devil
+and make known his wishes.  Beelzebub departed, much chagrined.
+Presently back came the Devil, and surely it _was_ the Devil this
+time,--there could be no mistake about it; for he wore a scarlet cloak,
+and had cloven feet, and carried about with him as many suffocating
+smells as there are kinds of brimstone, sulphur, and assafoetida.
+
+The two talked over all Daniel's miseries; the Devil sympathized with
+Daniel, and ever and anon a malodorous, gummy tear would trickle down the
+Devil's sinister nose and drop off on the carpet.
+
+"What you want is money," said the Devil.  "That will give you the
+comfort and the contentment you crave."
+
+"Yes," said Daniel; "it will give me every opportunity to do good."
+
+"To do good!" repeated the Devil.  "To do good, indeed!  Yes, it's many a
+good time we shall have together, friend Daniel!  Ha, ha, ha!"  And the
+Devil laughed uproariously.  Nothing seemed more humorous than the
+prospect of "doing good" with the Devil's money!  But Daniel failed to
+see what the Devil was so jolly about.  Daniel was not a humorist; he
+was, as we have indicated, a plain business man.
+
+It was finally agreed that Daniel should sell his soul to the Devil upon
+condition that for the space of twenty-four years the Devil should serve
+Daniel faithfully, should provide him with riches, and should do
+whatsoever he was commanded to do; then, at the end of the twenty-fourth
+year, Daniel's soul was to pass into the possession of the Devil, and was
+to remain there forever, without recourse or benefit of clergy.  Surely a
+more horrible contract was never entered into!
+
+"You will have to sign your name to this contract," said the Devil,
+producing a sheet of asbestos paper upon which all the terms of the
+diabolical treaty were set forth exactly.
+
+"Certainly," replied Daniel.  "I have been a business man long enough to
+know the propriety and necessity of written contracts.  And as for you,
+you must of course give a bond for the faithful execution of your part of
+this business."
+
+"That is something I have never done before," suggested the Devil.
+
+"I shall insist upon it," said Daniel, firmly.  "This is no affair of
+sentiment; it is strictly and coldly business: you are to do certain
+service, and are to receive certain rewards therefor--"
+
+"Yes, your soul!" cried the Devil, gleefully rubbing his callous hands
+together.  "Your soul in twenty-four years!"
+
+"Yes," said Daniel.  "Now, no contract is good unless there is a quid pro
+quo."
+
+"That's so," said the Devil, "so let's get a lawyer to draw up the paper
+for me to sign."
+
+"Why a lawyer?" queried Daniel.  "A contract is a simple instrument; I,
+as a business man, can frame one sufficiently binding."
+
+"But I prefer to have a lawyer do it," urged the Devil.
+
+"And _I_ prefer to do it myself," said Daniel.
+
+When a business man once gets his mind set, not even an Archimedean lever
+could stir it.  So Daniel drew up the bond for the Devil to sign, and
+this bond specified that in case the Devil failed at any time during the
+next twenty-four years to do whatso Daniel commanded him, then should the
+bond which the Devil held against Daniel become null and void, and upon
+that same day should a thousand and one souls be released forever from
+the Devil's dominion.  The Devil winced; he hated to sign this agreement,
+but he had to.  An awful clap of thunder ratified the abominable treaty,
+and every black cat within a radius of a hundred leagues straightway fell
+to frothing and to yowling grotesquely.
+
+Presently Daniel began to prosper; the Devil was a faithful slave, and he
+served Daniel so artfully that no person on earth suspected that Daniel
+had leagued with the evil one.  Daniel had the finest house in the city,
+his wife dressed magnificently, and his children enjoyed every luxury
+wealth could provide.  Still, Daniel was content to be known as a
+business man; he deported himself modestly and kindly; he pursued with
+all his old-time diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found
+so unproductive of riches.  His indifference to the pleasures which money
+put within his reach was passing strange, and it caused the Devil vast
+uneasiness.
+
+"Daniel," said the Devil, one day, "you're not getting out of this thing
+all the fun there is in it.  You go poking along in the same old rut with
+never a suspicion that you have it in your power to enjoy every pleasure
+of human life.  Why don't you break away from the old restraints?  Why
+don't you avail yourself of the advantages at your command?"
+
+"I know what you 're driving at," said Daniel, shrewdly, "Politics!"
+
+"No, not at all," remonstrated the Devil.  "What I mean is fun,--gayety.
+Why not have a good time, Daniel?"
+
+"But I am having a good time," said Daniel.  "My business is going along
+all right, I am rich.  I 've got a lovely home; my wife is happy; my
+children are healthy and contented; I am respected,--what more could I
+ask?  What better time could I demand?"
+
+"You don't understand me," explained the Devil.  "What I mean by a good
+time is that which makes the heart merry and keeps the soul youthful and
+buoyant,--wine, Daniel!  Wine and the theatre and pretty girls and fast
+horses and all that sort of happy, joyful life!"
+
+"Tut, tut, tut!" cried Daniel; "no more of that, sir!  I sowed my wild
+oats in college.  What right have I to think of such silly follies,--I,
+at forty years of age, and a business man too?"
+
+So not even the Devil himself could persuade Daniel into a life of
+dissipation.  All you who have made a study of the business man will
+agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to swerve from
+conservative methods.  The Devil groaned and began to wonder why he had
+ever tied up to a man like Daniel,--a business man.
+
+Pretty soon Daniel developed an ambition.  He wanted reputation, and he
+told the Devil so.  The Devil's eyes sparkled.  "At last," murmured the
+Devil, with a sigh of relief,--"at last."
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, "I want to be known far and wide.  You must build a
+church for me."
+
+"What!" shrieked the Devil.  And the Devil's tail stiffened up like a
+sore thumb.
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, calmly; "you must build a church for me, and it must
+be the largest and the handsomest church in the city.  The sittings shall
+be free, and you shall provide the funds for its support forever."
+
+The Devil frothed at his mouth, and blue fire issued from his ears and
+nostrils.  He was the maddest devil ever seen on earth.
+
+"I won't do it!" roared the Devil.  "Do you suppose I'm going to spend my
+time building churches and stultifying myself just for the sake of
+gratifying your idle whims?  I won't do it,--never!"
+
+"Then the bond I gave is null and void," said Daniel.
+
+"Take your old bond," said the Devil, petulantly.
+
+"But the bond you gave is operative," continued Daniel.  "So release the
+thousand and one souls you owe me when you refuse to obey me."
+
+"Oh, Daniel!" whimpered the Devil, "how can you treat me so?  Have n't I
+always been good to you?  Have n't I given you riches and prosperity?
+Does no sentiment of friendship--"
+
+"Hush," said Daniel, interrupting him.  "I have already told you a
+thousand times that our relations were simply those of one business man
+with another.  It now behooves you to fulfil your part of our compact;
+eventually I shall fulfil mine.  Come, now, to business!  Will you or
+will you not keep your word and save your bond?"
+
+The Devil was sorely put to his trumps.  But when it came to releasing a
+thousand and one souls from hell,--ah, that staggered him!  He had to
+build the church, and a noble one it was too.  Then he endowed the
+church, and finally he built a parsonage; altogether it was a stupendous
+work, and Daniel got all the credit for it.  The preacher whom Daniel
+installed in this magnificent temple was severely orthodox, and one of
+the first things he did was to preach a series of sermons upon the
+personality of the Devil, wherein he inveighed most bitterly against that
+person and his work.
+
+By and by Daniel made the Devil endow and build a number of hospitals,
+charity schools, free baths, libraries, and other institutions of similar
+character.  Then he made him secure the election of honest men to office
+and of upright judges to the bench.  It almost broke the Devil's heart to
+do it, but the Devil was prepared to do almost anything else than forfeit
+his bond and give up those one thousand and one souls.  By this time
+Daniel came to be known far and wide for his philanthropy and his piety.
+This gratified him of course; but most of all he gloried in the
+circumstance that he was a business man.
+
+"Have you anything for me to do today?" asked the Devil, one morning.  He
+had grown to be a very meek and courteous devil; steady employment in
+righteous causes had chastened him to a degree and purged away somewhat
+of the violence of his nature.  On this particular morning he looked
+haggard and ill,--yes, and he looked, too, as blue as a whetstone.
+
+"I am not feeling robust," explained the Devil.  "To tell the truth, I am
+somewhat ill."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Daniel; "but as I am not conducting a
+sanitarium, I can do nothing further than express my regret that you are
+ailing.  Of course our business relations do not contemplate any
+interchange of sympathies; still I'll go easy with you to-day.  You may
+go up to the house and look after the children; see that they don't smoke
+cigarettes, or quarrel, or tease the cat, or do anything out of the way."
+
+Now that was fine business for the Devil to be in; but how could the
+Devil help himself?  He was wholly at Daniel's mercy.  He went groaning
+about the humiliating task.
+
+The crash came at last.  It was when the Devil informed Daniel one day
+that he was n't going to work for him any more.
+
+"You have ruined my business," said the Devil, wearily.  "A committee of
+imps waited upon me last night and told me that unless I severed my
+connection with you a permanent suspension of my interests down yonder
+would be necessitated.  While I have been running around doing your
+insane errands my personal business has gone to the dogs--I would n't be
+at all surprised if I were to have to get a new plant altogether.
+Meanwhile my reputation has suffered; I am no longer respected, and the
+number of my recruits is daily becoming smaller.  I give up,--I can make
+no further sacrifice."
+
+"Then you are prepared to forfeit your bond?" asked Daniel.
+
+"Not by any means," replied the Devil.  "I propose to throw the matter
+into the courts."
+
+"That will hardly be to your interest," said Daniel, "since, as you well
+know, we have recently elected honest men to the bench, and, as I
+recollect, most of our judges are members in good standing of the church
+we built some years ago!"
+
+The Devil howled with rage.  Then, presently, he began to whimper.
+
+"For the last time," expostulated Daniel, "let me remind you that
+sentiment does not enter into this affair at all.  We are simply two
+business parties coöperating in a business scheme.  Our respective duties
+are exactly defined in the bonds we hold.  You keep your contract and
+I'll keep mine.  Let me see, I still have a margin of thirteen years."
+
+The Devil groaned and writhed.
+
+"They call me a dude," whimpered the Devil.
+
+"Who do?" asked Daniel.
+
+"Beelzebub and the rest," said the Devil.  "I have been trotting around
+doing pious errands so long that I 've lost all my sulphur-and-brimstone
+flavor, and now I smell like spikenard and myrrh."
+
+"Pooh!" said Daniel.
+
+"Well, I do," insisted the Devil.  "You've humiliated me so that I hain't
+got any more ambition.  Yes, Daniel, you've worked me shamefully hard!"
+
+"Well," said Daniel, "I have a very distinct suspicion that when,
+thirteen years hence, I fall into your hands I shall not enjoy what might
+be called a sedentary life."
+
+The Devil plucked up at this suggestion.  "Indeed you shall not," he
+muttered.  "I'll make it hot for you!"
+
+"But come, we waste time," said Daniel.  "I am a man of business, and I
+cannot fritter away the precious moments parleying with you.  I have
+important work for you.  Tomorrow is Sunday; you are to see that all the
+saloons are kept closed."
+
+"I sha'n't--I won't!" yelled the Devil.
+
+"But you must," said Daniel, firmly.
+
+"Do you really expect me to do _that_?" roared the Devil.  "Do you fancy
+that I am so arrant a fool as to shut off the very feeders whereby my
+hungry hell is supplied?  That would be suicidal!"
+
+"I don't know anything about that," said Daniel; "I am a business man,
+and by this business arrangement of ours it is explicitly stipulated--"
+
+"I don't care what the stipulations are!" shrieked the Devil.  "I'm
+through with you, and may I be consumed by my own fires if ever again I
+have anything to do with a business man!"
+
+The upshot of it all was that the Devil forfeited his bond, and by this
+act Daniel was released from every obligation unto the Devil, and one
+thousand and one souls were ransomed from the torture of the infernal
+fires.
+
+
+
+
+METHUSELAH
+
+The discussion now going on between our clergymen and certain
+unbelievers touching the question of Cain and his wife will surely
+result beneficially, for it will set everybody to reading his Bible
+more diligently.  Still, the biography of Cain is one that we could
+never become particularly interested in; in short, of all the Old
+Testament characters none other interests us so much as does
+Methuselah, the man who lived 969 years.  Would it be possible to find
+in all history another life at once so grand and so pathetic?  One can
+get a faint idea of the awful magnitude of Methuselah's career by
+pausing to recollect that 969 years represent 9.69 centuries, 96
+decades, 11,628 months, 50,388 weeks, 353,928 days, 8,494,272 hours,
+521,656,320 minutes, and 36,299,879,200 seconds!
+
+How came he to live so long?  Ah, that is easily enough explained.  He
+loved life and the world,--both were beautiful to him.  And one day he
+spoke his wish in words.  "Oh, that I might live a thousand years!" he
+cried.
+
+Then looking up straightway he beheld an angel, and the angel said:
+"Wouldst thou live a thousand years?"
+
+And Methuselah answered him, saying: "As the Lord is my God, I would
+live a thousand years."
+
+"It shall be even so," said the angel; and then the angel departed out
+of his sight.  So Methuselah lived on and on, as the angel had promised.
+
+How sweet a treasure the young Methuselah must have been to his parents
+and to his doting ancestors; with what tender solicitude must the old
+folks have watched the child's progress from the innocence of his first
+to the virility of his later centuries.  We can picture the happy
+reunions of the old Adam family under the domestic vines and fig-trees
+that bloomed near the Euphrates.  When Methuselah was a mere toddler of
+nineteen years, Adam was still living, and so was his estimable wife;
+the possibility is that the venerable couple gave young Methuselah a
+birthday party at which (we can easily imagine) there were present
+these following, to-wit: Adam, aged 687; Seth, aged 557; Enos, aged
+452; Cainan, aged 362; Mahalaleel, aged 292; Jared, aged 227; Enoch,
+aged 65, and his infant boy Methuselah, aged 19.  Here were represented
+eight direct generations, and there were present, of course,
+the wives and daughters; so that, on the whole, the gathering
+must have been as numerous as it was otherwise remarkable.
+Nowhere in any of the vistas of history, of romance, or of
+mythology were it possible to find a spectacle more imposing than
+that of the child Methuselah surrounded by his father Enoch,
+his grandfather Jared, his great-grandfather Mahalaleel, his
+great-great-grandfather Cainan, his great-great-great-grandfather
+Enos, his great-great-great-great-grandfather Seth, and his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam, as well as by his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve, and her feminine
+posterity for (say) four centuries!  How pretty and how kindly dear old
+grandma Eve must have looked on that gala occasion, attired, as she
+must have been, in all the quaint simplicity of that primeval period;
+and how must the dear old soul have fretted through fear that little
+Methuselah would eat too many papaws, or drink too much goat's milk.
+It is a marvel, we think, that in spite of the indulgence and the
+petting in which he was reared, Methuselah grew to be a good, kind man.
+
+Profane historians agree that just about the time he reached the age of
+ninety-four Methuselah became deeply enamoured of a comely and
+sprightly damsel named Mizpah,--a young thing scarce turned
+seventy-six.  Up to this period of adolescence his cautious father
+Enoch had kept Methuselah out of all love entanglements, and it is
+probable that he would not have approved of this affair with Mizpah had
+not Jared, the boy's grandfather, counselled Enoch to give the boy a
+chance.  But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful
+affection!  It befell in an evil time that there came over from the
+land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with
+finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that
+incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing
+young stranger of 102 as his bride.
+
+This shocking blow so grievously affected Methuselah that for some time
+(that is to say, for a period of ninety-one years) he shunned female
+society.  But having recovered somewhat from the bitterness of that
+great disappointment received in the callowness of his ninth decade, he
+finally met and fell in love with Adah, a young woman of 148, and her
+he married.  The issue of this union was a boy whom they named Lamech,
+and this child from the very hour of his birth gave his father vast
+worriment, which, considering the disparity in their ages, is indeed
+most shocking of contemplation.  The tableau of a father (aged 187)
+vainly coddling a colicky babe certainly does not call for our
+enthusiasm.  Yet we presume to say that Methuselah bore his trials
+meekly, that he cherished and adored the baby, and that he spent weeks
+and months playing peek-a-boo and ride-a-cock-horse.  In all our
+consideration of Methuselah we must remember that the mere matter of
+time was of no consequence to him.
+
+Lamech grew to boyhood, involving his father in all those ridiculous
+complications which parents nowadays do not heed so much, but which
+must have been of vast annoyance to a man of Methuselah's advanced age
+and proper notions.  Whittling with the old gentleman's razor, hooking
+off from school, trampling down the neighbors' rowen, tracking mud into
+the front parlor--these were some of Lamech's idiosyncrasies, and of
+course they tormented Methuselah, who recalled sadly that boys were no
+longer what they used to be when he was a boy some centuries previous.
+But when he got to be 182 years old Lamech had sowed all his wild oats,
+and it was then he married a clever young girl of 98, who bore him a
+son whom they called Noah.  Now if Methuselah had been worried and
+plagued by Lamech, he was more than compensated therefor by this baby
+grandson, whom he found to be, aside from all prejudices, the prettiest
+and the smartest child he had ever seen.  Old father Adam, who was now
+turned of his ninth century, tottered over to see the baby, and he,
+too, allowed that it was an uncommonly bright child.  And dear old
+grandma Eve declared that there was an expression about the upper part
+of the little Noah's face that reminded her very much of the soft-eyed
+boy she lost 800 years ago.  And dear old grandma Eve used to rock
+little Noah and sing to him, and cry softly to herself all the while.
+
+Now, in good time, Noah grew to lusty youth, and although he was, on
+the whole, a joy to his grandsire Methuselah, he developed certain
+traits and predilections that occasioned the old gentleman much
+uneasiness.  At the tender age of 265 Noah exhibited a strange passion
+for aquatics, and while it was common for other boys of that time to
+divert themselves with the flocks and herds, with slingshots and
+spears, with music and dancing, Noah preferred to spend his hours
+floating toy-ships in the bayous of the Euphrates.  Every day he took
+his little shittim-wood boats down to the water, tied strings to them,
+and let them float hither and thither on the crystal bosom of the tide.
+Naturally enough these practices worried the grandfather mightily.
+
+"May not the crocodiles compass him round about?" groaned Methuselah.
+"May not behemoth prevail against him?  Or, verily, it may befall that
+the waves shall devour him.  Woe is me and lamentation unto this
+household if destruction come to him through the folly of his fathers!"
+
+So Methuselah's age began to be full of care and trouble, and many a
+time he felt weary of living, and sometimes--yes, sometimes--he wished
+he were dead.  People in those times were not afraid to die; they
+believed in the second and better life, because God spoke with them and
+told them it should be.
+
+The last century of this good man's sojourn upon earth was
+particularly pathetic.  His ancestors were all dead; he alone
+remained the last living reminiscence of a time that but for him
+would have been forgotten.  Deprived of the wise counsels of his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam and of the gentle
+admonitions of his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve,
+Methuselah felt not only lonesome but even in danger of wrong-doing, so
+precious to him had been the teachings of these worthy progenitors.
+And what particularly disturbed Methuselah were the dreadful changes
+that had taken place in society since he was a boy.  Dress, speech,
+customs, and morals were all different now from what they used to be.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy,--ah, he remembered it well,--people went
+hither and thither clad only in simple fig-leaf garb; and they were
+content therewith.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy, people spoke a plain, direct language,
+strong in its truth, its simplicity, and its honest vigor.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy, manners were open and unaffected, and morals
+were pure and healthy.
+
+But now all these things were changed.  An evil called fashion had
+filled the minds of men and women with vanity.  From the sinful land of
+Nod and from other pagan countries came divers tradesmen with purples
+and linens and fine feathers, whereby a wicked pride was engendered,
+and from these sinful countries, too, came frivolous manners that
+supplanted the guileless etiquette of the past.
+
+Moreover, traffic and intercourse with the subtle heathen had corrupted
+and perverted the speech of Adam's time: crafty phrases and false
+rhetorics had crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were
+fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete.  Such new-fangled
+words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas,"
+and "sithence" had stolen into common usage, making more direct and
+simpler speech a jest and a byword.
+
+Likewise had prudence given way to extravagance, abstemiousness to
+intemperance, dignity to frivolity, and continence to lust; so that by
+these evils was Methuselah grievously tormented, and it repented him
+full sore that he had lived to see such exceeding wickedness upon
+earth.  But in the midst of all these follies did Methuselah maintain
+an upright and godly life, and continually did he bless God for that he
+had held him in the path of rectitude.
+
+Now when Methuselah was in the 964th summer of his sojourn he was
+called upon to mourn the death of his son Lamech, whom an inscrutable
+Providence had cut off in what in those days was considered the flower
+of a man's life,--namely, the eighth century thereof.  Lamech's
+untimely decease was a severe blow to his doting father, who,
+forgetting all his son's boyish indiscretions, remembered now only
+Lamech's good and lovable traits and deeds.  It is reasonable to
+suppose, however, that the old gentleman was somewhat beguiled from his
+grief by the lively dispositions and playful antics of Lamech's
+grandsons, Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,--Shem, Ham, and
+Japheth,--who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of
+ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively.  These boys
+inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and
+scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and
+sloughs of the Euphrates in their gopher-wood canoes.
+
+"Gran'pa," Noah used to say, "the conduct of those boys causes me
+constant vexation.  I have no time to follow them around, and I am
+haunted continually by the fear that they will be drowned, or that the
+crocodiles will get them if they don't watch out!"
+
+But Methuselah would smiling answer: "Possess thy soul in patience and
+thy bowels in peace; for verily is it not written 'boys will be boys!'"
+
+Now Shem, Ham, and Japheth were very fond of their great-grandpa, and
+to their credit be it said that next to paddling over the water
+privileges of the Euphrates they liked nothing better than to sit in
+the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times.
+Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half
+centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally
+suppose.  Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for
+Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on
+earth.  On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in
+very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually
+referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a
+"mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they
+took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him
+with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say
+shocking, to a gentleman of his years.
+
+It was perhaps, however, at the old settlers' picnics, which even then
+were of annual occurrence, that Methuselah most enjoyed himself; for on
+these occasions he was given the place of prominence and he was
+deferred to in everything, since he antedated all the others by at
+least three centuries.  The historians and the antiquarians of the time
+found him of much assistance to them in their labors, since he was
+always ready to provide them with dates touching incidents of the
+remote period from which he had come down unscathed.  He remembered
+vividly how, when he was 186 years of age, the Euphrates had frozen
+over to a depth of seven feet; the 209th winter of his existence he
+referred to as "the winter of the deep snow;" he remembered that
+when he was a boy the women had more character than the women
+of these later years; he had a vivid recollection of the great
+plague that prevailed in the city of Enoch during his fourth
+century; he could repeat, word for word, the address of welcome
+his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam delivered to an
+excursion party that came over from the land of Nod one time when
+Methuselah was a mere child of eighty-seven,--oh, yes, poor old
+Methuselah was full of reminiscence, and having crowded an active
+career into the brief period of 969 years, it can be imagined that
+ponderous tomes would not hold the tales he told whenever he was
+encouraged.
+
+One day, however, Methuselah's grandson Noah took the old gentleman
+aside and confided into his ear-trumpet a very solemn secret which must
+have grieved the old gentleman immensely, for he gnashed his gums and
+wrung his thin, bony hands and groaned dolorously.
+
+"The end of all flesh is at hand," said Noah.  "The earth is filled
+with violence through them, and God will destroy them with the earth.
+I will make an ark of gopher-wood, the length thereof 300 cubits, the
+breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits, and I will
+pitch it within and without with pitch.  Into the ark will I come, and
+my sons and my wife, and my sons' wives, and certain living beasts
+shall come, and birds of the air, and we and they shall be saved.  Come
+thou also, for thou art an austere man and a just."
+
+But as Methuselah sate alone upon his couch that night he thought of
+his life: how sweet it had been,--how that, despite the evil now and
+then, there had been more of happiness than of sorrow in it.  He even
+forgot the wickedness of the world and remembered only its good and its
+sunshine, its kindness and its love.  He blessed God for it all, and he
+prayed for the death-angel to come to him ere he beheld the destruction
+of all he so much loved.
+
+Then the angel came and spread his shadow about the old man.
+
+And the angel said: "Thy prayer is heard, and God doth forgive thee the
+score-and-ten years of the promised span of thy life."
+
+And Methuselah gathered up his feet into the bed, and prattling of the
+brooks, he fell asleep; and so he slept with his fathers.
+
+
+
+
+FÉLICE AND PETIT-POULAIN
+
+The name was singularly appropriate, for assuredly Félice was the
+happiest of all four-footed creatures.  Her nature was gentle; she was
+obedient, long-suffering, kind.  She had known what it was to toil and
+to bear burdens; sometimes she had suffered from hunger and from
+thirst; and before she came into the possession of Jacques she had been
+beaten, for Pierre, her former owner, was a hard master.  But Félice
+was always a kind, faithful, and gentle creature; presumably that was
+why they named her that pretty name, Félice.  She may not have been
+happy when Pierre owned and overworked and starved and beat her; that
+does not concern us now, for herein it is to tell of that time when she
+belonged to Jacques, and Jacques was a merciful man.
+
+Jacques was a farmer; he lived a short distance from Cinqville, which,
+as you are probably aware, is a town of considerable importance upon
+what used to be the boundary line between France and Germany.  The
+country round about is devoted to agriculture.  You can fancy that,
+with its even roads, leafy woods, quiet lanes, velvety paddocks, tall
+hedges, and bountiful fields, this country was indeed as pleasant a
+home as Félice--or, for that matter, any other properly minded
+horse--could hope for.  Toward the southern horizon there were hills
+that looked a grayish blue from a distance; upon these hills were
+vineyards, and the wine that came therefrom is very famous wine, as
+your uncle, if he be a club man, will very truly assure you.  There was
+a pretty little river that curled like a silver snake through the
+fertile meadows, and lost its way among the hills, and there were many
+tiny brooks that scampered across lots and got tangled up with that
+pretty little river in most bewildering fashion.  So, as you can
+imagine, this was a fair country, and you do not wonder that, with so
+merciful a master as Jacques, our friend Félice was happy.
+
+But what perfected her happiness was the coming of her little colt, as
+cunning and as blithe a creature as ever whisked a tail or galloped on
+four legs.  I do not know why they called him by that name, but
+Petit-Poulain was what they called him, and that name seemed to please
+Félice, for when farmer Jacques came thrice a day to the stile and
+cried, "Petit-Poulain, petit, petit, Petit-Poulain!" the kind old
+mother would look up fondly, and, with doting eyes, watch her dainty
+little colt go bounding toward his calling master.  And he was indeed a
+lovely little fellow.  The curé, the holy père François, predicted that
+in due time that colt would make a great name for himself and a great
+fortune for his owner.  The holy père knew whereof he spake, for in his
+youth he had tasted of the sweets of Parisian life, and upon one
+memorable occasion had successfully placed ten francs upon the winner
+of le grand prix.  We can suppose that Félice thought well of the holy
+père.  He never came down the road that she did not thrust her nose
+through the hedge and give a mild whinny of recognition, as if she fain
+would say: "Pray stop a moment and see Petit-Poulain and his old
+mother!"
+
+What happy days those were for Félice and her darling colt.  With what
+tenderness they played together in the paddock; or, when the sky was
+overcast and a storm came on, with what solicitude would the old mother
+lead the way into the thatched stable, where there was snug protection
+against the threatening element.  There are those who say that none but
+humankind is immortal,--that none but man has a soul.  I do not make or
+believe that claim.  There is that within me which tells me that no
+thing in this world and life of ours which has felt the grace of
+maternity shall utterly perish.  And this I say in all reverence, and
+with the hope that I offend neither God nor man.
+
+You are to know that old Félice's devotion to Petit-Poulain was human
+in its tenderness.  As readily, as gladly, and as surely as your dear
+mother would lay down her life for you would old Félice have yielded up
+her life for her innocent, blithe darling.  So old Félice was happy
+that pleasant time in that fair country, and Petit-Poulain waxed hale
+and evermore blithe and beautiful.
+
+Happy days, too, were those for that peaceful country and the other
+dwellers therein.  There was no thought of evil there; the seasons were
+propitious, the vineyards thrived, the crops were bountiful; as far as
+eye could see all was prosperity and contentment.  But one day the holy
+Father François came hurrying down the road, and it was too evident
+that he brought evil tidings.  Félice thought it very strange that he
+paid no heed to her when, as was her wont, she thrust her nose through
+the hedge and gave a mild whinny of welcome.  Anon she saw that he
+talked long and earnestly with her master Jacques, and presently she
+saw that Jacques went into the cottage and came again therefrom with
+his wife Justine and kissed her, and then went away with Père François
+toward the town off yonder.  Félice saw that Justine was weeping, and
+with never a suspicion of impending evil, she wondered why Justine
+should weep when all was so prosperous and bright and fair and happy
+about her.  Félice saw and wondered, and meanwhile Petit-Poulain
+scampered gayly about that velvety paddock.
+
+That night the vineyard hills, bathed in the mellow grace of moonlight,
+saw a sight they had never seen before.  From the east an army came
+riding and marching on,--an army of strange, determined men, speaking a
+language before unheard in that fair country and threatening things of
+which that peaceful valley had never dreamed.  You and I, of course,
+know that these were the Germans advancing upon France,--a nation of
+immortals eager to destroy the possessions and the human lives of
+fellow-immortals!  But old Félice, hearing the din away off
+yonder,--the unwonted noise of cavalry and infantry advancing with
+murderous intent,--she did not understand it all, she did not even
+suspect the truth.  You cannot wonder, for what should a soulless beast
+know of the noble, the human privilege of human slaughter?  Old Félice
+heard that strange din, and instinct led her to coax her little colt
+from the pleasant paddock into that snug and secure retreat, the
+thatched stable, and there, in the early morning, they found her,
+Petit-Poulain pulling eagerly at her generous dugs.
+
+Those who came riding up were strangers in those parts; they were
+ominously accoutred and they spoke words that old Félice had never
+heard before.  Yes, as you have already guessed, they were German
+cavalry-men.  A battle was impending, and they needed more horses.
+
+"Old enough; but in lieu of a better, she will do."  That was what they
+said.  They approached her carefully, for they suspected that she might
+be vicious.  Poor old Félice, she had never harmed even the flies that
+pestered her.  "They are going to put me at the plough," she thought.
+"It is a long time since I did work of any kind,--nothing, in fact,
+since Petit-Poulain was born.  Poor Petit-Poulain will miss me; but I
+will soon return."  With these thoughts she turned her head fondly and
+caressed her pretty colt.
+
+"The colt must be tied in the stall or he will follow her."  So said
+the cavalrymen.  They threw a rope about his neck and made him fast in
+the stable.  Petit-Poulain was very much surprised, and he remonstrated
+vainly with his fierce little heels.
+
+They put a halter upon old Félice.  Justine, the farmer's wife, met
+them in the yard, and reproached them wildly in French.  They laughed
+boisterously, and answered her in German.  Then they rode away, leading
+old Félice, who kept turning her head and whinnying pathetically, for
+she was thinking of Petit-Poulain.
+
+Of peace I know and can speak,--of peace, with its solace of love,
+plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty,
+heartache, disappointment, tears, bereavement.  Of war I know nothing,
+and never shall know; it is not in my heart of for my hand to break
+that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee.
+I do not know of war, nor can I tell you of that battle which men with
+immortal souls fought one glorious day in a fertile country with
+vineyard hills all round about.  But when night fell there was
+desolation everywhere and death.  The Eden was a wilderness; the
+winding river was choked with mangled corpses; shell and shot had mowed
+down the acres of waving grain, the exuberant orchards, the gardens and
+the hedgerows; black, charred ruins, gaunt and ghostlike, marked the
+spots where homes had stood.  The vines had been cut and torn away, and
+the despoiled hills seemed to crouch down like bereaved mothers under
+the pitiless gaze of the myriad eyes of heaven.
+
+The victors went their way; a greater triumph was in store for them; a
+mighty capital was to be besieged; more homes were to be
+desolated,--more blood shed, more hearts broken.  So the victors went
+their way, their hands red and their immortal souls elated.
+
+In the early dawn a horse came galloping homeward.  It is Félice, old
+Félice, riderless, splashed with mud, wild-eyed, sore with fatigue!
+Félice, Félice, what horrors hast thou not seen!  If thou couldst
+speak, if that tongue of thine could be loosed, what would it say of
+those who, forgetful of their souls, sink lower than the soulless
+brutes!  Better it is thou canst not speak; the anguish in thine eyes,
+the despair in thy honest heart, the fear, the awful fear in thy mother
+breast,--what tongue could utter them?
+
+Adown the road she galloped,--the same road she had traversed, perhaps,
+a thousand times before, yet it was so changed now she hardly knew it.
+Twenty-four hours had ruthlessly levelled the noble trees, the
+hedgerows, and the fields of grain.  Twenty-four hours of battle had
+done all this and more.  In all those ghastly hours, one thought had
+haunted Félice; one thought alone,--the thought of Petit-Poulain!  She
+pictured him tied in that far-away stall, wondering why she did not
+come.  He was hungry, she knew; her dugs were full of milk and they
+pained her; how sweet would be her relief when her Petit-Poulain broke
+his long fast.  Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain,--this one
+thought and this alone had old Félice throughout those hours of battle
+and of horror.
+
+Could this have been the farm-house?  It was a ruin now.  Shells had
+torn it apart.  Where was the good master Jacques; had he gone with the
+curé to the defence of the town?  And Justine,--where was she?  Bullets
+had cut away the rose-trees and the smoke-bush; the garden was no more.
+The havoc, the desolation, was complete.  The cote, which had
+surmounted the pole around which an ivy twined, had been swept away.
+The pigeons now circled here and there bewildered; wondering, perhaps,
+why Justine did not come and call to them and feed them.
+
+To this seared, scarred spot came old Félice.  He that had ridden her
+into battle lay with his face downward near those distant vineyard
+hills.  His blood had stained Félice's neck; a bullet had grazed her
+flank, but that was a slight wound,--riderless, she turned and came
+from the battle-field and sought her Petit-Poulain once again.
+
+Hard by the ruins of cottage, of garden, and of cote, she came up
+standing; she was steaming and breathless.  She rolled her eyes wildly
+around,--she looked for the stable where she had left Petit-Poulain.
+She trembled as if an overwhelming apprehension of disaster suddenly
+possessed her.  She gave a whinny, pathetic in its tenderness.  She was
+calling Petit-Poulain.  But there was no answer.
+
+Petit-Poulain lay dead in the ruins of the stable.  His shelter had not
+escaped the fury of the battle.  He could not run away, for they had
+tied him fast when they carried his old mother off.  So now he lay amid
+that debris, his eyes half open in death and his legs stretched out
+stark and stiff.
+
+And old Félice,--her udder bursting with the maternal grace he never
+again should know, and her heart breaking with the agony of sudden and
+awful bereavement,--she staggered, as if blinded by despair, toward
+that vestige of her love, and bent over him and caressed her
+Petit-Poulain.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER
+
+Once upon a time a little boy came, during his play, to the bank of a
+river.  The waters of the river were very dark and wild, and there was
+so black a cloud over the river that the little boy could not see the
+further shore.  An icy wind came up from the cloud and chilled the
+little boy, and he trembled with cold and fear as the wind smote his
+cheeks and ran its slender icicle fingers through his yellow curls.  An
+old man sat on the bank of the river; he was very, very old; his head
+and shoulders were covered with a black mantle; and his beard was white
+as snow.
+
+"Will you come with me, little boy?" asked the old man.
+
+"Where?" inquired the little boy.
+
+"To yonder shore," replied the old man.
+
+"Oh, no; not to that dark shore," said the little boy.  "I should be
+afraid to go."
+
+"But think of the sunlight always there," said the old man, "the birds
+and flowers; and remember there is no pain, nor anything of that kind
+to vex you."
+
+The little boy looked and saw the dark cloud hanging over the waters,
+and he felt the cold wind come up from the river; moreover, the sight
+of the strange man terrified him.  So, hearing his mother calling him,
+the little boy ran back to his home, leaving the old man by the river
+alone.
+
+Many years after that time the little boy came again to the river; but
+he was not a little boy now,--he was a big, strong man.
+
+"The river is the same," said he; "the wind is the same cold, cutting
+wind of ice, and the same black cloud obscures yonder shore.  I wonder
+where the strange old man can be."
+
+"I am he," said a solemn voice.
+
+The man turned and looked on him who spoke, and he saw a warrior clad
+in black armor and wielding an iron sword.
+
+"No, you are not he!" cried the man.  "You are a warrior come to do me
+harm."
+
+"I am indeed a warrior," said the other.  "Come with me across the
+river."
+
+"No," replied the man, "I will not go with you.  Hark, I hear the
+voices of my wife and children calling to me,--I will return to them!"
+
+The warrior strove to hold him fast and bear him across the river to
+the yonder shore, but the man prevailed against him and returned to his
+wife and little ones, and the warrior was left upon the river-bank.
+
+Then many years went by and the strong man became old and feeble.  He
+found no pleasure in the world, for he was weary of living.  His wife
+and children were dead, and the old man was alone.  So one day in those
+years he came to the bank of the river for the third time, and he saw
+that the waters had become quiet and that the wind which came up from
+the river was warm and gentle and smelled of flowers; there was no dark
+cloud overhanging the yonder shore, but in its place was a golden mist
+through which the old man could see people walking on the yonder shore
+and stretching out their hands to him, and he could hear them calling
+him by name.  Then he knew they were the voices of his dear ones.
+
+"I am weary and lonesome," cried the old man.  "All have gone before
+me: father, mother, wife, children,--all whom I have loved.  I see them
+and hear them on yonder shore, but who will bear me to them?"
+
+Then a spirit came in answer to this cry.  But the spirit was not a
+strange old man nor yet an armored warrior; but as he came to the
+river's bank that day he was a gentle angel, clad in white; his face
+was very beautiful, and there was divine tenderness in his eyes.
+
+"Rest thy head upon my bosom," said the angel, "and I will bear thee
+across the river to those who call thee."
+
+So, with the sweet peace of a little child sinking to his slumbers, the
+old man drooped in the arms of the angel and was borne across the river
+to those who stood upon the yonder shore and called.
+
+
+
+
+FRANZ ABT
+
+Many years ago a young composer was sitting in a garden.  All around
+bloomed beautiful roses, and through the gentle evening air the
+swallows flitted, twittering cheerily.  The young composer neither saw
+the roses nor heard the evening music of the swallows; his heart was
+full of sadness and his eyes were bent wearily upon the earth before
+him.
+
+"Why," said the young composer, with a sigh, "should I be doomed to all
+this bitter disappointment?  Learning seems vain, patience is
+mocked,--fame is as far from me as ever."
+
+The roses heard his complaint.  They bent closer to him and whispered,
+"Listen to us,--listen to us."  And the swallows heard him, too, and
+they flitted nearer him; and they, too, twittered, "Listen to
+us,--listen to us."  But the young composer was in no mood to be
+beguiled by the whisperings of the roses and the twitterings of the
+birds; with a heavy heart and sighing bitterly he arose and went his
+way.
+
+It came to pass that many times after that the young composer came at
+evening and sat in the garden where the roses bloomed and the swallows
+twittered; his heart was always full of disappointment, and often he
+cried out in anguish against the cruelty of fame that it came not to
+him.  And each time the roses bent closer to him, and the swallows flew
+lower, and there in the garden the sweet flowers and little birds
+cried, "Listen to us,--listen to us, and we will help you."
+
+And one evening the young composer, hearing their gentle pleadings,
+smiled sadly, and said: "Yes, I will listen to you.  What have you to
+say, pretty roses?"
+
+"Make your songs of us," whispered the roses,--"make your songs of us."
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the composer.  "A song of the roses would be very
+strange, indeed!  No, sweet flowers,--it is fame I seek, and fame would
+scorn even the beauty of your blushes and the subtlety of your
+perfumes."
+
+"You are wrong," twittered the swallows, flying lower.  "You are wrong,
+foolish man.  Make a song for the heart,--make a song of the swallows
+and the roses, and it will be sung forever, and your fame shall never
+die."
+
+But the composer laughed louder than before; surely there never had
+been a stranger suggestion than that of the roses and the swallows!
+Still, in his chamber that night the composer thought of what the
+swallows had said, and in his dreams he seemed to hear the soft tones
+of the roses pleading with him.  Yes, many times thereafter the
+composer recalled what the birds and flowers had said, but he never
+would ask them as he sat in the garden at evening how he could make the
+heart-song of which they chattered.  And the summer sped swiftly by,
+and one evening when the composer came into the garden the roses were
+dead, and their leaves lay scattered on the ground.  There were no
+swallows fluttering in the sky, and the nests under the eaves were
+deserted.  Then the composer knew his little friends were beyond
+recall, and he was oppressed by a feeling of loneliness.  The roses and
+the swallows had grown to be a solace to the composer, had stolen into
+his heart all unawares,--now that they were gone, he was filled with
+sadness.
+
+"I will do as they counselled," said he; "I will make a song of
+them,--a song of the swallows and the roses.  I will forget my greed
+for fame while I write in memory of my little friends."
+
+Then the composer made a song of the swallows and the roses, and, while
+he wrote, it seemed to him that he could hear the twittering of the
+little birds all around him, and scent the fragrance of the flowers,
+and his soul was warmed with a warmth he had never felt before, and his
+tears fell upon his manuscript.
+
+When the world heard the song which the composer had made of the
+swallows and the roses, it did homage to his genius.  Such sentiment,
+such delicacy, such simplicity, such melody, such heart, such
+soul,--ah, there was no word of rapturous praise too good for the
+composer now: fame, the sweetest and most enduring kind of fame, had
+come to him.
+
+And the swallows and the roses had done it all.  Their subtle
+influences had filled the composer's soul with a great inspiration,--by
+means like this God loves to speak to the human heart.
+
+"We told you so," whispered the roses when they came again in the
+spring.  "We told you that if you sang of us the world would love your
+song."
+
+Then the swallows, flying back from the south, twittered: "We told you
+so; sing the songs the heart loves, and you shall live forever."
+
+"Ah, dear ones," said the composer, softly; "you spoke the truth.  He
+who seeks a fame that is immortal has only to reach and abide in the
+human heart."
+
+The lesson he learned of the swallows and the roses he never forgot.
+It was the inspiration and motive of a long and beautiful life.  He
+left for others that which some called a loftier ambition.  He was
+content to sit among the flowers and hear the twitter of birds and make
+songs that found an echo in all breasts.  Ah, there was such a
+beautiful simplicity,--such a sweet wisdom in his life!  And where'er
+the swallows flew, and where'er the roses bloomed, he was famed and
+revered and beloved, and his songs were sung.
+
+Then his hair grew white at last, and his eyes were dim and his steps
+were slow.  A mortal illness came upon him, and he knew that death was
+nigh.
+
+"The winter has been long," said he, wearily.  "Open the window and
+raise me up that I may see the garden, for it must be that spring is
+come."
+
+It was indeed spring, but the roses had not yet bloomed.  The swallows
+were chattering in their nests under the eaves or flitting in the mild,
+warm sky.
+
+"Hear them," he said faintly.  "How sweetly they sing.  But alas! where
+are the roses?"
+
+Where are the roses?  Heaped over thee, dear singing heart; blooming on
+thy quiet grave in the Fatherland, and clustered and entwined all in
+and about thy memory, which with thy songs shall go down from heart to
+heart to immortality.
+
+
+
+
+MISTRESS MERCILESS
+
+This is to tell of our little Mistress Merciless, who for a season
+abided with us, but is now and forever gone from us unto the far-off
+land of Ever-Plaisance.  The tale is soon told; for it were not seemly
+to speak all the things that are in one's heart when one hath to say of
+a much-beloved child, whose life here hath been shortened so that, in
+God's wisdom and kindness, her life shall be longer in that garden that
+bloometh far away.
+
+You shall know that all did call her Mistress Merciless; but her
+mercilessness was of a sweet, persuasive kind: for with the beauty of
+her face and the music of her voice and the exceeding sweetness of her
+virtues was she wont to slay all hearts; and this she did unwittingly,
+for she was a little child.  And so it was in love that we did call her
+Mistress Merciless, just as it was in love that she did lord it over
+all our hearts.
+
+Upon a time walked she in a full fair garden, and there went with her
+an handmaiden that we did call in merry wise the Queen of Sheba; for
+this handmaiden was in sooth no queen at all, but a sorry and
+ill-favored wench; but she was assotted upon our little Mistress
+Merciless and served her diligently, and for that good reason was
+vastly beholden of us all.  Yet, in a jest, we called her the Queen of
+Sheba; and I make a venture that she looked exceeding fair in the eyes
+of our little Mistress Merciless: for the eyes of children look not
+upon the faces but into the hearts and souls of others.  Whilst these
+two walked in the full fair garden at that time they came presently
+unto an arbor wherein there was a rustic seat, which was called the
+Siege of Restfulness; and hereupon sate a little sick boy that, from
+his birth, had been lame, so that he could not play and make merry with
+other children, but was wont to come every day into this full fair
+garden and content himself with the companionship of the flowers.  And,
+though he was a little lame boy, he never trod upon those flowers; and
+even had he done so, methinks the pressure of those crippled feet had
+been a caress, for the little lame boy was filled with the spirit of
+love and tenderness.  As the tiniest, whitest, shrinking flower
+exhaleth the most precious perfume, so in and from this little lame
+boy's life there came a grace that was hallowing in its beauty.
+
+Since they never before had seen him, they asked him his name; and he
+answered them that of those at home he was called Master Sweetheart, a
+name he could not understand: for surely, being a cripple, he must be a
+very sorry sweetheart; yet, that he was a sweetheart unto his mother at
+least he had no doubt, for she did love to hold him in her lap and call
+him by that name; and many times when she did so he saw that tears were
+in her eyes,--a proof, she told him when he asked, that Master
+Sweetheart was her sweetheart before all others upon earth.
+
+It befell that our little Mistress Merciless and Master Sweetheart
+became fast friends, and the Queen of Sheba was handmaiden to them
+both; for the simple, loyal creature had not a mind above the artless
+prattle of childhood, and the strange allegory of the lame boy's speech
+filled her with awe, even as the innocent lisping of our little
+Mistress Merciless delighted her heart and came within the
+comprehension of her limited understanding.  So each day, when it was
+fair, these three came into the full fair garden, and rambled there
+together; and when they were weary they entered into the arbor and sate
+together upon the Siege of Restfulness.  Wit ye well there was not a
+flower or a tree or a shrub or a bird in all that full fair garden
+which they did not know and love, and in very sooth every flower and
+tree and shrub and bird therein did know and love them.
+
+When they entered into the arbor, and sate together upon the Siege of
+Restfulness, it was Master Sweetheart's wont to tell them of the land
+of Ever-Plaisance, for it was a conceit of his that he journeyed each
+day nearer and nearer to that land, and that his journey thitherward
+was nearly done.  How came he to know of that land I cannot say, for I
+do not know; but I am fain to believe that, as he said, the exceeding
+fair angels told him thereof when by night, as he lay sleeping, they
+came singing and with caresses to his bedside.
+
+I speak now of a holy thing, therefore I speak truth when I say that
+while little children lie sleeping in their beds at night it pleaseth
+God to send His exceeding fair angels with singing and caresses to bear
+messages of His love unto those little sleeping children.  And I have
+seen those exceeding fair angels bend with folded wings over the little
+cradles and the little beds, and kiss those little sleeping children
+and whisper God's messages of love to them, and I knew that those
+messages were full of sweet tidings; for, even though they slept, the
+little children smiled.  This have I seen, and there is none who loveth
+little children that will deny the truth of this thing which I have now
+solemnly declared.
+
+Of that land of Ever-Plaisance was our little Mistress Merciless ever
+fain to hear tell.  But when she beset the rest of us to speak thereof
+we knew not what to say other than to confirm such reports as Master
+Sweetheart had already made.  For when it cometh to knowing of that
+far-off land,--ah me, who knoweth more than the veriest little child?
+And oftentimes within the bosom of a little, helpless, fading one there
+bloometh a wisdom which sages cannot comprehend.  So when she asked us
+we were wont to bid her go to Master Sweetheart, for he knew the truth
+and spake it.
+
+It is now to tell of an adventure which on a time befell in that full
+fair garden of which you have heard me speak.  In this garden lived
+many birds of surpassing beauty and most rapturous song, and among them
+was one that they called Joyous, for that he did ever carol forth so
+joyously, it mattered not what the day soever might be.  This bird
+Joyous had his home in the top of an exceeding high tree, hard by the
+pleasant arbor, and here did he use to sit at such times as the little
+people came into that arbor, and then would he sing to them such songs
+as befitted that quiet spot, and them that came thereto.  But there was
+a full evil cat that dwelt near by, and this cruel beast found no
+pleasure in the music that Joyous did make continually; nay, that music
+filled this full evil cat with a wicked thirst for the blood of that
+singing innocent, and she had no peace for the malice that was within
+her seeking to devise a means whereby she might comprehend the bird
+Joyous to her murderous intent.  Now you must know that it was the wont
+of our little Mistress Merciless and of Master Sweetheart to feed the
+birds in that fair garden with such crumbs as they were suffered to
+bring with them into the arbor, and at such times would those birds fly
+down with grateful twitterings and eat of those crumbs upon the
+greensward round about the arbor.  Wit ye well, it was a merry sight to
+see those twittering birds making feast upon the good things which
+those children brought, and our little Mistress Merciless and little
+Master Sweetheart had sweet satisfaction therein.  But, on a day,
+whilst thus those twittering birds made great feasting, lo! on a sudden
+did that full evil cat whereof I have spoken steal softly from a
+thicket, and with one hideous bound make her way into the very midst of
+those birds and seize upon that bird Joyous, that was wont to sing so
+merrily from the tree hard by the arbor.  Oh, there was a mighty din
+and a fearful fluttering, and the rest flew swiftly away, but Joyous
+could not do so, because the full evil cat held him in her cruel fangs
+and claws.  And I make no doubt that Joyous would speedily have met his
+death, but that with a wrathful cry did our little Mistress Merciless
+hasten to his rescue.  And our little Mistress belabored that full evil
+cat with Master Sweetheart's crutch, until that cruel beast let loose
+her hold upon the fluttering bird and was full glad to escape with her
+aching bones into the thicket again.  So it was that Joyous was
+recovered from death; but even then might it have fared ill with him,
+had they not taken him up and dressed his wounds and cared for him
+until duly he was well again.  And then they released him to do his
+plaisance, and he returned to his home in the tree hard by the arbor
+and there he sung unto those children more sweetly than ever before;
+for his heart was full of gratitude to our little Mistress Merciless
+and Master Sweetheart.
+
+Now, of the dolls that she had in goodly number, that one which was
+named Beautiful did our little Mistress Merciless love best.  Know well
+that the doll Beautiful had come not from oversea, and was neither of
+wax nor of china; but she was right ingeniously constructed of a
+bed-key that was made of wood, and unto the top of this bed-key had the
+Queen of Sheba superadded a head with a fair face, and upon the body
+and the arms of the key had she hung passing noble raiment.  Unto this
+doll Beautiful was our little Mistress Merciless vastly beholden, and
+she did use to have the doll Beautiful lie by her side at night whilst
+she slept, and whithersoever during the day she went, there also would
+she take the doll Beautiful, too.  Much sorrow and lamentation,
+therefore, made our little Mistress Merciless when on an evil day the
+doll Beautiful by chance fell into the fish-pond, and was not rescued
+therefrom until one of her beauteous eyes had been devoured of the
+envious water; so that ever thereafter the doll Beautiful had but one
+eye, and that, forsooth, was grievously faded.  And on another evil day
+came a monster ribald dog pup and seized upon the doll Beautiful whilst
+she reposed in the arbor, and bore her away, and romped boisterously
+with her upon the sward, and tore off her black-thread hair, and sought
+to destroy her wholly, which surely he would have done but for the
+Queen of Sheba, who made haste to rescue the doll Beautiful, and
+chastise that monster ribald dog pup.
+
+Therefore, as you can understand, the time was right busily spent.  The
+full fair garden, with its flowers and the singing birds and the
+gracious arbor and the Siege of Restfulness, found favor with those
+children, and amid these joyous scenes did Master Sweetheart have to
+tell each day of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance, whither he said
+he was going.  And one day, when the sun shone very bright, and the
+full fair garden joyed in the music of those birds, Master Sweetheart
+did not come, and they missed the little lame boy and wondered where he
+was.  And as he never came again they thought at last that of a surety
+he had departed into that country whereof he loved to tell.  Which
+thing filled our little Mistress Merciless with wonder and inquiry; and
+I think she was lonely ever after that,--lonely for Master Sweetheart.
+
+I am thinking now of her and of him; for this is the Christmas
+season,--the time when it is most meet to think of the children and
+other sweet and holy things.  There is snow everywhere, snow and cold.
+The garden is desolate and voiceless: the flowers are gone, the trees
+are ghosts, the birds have departed.  It is winter out there, and it is
+winter, too, in this heart of mine.  Yet in this Christmas season I
+think of them, and it pleaseth me--God forbid that I offend with much
+speaking--it pleaseth me to tell of the little things they did and
+loved.  And you shall understand it all if, perchance, this sacred
+Christmas time a little Mistress Merciless of your own, or a little
+Master Sweetheart, clingeth to your knee and sanctifieth your
+hearthstone.
+
+When of an evening all the joy of day was done, would our little
+Mistress Merciless fall aweary; and then her eyelids would grow
+exceeding heavy and her little tired hands were fain to fold.  At such
+a time it was my wont to beguile her weariness with little tales of
+faery, or with the gentle play that sleepy children like.  Much was her
+fancy taken with what I told her of the train that every night whirleth
+away to Shut-Eye Town, bearing unto that beauteous country sleepy
+little girls and boys.  Nor would she be content until I told her
+thereof,--yes, every night whilst I robed her in her cap and gown would
+she demand of me that tale of Shut-Eye Town, and the wonderful train
+that was to bear her thither.  Then would I say in this wise:--
+
+
+At Bedtime-ville there is a train of cars that waiteth for you, my
+sweet,--for you and for other little ones that would go to quiet,
+slumbrous Shut-Eye Town.
+
+But make no haste; there is room for all.  Each hath a tiny car that is
+snug and warm, and when the train starteth each car swingeth soothingly
+this way and that way, this way and that way, through all the journey
+of the night.
+
+Your little gown is white and soft; your little cap will hold those
+pretty curls so fast that they cannot get away.  Here is a curl that
+peepeth out to see what is going to happen.  Hush, little curl! make no
+noise; we will let you peep out at the wonderful sights, but you must
+not tell the others about it; let them sleep, snuggled close together.
+
+The locomotive is ready to start.  Can you not hear it?
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"  That is what the locomotive is
+saying, all to itself.  It knoweth how pleasant a journey it is about
+to make.
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+Oh, many a time hath it proudly swept over prairie and hill, over river
+and plain, through sleeping gardens and drowsy cities, swiftly and
+quietly, bearing the little ones to the far, pleasant valley where
+lieth Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+So sayeth the locomotive to itself at the station in Bedtime-ville; for
+it knoweth how fair and far a journey is before it.
+
+Then a bell soundeth.  Surely my little one heareth the bell!
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+So soundeth the bell, and it seemeth to invite you to sleep and dreams.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+How sweetly ringeth and calleth that bell.
+
+"To sleep--to dreams, O little lambs!" it seemeth to call.  "Nestle
+down close, fold your hands, and shut your dear eyes!  We are off and
+away to Shut-Eye Town!  Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!  To
+sleep--to dreams, O little cosset lambs!"
+
+And now the conductor calleth out in turn.  "All aboard!" he calleth,
+"All aboard for Shut-Eye Town!" he calleth in a kindly tone.
+
+But, hark ye, dear-my-soul, make thou no haste; there is room for all.
+Here is a cosey little car for you.  How like your cradle it is, for it
+is snug and warm, and it rocketh this way and that way, this way and
+that way, all night long, and its pillows caress you tenderly.  So step
+into the pretty nest, and in it speed to Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+
+That is the whistle.  It soundeth twice, but it must sound again before
+the train can start.  Now you have nestled down, and your dear hands
+are folded; let your two eyes be folded, too, my sweet; for in a moment
+you shall be rocked away, and away, away into the golden mists of Balow!
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"
+
+And so my little golden apple is off and away for Shut-Eye Town!
+
+Slowly moveth the train, yet faster by degrees.  Your hands are folded,
+my beloved, and your dear eyes they are closed; and yet you see the
+beauteous sights that skirt the journey through the mists of Balow.
+And it is rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, that your speeding cradle
+goes,--rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, through the golden glories that
+lie in the path that leadeth to Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+
+So crieth the whistle, and it is "down-brakes," for here we are at
+Ginkville, and every little one knoweth that pleasant waking-place,
+where mother with her gentle hands holdeth the gracious cup to her
+sleepy darling's lips.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!" and off is the train again.  And
+swifter and swifter it speedeth,--oh, I am sure no other train speedeth
+half so swiftly!  The sights my dear one sees!  I cannot tell of
+them--one must see those beauteous sights to know how wonderful they
+are!
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+On and on and on the locomotive proudly whirleth the train.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+The bell calleth anon, but fainter and evermore fainter; and fainter
+and fainter groweth that other calling--"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"--till
+finally I know that in that Shut-Eye Town afar my dear one dreameth the
+dreams of Balow.
+
+
+This was the bedtime tale which I was wont to tell our little Mistress
+Merciless, and at its end I looked upon her face to see it calm and
+beautiful in sleep.
+
+Then was I wont to kneel beside her little bed and fold my two
+hands,--thus,--and let my heart call to the host invisible: "O guardian
+angels of this little child, hold her in thy keeping from all the
+perils of darkness and the night!  O sovereign Shepherd, cherish Thy
+little lamb and mine, and, Holy Mother, fold her to thy bosom and thy
+love!  But give her back to me,--when morning cometh, restore ye unto
+me my little one!"
+
+But once she came not back.  She had spoken much of Master Sweetheart
+and of that land of Ever-Plaisance whither he had gone.  And she was
+not afeared to make the journey alone; so once upon a time when our
+little Mistress Merciless bade us good-by, and went away forever, we
+knew that it were better so; for she was lonely here, and without her
+that far-distant country whither she journeyed were not content.
+Though our hearts were like to break for love of her, we knew that it
+were better so.
+
+The tale is told, for it were not seemly to speak all the things that
+are in one's heart when one hath to say of a much-beloved child whose
+life here hath been shortened so that, in God's wisdom and kindness,
+her life shall be longer in that garden that bloometh far away.
+
+About me are scattered the toys she loved, and the doll Beautiful hath
+come down all battered and grim,--yet, oh! so very precious to me, from
+those distant years; yonder fareth the Queen of Sheba in her service as
+handmaiden unto me and mine,--gaunt and doleful-eyed, yet stanch and
+sturdy as of old.  The garden lieth under the Christmas snow,--the
+garden where ghosts of trees wave their arms and moan over the graves
+of flowers; the once gracious arbor is crippled now with the
+infirmities of age, the Siege of Restfulness fast sinketh into decay,
+and long, oh! long ago did that bird Joyous carol forth his last sweet
+song in the garden that was once so passing fair.
+
+And amid it all,--this heartache and the loneliness which the years
+have brought,--cometh my Christmas gift to-day: the solace of a vision
+of that country whither she--our little Mistress Merciless--hath gone;
+a glimpse of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance.
+
+
+
+
+THE PLATONIC BASSOON
+
+All who knew the beautiful and accomplished Aurora wondered why she did
+not marry.  She had now reached the mature age of twenty-five years,
+and was in full possession of those charms which are estimated by all
+men as the choicest gifts a woman can possess.  You must know that
+Aurora had a queenly person, delightful manners, an extensive
+education, and an amiable disposition; and, being the only child of
+wealthy parents, she should not have lacked the one thing that seemed
+necessary to perfect and round out her usefulness as a member of
+society.
+
+The truth was, Aurora did not fancy the male sex.  She regarded men as
+conveniences that might come handy at times when an escort to the
+theatre was required, or when a partner in a dance was demanded, when a
+fan was to be picked up, or when an errand was to be run; but the idea
+of marrying any man was as distasteful to Aurora as the proposition to
+marry a hat-rack or any other piece of household furniture would have
+been.
+
+The secret of this strange aversion might have been traced to Aurora's
+maiden aunt Eliza, who had directed Aurora's education, and had from
+her niece's early youth instilled into Aurora's mind very distinct
+notions touching the masculine sex.
+
+Aurora had numerous admirers among the young gentlemen who moved in the
+same elevated social circle as herself and frequently called at her
+father's house.  Any one of them would gladly have made her his wife,
+and many of them had expressed a tender yearning for her life
+companionship.  But Aurora was quick to recognize in each suitor some
+objectionable trait or habit or feature which her aunt Eliza had told
+about, and which imperatively prohibited a continuance of the young
+gentleman's attentions.
+
+Aurora's father could not understand why his daughter was so
+hypercritical and fastidious in a matter which others of her sex were
+so apt to accept with charitable eyes.  "They are bright, honest
+fellows," he urged, "worthy of any girl's love.  Receive their advances
+kindly, my child, and having chosen one among them, you will be the
+happier for it."
+
+"Never mind, Aurora," said Aunt Eliza.  "Men are all alike.  They show
+their meanness in different ways, but the same spirit of evil is in 'em
+all.  I have lived in this world forty-six years, and during that time
+I have found men to be the most unfeeling and most untrustworthy of
+brutes."
+
+So it was that at the age of twenty-five Aurora was found beautiful,
+amiable, and accomplished, but thoroughly and hopelessly a man-hater.
+And it was about this time that she became involved in that unhappy
+affair which even to this day is talked of by those who knew her then.
+
+On the evening of a certain day Aurora attended the opera with her
+father and mother and Morgan Magnus, the young banker.  Their box at
+the opera was so close to the orchestra that by reaching out her hand
+Aurora could have touched several of the instruments.  Now it happened
+that a bassoon was the instrument nearest the box in which Aurora sat,
+and it was natural therefore that the bassoon attracted more of
+Aurora's attention than any other instrument in the orchestra.  If you
+have never beheld or heard a bassoon you are to understand that it is
+an instrument of wood, of considerable more length than breadth,
+provided with numerous stops and keys, and capable of producing an
+infinite variety of tones, ranging from the depth of lugubriousness to
+the highest pitch of vivacity.  This particular bassoon was of an
+appearance that bordered upon the somber, the polished white of his
+keys emphasizing the solemn black of his long, willowy body.  And, as
+he loomed up above the serene bald head of the musician that played
+him, Aurora thought she had never seen a more distingué object.
+
+The opera was "Il Trovatore," a work well calculated to call in play
+all that peculiar pathos of which the bassoon is capable.  When Aurora
+saw the player raise the bassoon and apply the tiny tube thereunto
+appertaining to his lips, and heard him evoke from the innermost
+recesses of the bassoon tones that were fairly reeking with tears and
+redolent of melancholy, she felt a curious sentiment of pity awakened
+in her bosom.
+
+Aurora had seen many an agonized swain at her feet, and had heard his
+impassioned pleadings for mercy; she had perused many a love missive
+wherein her pity was eloquently implored, but never had she experienced
+the tender, melting sentiment that percolated through her breast when
+she heard the bassoon mingling his melancholy tones with Manrico's
+plaints.  The tears welled up into Aurora's eyes, her bosom heaved
+convulsively, and the most subtile emotions thrilled her soul.
+
+In vain did young Magnus, the banker, seek to learn the cause of her
+agitation, and it seemed like a cruel mockery when Aurora's mother
+said: "You must remember, dear, that it is not real; it is only a
+play."  After this memorable evening, wherein an unexpected and
+indescribable sweetness had crept into the young woman's life, Aurora
+more frequently insisted upon going to the opera.  A strange
+fascination attracted her thither, and on each succeeding evening she
+found some new beauty in the bassoon, some new phase in his
+kaleidoscopic character to wonder at, some new accomplishment to
+admire.  On one occasion--it was at the opera bouffe--this musical
+prodigy exhibited a playfulness and an exuberance of wit and humor that
+Aurora had never dreamed of.  He ran the gamut of vocal conceit, and
+the polyglot fertility of his fancy simply astounded his rapt auditor.
+She was dazed, enchanted, spellbound.  So here we find the fair Aurora
+passing from the condition of pity into the estate of admiration.
+
+And now, having first conceived a wondrous pity for the bassoon, and
+then having become imbued with an admiration of his wit, sarcasm,
+badinage, repartee, and humor, it followed naturally and logically that
+Aurora should fall desperately in love with him; for pity and
+admiration are but the forerunners of the grand passion.
+
+"Aunt Eliza," said Aurora one day, "you have instilled into my
+sensitive nature an indelible aversion to men, compared with which all
+such deleble passions as affection and love are as inconsequential as
+summer zephyrs.  I believe men to be by nature and practice gross,
+vulgar, sensual, and unworthy; and from this opinion I feel that I
+shall never recede.  Yet such a clinging and fragile thing is woman's
+heart that it must needs have some object about which it may twine,
+even as the gentle ivy twines about the oak.  Now, as you know, some
+women there are who, convinced of the utter worthlessness of the
+opposite sex, dedicate their lives to the adoration of some art or
+science, lavishing thereupon that love which women less prudent
+squander upon base men and ungrateful children; in the painting of
+pictures, devotion to the drama, the cultivation of music, pursuit of
+trade, or the exclusive attention to a profession, some women find the
+highest pleasure.  But you and I, dear aunt, who are directed by even
+higher and purer motives than these women, scorn the pursuits of the
+arts and sciences, the professions and trades, and lay our hearts as
+willing sacrifices upon the altars of a tabby cat and a bassoon.  What
+could be purer or more exalted than a love of that kind?"
+
+Having uttered this eloquent preface, which was, indeed, characteristic
+of the fair creature, Aurora told Aunt Eliza of the bassoon, and as she
+spoke of his versatile accomplishments and admirable qualities her eyes
+glowed with an unwonted animation, and a carmine hue suffused her
+beautiful cheeks.  It was plain that Aurora was deeply in love, and
+Aunt Eliza was overjoyed.
+
+"It is gratifying," said Aunt Eliza, "to find that my teachings promise
+such happy results, that the seeds I have so carefully sown already
+show signs of a glorious fruition.  Now, while it is true that I cannot
+conceive of a happier love than that which exists between my own dear
+tabby cat and myself, it is also true that I recognize your bassoon as
+an object so much worthier of adoration than mankind in general, and
+your male acquaintances in particular, that I most heartily felicitate
+you upon the idol you have chosen for your worship.  Bassoons do not
+smoke, nor chew tobacco, nor swear, nor bet on horse-races, nor play
+billiards, nor do any of those horrid things which constitute the
+larger part of a man's ambitions and pursuits.  You have acted wisely,
+my dear, and heaven grant you may be as happy in his love as I am in
+tabby's."
+
+"I feel that I shall be," murmured Aurora; "already my bassoon is very
+precious to me."
+
+With the dawn of this first passion a new motive seemed to come into
+Aurora's life--a gentle melancholy, a subdued sentiment whose
+accompaniments were sighings and day-dreamings and solitary tears and
+swoonings.
+
+Quite naturally Aurora sought Aunt Eliza's society more than ever now,
+and her conversation and thoughts were always on the bassoon.  It was
+very beautiful.
+
+But late one night Aurora burst into Aunt Eliza's room and threw
+herself upon Aunt Eliza's bed, sobbing bitterly.  Aunt Eliza was
+inexpressibly shocked, and under a sudden impulse of horror the tabby
+sprang to her feet, arched her back, bristled her tail, and uttered
+monosyllables of astonishment.
+
+"Why, Aurora, what ails you?" inquired Aunt Eliza, kindly.
+
+"Oh, auntie, my heart is broken, I know it is," wailed Aurora.
+
+"Come, come, my child," said Aunt Eliza, soothingly, "don't take on so.
+Tell auntie what ails you."
+
+"He was harsh and cruel to me to-night, and oh!  I loved him so!"
+moaned Aurora.
+
+"A lovers' quarrel, eh?" thought Aunt Eliza; and she got up, slipped
+her wrapper on, and brewed Aurora a big bowl of boneset tea.  Oh, how
+nice and bitter and fragrant it was, and how Aunt Eliza's nostrils
+sniffed, and how her eyes sparkled as she sipped the grateful beverage.
+
+"There, drink that, my dear," said Aunt Eliza, "and then tell me all
+about it."
+
+Aurora quaffed the bowl of boneset tea, and the wholesome draught
+seemed to give her fortitude, for now she told Aunt Eliza the whole
+story.  It seems that Aurora had been to the opera as usual, not for
+the purpose of hearing and seeing the performance, but simply for the
+sake of being where the beloved bassoon was.  The opera was Wagner's
+"Die Walküre," and the part played by the bassoon in the orchestration
+was one of conspicuous importance.  Fully appreciating his importance,
+the bassoon conducted himself with brutal arrogance and
+superciliousness on this occasion.  His whole nature seemed changed;
+his tones were harsh and discordant, and with malevolent obstinacy he
+led all the other instruments in the orchestra through a seemingly
+endless series of musical pyrotechnics.  There never was a more
+remarkable exhibition of stubbornness.  When the violins and the
+'cellos, the hautboys and the flutes, the cornets and the trombones,
+said "Come, let us work together in G minor," or "Let us do this
+passage in B flat," the bassoon would lead off with a wild shriek in D
+sharp or some other foreign key, and maintain it so lustily that the
+other instruments--e. g., the violins, the 'cellos, the hautboys, and
+all--were compelled to back, switch, and wheel into the bassoon's lead
+as best they could.
+
+But no sooner had they come into harmony than the bassoon--oh,
+melancholy perversity of that instrument--would strike off into another
+key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and
+another stampede.  And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept
+up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in
+his riotous, brutal conduct.
+
+At first Aurora was mortified; then her mortification deepened into
+chagrin.  In the hope of touching his heart she bestowed upon him a
+look of such tender supplication that, had he not been the most callous
+creature in the world, he must have melted under it.  To his eternal
+shame, let it be said, the bassoon remained as impervious to her
+beseeching glances as if he had been a sphinx or a rhinoceros.  In
+fact, Aurora's supplicating eyes seemed to instigate him to further and
+greater madness, for after that he became still more riotous, and at
+many times during the evening the crisis in the orchestra threatened
+anarchy and general disintegration.
+
+Aurora's humiliation can be imagined by those only who have experienced
+a like bitterness--the bitterness of awakening to a realization of the
+cruelty of love.  Aurora loved the bassoon tenderly, deeply,
+absorbingly.  The sprightliness of his lighter moods, no less than the
+throbbing pathos of his sadder moments, had won her heart.  She had
+given him her love unreservedly, she fairly worshipped him, and now she
+awakened, as it were, from a golden dream, to find her idol clay!  It
+was very sad.  Yet who that has loved either man or bassoon does not
+know this bitterness?
+
+"He will be gentler hereafter," said Aunt Eliza, encouragingly.  "You
+must always remember that we should be charitable and indulgent with
+those we love.  Who knows why the bassoon was harsh and wayward and
+imperious to-night?  Let us not judge him till we have heard the whys
+and wherefores.  He may have been ill; depend upon it, my dear, he had
+cause for his conduct."
+
+Aunt Eliza's prudent words were a great solace to Aurora.  And she
+forgave the bassoon all the pain he had inflicted when she went to the
+opera the next night and heard him in "I Puritani," a work in which the
+grand virility of his nature, its vigor and force, came out with
+telling effect.  There was not a trace of the insolence he had
+manifested in "Die Walküre," nor of the humorous antics he had
+displayed in "La Grande Duchesse"; divested of all charlatanism, he was
+now a magnificent, sonorous, manly bassoon, and you may depend upon it
+Aurora was more in love with him than ever.
+
+It was about this time that, perceiving a marked change in his
+daughter's appearance and demeanor, Aurora's father began to question
+her mother about it all, and that good lady at last made bold to tell
+the old gentleman the whole truth of the matter, which was simply that
+Aurora cherished a passion for the bassoon.  Now the father was an
+exceedingly matter-of-fact, old-fashioned man, who possessed not the
+least bit of sentiment, and when he heard that his only child had
+fallen in love with a bassoon, his anger was very great.  He summoned
+Aurora into his presence, and regarded her with an austere countenance.
+
+"Girl," he said, in icy tones, "is it true that you have been flirting
+with a bassoon?"
+
+"Father," replied Aurora, with dignity, "I have never flirted with
+anybody, and you grievously wrong the bassoon when you intimated that
+he, too, is capable of such frivolity."
+
+"It is nevertheless true," roared the old gentleman, "that you have
+conceived a passion for this bassoon, and have cherished it
+clandestinely."
+
+"It _is_ true, father, that I love the bassoon," said Aurora; "it is
+true that I admire his wit, vivacity, sentiment, soul, force, power,
+and manliness, but I have loved in secret.  We have never met; he may
+know I love him, and he may reciprocate my love, but he has never
+spoken to me nor I to him, so there is nothing clandestine in the
+affair."
+
+"Oh, my child! my child!" sobbed the old man, breaking down; "how could
+you love a bassoon, when so many eligible young men are suitors for
+your hand?"
+
+"Don't mention him in the same breath with those horrid creatures!"
+cried Aurora, indignantly.  "What scent of tobacco or odor of wines has
+ever profaned the purity of his balmy breath?  What does he know of
+billiards, of horse-racing, of actresses, and those other features of
+brutal men's lives?  Father, he is pure and good and exalted; seek not
+to debase him by naming him in the category of man!"
+
+"These are Eliza's teachings!" shrieked the old gentleman; and off he
+bundled to vent his wrath on the maiden aunt.  But it was little
+satisfaction he got from Aunt Eliza.
+
+After that the old gentleman kept a strict eye on Aurora, and very soon
+he became satisfied of two things: First, that Aurora was sincerely in
+love with the bassoon; and, second, that the bassoon cared nothing for
+Aurora.  That Aurora loved the bassoon was evidenced by her demeanor
+when in his presence--her steadfast eyes, her parted lips, her heaving
+bosom, her piteous sighs, her flushed cheeks, and her varying emotions
+as his tones changed, bore unimpeachable testimony to the sincerity of
+her passion.  That the bassoon did not care for Aurora was proved by
+his utter disregard of her feelings, for though he might be tender this
+moment he was harsh the next--though pleading now he spurned her anon;
+and so, variable and fickle and false as the winds, he kept Aurora in
+misery and hysterics about half the time.
+
+One morning the old gentleman entered the theatre while the orchestra
+was rehearsing.
+
+"Who plays the bassoon?" he asked, in an imperative tone.
+
+"Ich!" said a man with a bald head and gold spectacles.
+
+"Your name?" demanded the old gentleman.
+
+"Otto Baumgarten," replied he of the bald head and gold spectacles.
+
+"Then, Otto Baumgarten," said the father, "I will give you one hundred
+dollars for your bassoon."
+
+"Mein Gott!" said Herr Baumgarten, "dat bassoon gost me not half so
+much fon dot!"
+
+"Never mind!" replied the old gentleman.  "Take the money and give me
+the bassoon."
+
+Herr Baumgarten did not hesitate a moment.  He clutched at the gold
+pieces, and while he counted them Aurora's father was hastening up the
+street with the bassoon under his arm.  Aurora saw him coming, and she
+recognized the idol of her soul; his silver-plated keys were not to be
+mistaken.  With a cry of joy she met her father in the hallway,
+snatched the bassoon to her heart, and covered him with kisses.
+
+"He makes no answer to your protestations!" said her father.  "Come,
+give over a love that is hopeless; cast aside this bassoon, who is
+hollow at heart, and whose affection at best is only platonic!"
+
+"You speak blasphemies, father," cried Aurora, "and you yourself shall
+hear how he loves me, for when I but put my lips to this slender
+mouthpiece there shall issue from my worshipped bassoon tones of such
+ineffable tenderness that even you shall be convinced that my passion
+is reciprocated."
+
+With these words Aurora glued her beauteous lips to the slender
+blowpipe of the bassoon, and, having inflated her lungs to their
+capacity, breathed into it a respiration that seemed to come from her
+very soul.  But no sound issued from the cold, hollow, unresponsive
+bassoon.  Aurora repeated the effort with increased vigor.  There came
+no answer at all.
+
+"Aha!" laughed her father.  "I told you so; he loves you not."
+
+But then, with a last superhuman effort, Aurora made her third attempt;
+her eyeballs started from their sockets, big, blue veins and cords
+stood out on her lovely neck, and all the force and vigor of her young
+life seemed to go out through her pursed lips into the bassoon's
+system.  And then, oh then! as if to mock her idolatry and sound the
+death knell of her unhappy love, the bassoon recoiled and emitted a
+tone so harsh, so discordant, so supernatural, that even Aurora's
+father drew back in horror.
+
+And lo! hearing that supernatural sound that told her of the
+hopelessness of love, Aurora dropped the hollow, mocking scoffer,
+clutched spasmodically at her heart, and, with an agonizing shriek,
+fell lifeless to the floor.
+
+
+
+
+HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES
+
+
+I
+
+THE EEL-KING
+
+There was a maiden named Liliokani whose father was a fisherman.  But
+the maiden liked not her father's employment, for she believed it to be
+an offence against Atua, the all-god, to deprive any animal of that
+life which Atua had breathed into it.  And this was pleasing unto Atua,
+and he blessed Liliokani with exceeding beauty; no other eyes were so
+large, dark, and tender as hers; the braids of her long, soft hair fell
+like silken seagrass upon her shoulders; she was tall and graceful as
+the palm, and her voice was the voice of the sea when the sea cradles
+the moonlight and sings it to sleep.
+
+Full many kings' sons came wooing Liliokani, and chiefs renowned in
+war; and with others came Tatatao, that was a mighty hunter of hares
+and had compassed famous hardships.  For those men that delight in
+adventure and battle are most pleasantly minded to gentle women, for
+thus capriciously hath Atua, the all-god, ordained.  But Liliokani had
+no ear to the wooing of these men, and the fisherman's daughter was a
+virgin when Mimi came.
+
+Mimi was king of the eels, and Atua had given him eternal life and the
+power to change his shape when it pleased him to issue from the water
+and walk the earth.  It befell that this eel-king, Mimi, beheld
+Liliokani upon a time as he swam the little river near her father's
+abode, and he saw that she was exceeding fair and he heard the soft,
+sad sea-tone in her voice.  So for many days Mimi frequented those
+parts and grew more and more in love with the maiden.
+
+Upon a certain day, while she helped her father to mend his nets,
+Liliokani saw a young man of goodly stature and handsome face
+approaching, and to herself she said: "Surely if ever I be tempted to
+wed it shall be with this young man, whose like I have never before
+known."  But she had no thought that it was Mimi, the eel-king, who in
+this changed shape now walked the earth.
+
+Sweetly he made obeisance and pleasant was his discourse with the
+fisherman and his daughter, and he told them many things of his home,
+which he said was many kumes distant from that spot.  Though he spake
+mostly to the old man, his eyes were fixed upon Liliokani, and, after
+the fashion of her sex, that maiden presently knew that he had great
+love unto her.  Many days after that came Mimi to hold discourse with
+them, and they had joy of his coming, for in sooth he was of fair
+countenance and sweet address, and the fisherman, being a single-minded
+and a simple man, had no suspicion of the love between Mimi and
+Liliokani.  But once Mimi said to Liliokani in such a voice as the
+sea-wind hath to the maiden palm-trees: "Brown maiden mine, let thy
+door be unlatched this night, and I will come to thee."
+
+So the door was not latched that night and Mimi went in unto her, and
+they two were together and alone.
+
+"What meaneth that moaning of the sea?" asked Liliokani.
+
+"The sea chanteth our bridal anthem," he answered.
+
+"And what sad music cometh from the palms to-night?" she asked.
+
+"They sing soft and low of our wedded love," he answered.
+
+But Liliokani apprehended evil, and, although she spake no more of it
+at that time, a fear of trouble was in her heart.
+
+Now Atua, the all-god, was exceeding wroth at this thing, and in
+grievous anger he beheld how that every night the door was unlatched
+and Mimi went in unto Liliokani.  And Atua set about to do vengeance,
+and Atua's wrath is sure and very dreadful.
+
+There was a night when Mimi did not come; the door was unlatched and
+the breath of Liliokani was as the perfume of flowers and of spices
+commingled; yet he came not.  Then Liliokani wept and unbraided her
+hair and cried as a widow crieth, and she thought that Mimi had found
+another pleasanter than she unto him.  So, upon the next night, she
+latched the door.  But in the middle of the night, when the fire was
+kindled in the island moon, there was a gentle tapping at the door, and
+Mimi called to her.  And when she had unlatched the door she began to
+chide him, but he stopped her chiding, and with great groaning he took
+her to his breast, and she knew by the beating of his heart that evil
+had come upon him.
+
+Then Mimi told her who he was and how wroth the all-god was because the
+eel-king, forgetful of his immortality and neglectful of his domain,
+loved the daughter of a mortal.
+
+"Forswear me, then," quoth Liliokani, "forswear me, and come not hither
+again, and the anger of the all-god shall be appeased."
+
+"It is not to lie to Atua," answered Mimi.  "The all-god readeth every
+heart and knoweth every thought.  How can I, that love thee only,
+forswear thee?  More just and terrible would be Atua's wrath for that
+lie to him and that wrong to thee and to myself.  Brown maiden, I go
+back into the sea and from thee forever, bearing with me a love for
+thee which even the all-god's anger cannot chill."
+
+So he kissed her for the last time and bade her a last farewell, and
+then he went from that door down to the water's edge and into his
+domain.  And Liliokani made great moan and her heart was like to break.
+But the sea was placid as a hearthstone and the palms lay asleep in the
+sky that night, for it was Atua's will that the woman should suffer
+alone.
+
+In the middle of the next night a mighty tempest arose.  The clouds
+reached down and buffeted the earth and sea, and the winds and the
+waters cried out in anger against each other and smote each other.
+Above the tumult Atua's voice was heard.  "Arise, Liliokani," quoth
+that voice, "and with thy father's stone hatchet smite off the head of
+the fish that lieth upon the threshold of the door."
+
+Then Liliokani arose with fear and trembling and went to the door, and
+there, on the threshold, lay a monster eel whose body had been floated
+thither by the flood and the tempest.  With her father's stone hatchet
+she smote off the eel's head, and the head fell into the hut, but the
+long, dead body floated back with the flood into the sea and was seen
+no more.  Then the tempest abated, and with the morning came the sun's
+light and its tender warmth.  And at the earliest moment Liliokani took
+the eel's head secretly and buried it with much sorrow and weeping, for
+the eyes within that lifeless head were Mimi's eyes, and Liliokani knew
+that this thing was come of the all-god's wrath.
+
+It was her wont to go each day and make moan over the spot where she
+had hid this vestige of her love, and presently Atua pitied her, for
+Atua loveth his children upon this earth, even though they sin most
+grievously.  So, by and by, Liliokani saw that two green leaves were
+sprouting from the earth, and in a season these two leaves became twin
+stalks and grew into trees, the like of which had never before been
+seen upon earth.  And Liliokani lived to see and to taste the fruit of
+these twin trees that sprung from Mimi's brain--the red cocoanut and
+the white cocoanut, whereof all men have eaten since that time.  And
+all folk hold that fruit in sweet estimation, for it cometh from the
+love that a god had unto a mortal woman, and mortality is love and love
+is immortality.
+
+Atua forgot not Liliokani when the skies opened to her; she liveth
+forever in the star that looketh only upon this island, and it is her
+tender grace that nourishes the infant cocoas and maketh the elder ones
+fruitful.  Meanwhile no woman that dwelleth upon earth hath
+satisfaction in tasting the flesh of eels, for a knowledge of Mimi's
+love and sacrifice hath been subtly implanted by Atua, the all-god, in
+every woman's breast.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MOON LADY
+
+Once there were four maidens who were the daughters of Talakoa, and
+they were so very beautiful that their fame spread through the
+universe.  The oldest of these maidens was named Kaulualua, and it is
+of her that it is to tell this tale.
+
+One day while Kaulualua was combing her hair she saw a tall, fair man
+fishing in the rivulet, and he was a stranger to her.  Never before had
+she seen so fair a man, though in very sooth she had been wooed of many
+king's sons and of chiefs from every part of the earth.  Then she
+called to her three sisters and asked them his name, but they could not
+answer; this, however, they knew--he was of no country whereof they had
+heard tell, for he was strangely clad and he was of exceeding fair
+complexion and his stature surpassed that of other men.
+
+The next day these maidens saw this same tall, fair man, but he no
+longer fished in the rivulet; he hunted the hares and was passing
+skilful thereat, so that the maidens admired him not only for his
+exceeding comeliness but also for his skill as a huntsman, for surely
+there was no hare that could escape his vigilance and the point of his
+arrow.  So when Talakoa, their father, came that evening the maidens
+told him of this stranger, and he wondered who he was and whence he
+fared.  Awaking from sleep in the middle of that night, Kaulualua saw
+that the stars shone with rare brilliancy, and that by their light a
+man was gazing upon her through the window.  And she saw that the man
+was the tall, fair man of whom it has been spoken.  So she uttered no
+cry, but feigned that she slept, for she saw that there was love in the
+tall, fair man's eyes, and it pleaseth a maiden to be looked upon in
+that wise.
+
+When it was morning this tall, fair man came and entered that house and
+laid a fish and a hare upon the hearthstone and called for Talakoa.
+And he quoth to Talakoa:
+
+"Old man, I would have your daughter to wife."
+
+Being a full crafty man, as beseemeth one of years, Talakoa replied:
+"Four daughters have I."
+
+The tall, fair man announced: "You speak sooth, as well becometh a full
+crafty man.  Four daughters have you, and it is Kaulualua that I would
+have to wife."
+
+Saith that full crafty man, the father: "How many palm trees grow in
+thy possession, and how many rivers flow through thy chiefdom?  Whence
+comest thou, gentle sir, for assuredly neither I nor mine have seen the
+like of thee before."
+
+"Good sooth," answered the tall, fair man, "I will tell you no lie, for
+I would have that daughter to wife, and the things you require do well
+beseem a full crafty man that meaneth for his child's good.  I am the
+man of the moon, and my name is Marama."
+
+Then Talakoa and his daughters looked at one another and were sore
+puzzled, for they knew not whereof Marama spake.  And they deemed him a
+madman; yet did they not laugh him to scorn, because that he had come
+a-wooing, and had laid the fish and the hare upon the hearthstone.
+
+"Kind sir, bringing gifts," quoth Talakoa, "I say no lie to you, but we
+know not that country whereof you speak.  Pray tell us of the moon and
+where is it situate, and how many kumes is it distant from here?"
+
+"Full crafty man, father of her whom I would have to wife, I will tell
+you truly," answered Marama.  "The moon wherefrom I come is a mighty
+island in the vast sea of night, and it is distant from here so great a
+space that it were not to count the kumes that lie between.  Exceeding
+fair is that island in that vast sea, and it hath mountains and valleys
+and plains and seas and rivers and lakes, and I am the chief overall.
+Atua made that island for me and put it in that mighty sea, for I am
+the son of Atua, and over that island in that sea I shall rule forever."
+
+Great wonder had they to hear tell of these things, and they knew now
+that Marama was the child of Atua, who made the universe and is the
+all-god.  Then Marama said on:
+
+"Atua bade me search and find me a wife, and upon the stars have I
+walked two hundred years, fishing and hunting, and seeing maidens, but
+of all maidens seen there is none that I did love.  So now at last, in
+this island of this earth, I have found Kaulualua, and have seen the
+pearl of her beauty and smelled the cinnamon of her breath, and I would
+fain have her to wife that she may be ruler with me over the moon, my
+island in the vast, black sea of night."
+
+It was not for Talakoa, being of earth such as all human kind, to
+gainsay the words of Marama.  And there was a flame in Kaulualua's
+heart and incense in her breath and honey in her eyes toward this tall,
+fair man that was the son of Atua.  So the old father said to her:
+"Take up the fish and the hare and roast them, my daughter, and spread
+them before us, and we will eat them and so pledge our troth, one to
+another."
+
+This thing did Kaulualua, and so the man from the moon had her to wife.
+
+That night they went from the home of Talakoa to the island in the sea
+of night, and Talakoa and the three maidens watched for a signal from
+that island, for Kaulualua told them she would build a fire thereon
+that they might know when she was come thither.  Many, many nights they
+watched, and their hair grew white, and Time marked their faces with
+his fingers, and the moss gathered on the palm trees.  At last, as if
+he would sleep forever, Talakoa laid himself upon his mat by the door
+and asked that the skies be opened to him, for he was enfeebled with
+age.
+
+And while he asked this thing the three sisters saw a dim light afar
+off in the black sea of night, and it was such a light as had never
+before been seen.  And this light grew larger and brighter, so that in
+seven nights it was thrice the size of the largest palm leaf, and it
+lighted up all that far-off island in the sea of night, and they knew
+that Kaulualua and the moon-god were in their home at last.  So old
+Talakoa was soothed and the skies that opened unto him found him
+satisfied.
+
+The three sisters lived long, and yet two hundred ages are gone since
+the earth received them into its bosom.  Yet still upon that island in
+the dark sea of night abideth in love the moon-god with his bride.
+Atua hath been good to her, for he hath given her eternal youth, as he
+giveth to all wives that do truly love and serve their husbands.  It is
+for us to see that pleasant island wherein Kaulualua liveth; it is for
+us to see that when Marama goeth abroad to hunt or to fish his
+moon-lady sitteth alone and maketh moan, and heedeth not her fires; it
+is for us to see that when anon he cometh back she buildeth up those
+fires whereon to cook food for him, and presently the fires grow
+brighter and the whole round moon island is lighted and warmed thereby.
+In this wise an exceeding fair example is set unto all wives of their
+duty unto their mates.
+
+When the sea singeth to the sands, when the cane beckoneth to the
+stars, and when the palm-leaves whisper to sweet-breathed night, how
+pleasant it is, my brown maiden, to stand with thee and look upon that
+island in the azure sea that spreadeth like a veil above the cocoa
+trees.  For there we see the moon-lady, and she awaiteth her dear lord
+and she smileth in love; and that grace warmeth our hearts--your heart
+and mine, O little maiden! and we are glad with a joy that knoweth no
+speaking.
+
+
+
+
+LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM
+
+The Plainfield boys always had the name of being smart, and I guess
+Lute Baker was just about the smartest boy the old town ever turned
+out.  Well, he came by it naturally; Judge Baker was known all over
+western Massachusetts as the sage of Plainfield, and Lute's mother--she
+was a Kellogg before the judge married her--she had more faculty than a
+dozen of your girls nowadays, and her cooking was talked about
+everywhere--never was another woman, as folks said, could cook like
+Miss Baker.  The boys--Lute's friends--used to hang around the back
+porch of noonings just to get some of her doughnuts; she was always
+considerate and liberal to growing boys.  May be Lute would n't have
+been so popular if it had n't been for those doughnuts, and may be he
+would n't have been so smart if it had n't been for all the good things
+his mother fed into him.  Always did believe there was piety and wisdom
+in New England victuals.
+
+Lute went to Amherst College and did well; was valedictorian; then he
+taught school a winter, for Judge Baker said that nobody could amount
+to much in the world unless he taught school a spell.  Lute was set on
+being a lawyer, and so presently he went down to Springfield and read
+and studied in Judge Morris' office, and Judge Morris wrote a letter
+home to the Bakers once testifying to Lute's "probity" and
+"acumen"--things that are never heard tell of except high up in the
+legal profession.
+
+How Lute came to get the western fever I can't say, but get it he did,
+and one winter he up and piked off to Chicago, and there he hung out
+his shingle and joined a literary social and proceeded to get rich and
+famous.  The next spring Judge Baker fell off the woodshed while he was
+shingling it, and it jarred him so he kind of drooped and pined round a
+spell and then one day up and died.  Lute had to come back home and
+settle up the estate.
+
+When he went west again he took a wife with him--Emma Cowles that was
+(everybody called her Em for short), pretty as a picture and as likely
+a girl as there was in the township.  Lute had always had a hankering
+for Em, and Em thought there never was another such a young fellow as
+Lute; she understood him perfectly, having sung in the choir with him
+two years.  The young couple went west well provided.
+
+Lute and Em went to housekeeping in Chicago.  Em wanted to do her own
+work, but Lute would n't hear to it; so they hired a German girl that
+was just over from the vineyards of the Rhine country.
+
+"Lute," says Em, "Hulda does n't know much about cooking."
+
+"So I see," says Lute, feelingly.  "She's green as grass; you'll have
+to teach her."
+
+Hulda could swing a hoe and wield a spade deftly, but of the cuisine
+she knew somewhat less than nothing.  Em had lots of patience and
+pluck, but she found teaching Hulda how to cook a precious hard job.
+Lute was amiable enough at first; used to laugh it off with a cordial
+bet that by and by Em would make a famous cook of the obtuse but
+willing immigrant.  This moral backing buoyed Em up considerable, until
+one evening in an unguarded moment Lute expressed a pining for some
+doughnuts "like those mother makes," and that casual remark made Em
+unhappy.  But next evening when Lute came home there were doughnuts on
+the table--beautiful, big, plethoric doughnuts that fairly reeked with
+the homely, delicious sentiment of New England.  Lute ate one.  Em felt
+hurt.
+
+"I guess it's because I 've eaten so much else," explained Lute, "but
+somehow or other they don't taste like mother's."
+
+Next day Em fed the rest of the doughnuts to a poor man who came and
+said he was starving.  "Thank you, marm," said he, with his heart full
+of gratitude and his mouth full of doughnuts; "I ha' n't had anything
+as good as this since I left Connecticut twenty years ago."
+
+That little subtlety consoled Em, but still she found it hard to bear
+up under her apparent inability to do her duty by Lute's critical
+palate.  Once when Lute brought Col. Hi Thomas home to dinner they had
+chicken pie.  The colonel praised it and passed his plate a third time.
+
+"Oh, but you ought to eat some of mother's chicken pie," said Lute.
+"Mother never puts an under crust in her chicken pies, and that makes
+'em juicier."
+
+Same way when they had fried pork and potatoes; Lute could not
+understand why the flesh of the wallowing, carnivorous western hog
+should n't be as white and firm and sweet as the meat of the swill-fed
+Yankee pig.  And why were the Hubbard squashes so tasteless and why was
+maple syrup so very different?  Yes, amid all his professional duties
+Lute found time to note and remark upon this and other similar things,
+and of course Em was--by implication, at least--held responsible for
+them all.
+
+And Em did try so hard, so very hard, to correct the evils and to
+answer the hypercritical demands of Lute's foolishly petted and spoiled
+appetite.  She warred valorously with butchers, grocers, and hucksters;
+she sent down east to Mother Baker for all the famous family recipes;
+she wrestled in speech and in practice with that awful Hulda; she
+experimented long and patiently; she blistered her pretty face and
+burned her little hands over that kitchen range--yes, a slow, constant
+martyrdom that conscientious wife willingly endured for years in her
+enthusiastic determination to do her duty by Lute.  Doughnuts,
+chicken-pies, boiled dinners, layer-cakes, soda biscuits, flapjacks,
+fish balls, baked beans, squash pies, corned-beef hash, dried-apple
+sauce, currant wine, succotash, brown bread--how valorously Em toiled
+over them, only to be rewarded with some cruel reminder of how "mother"
+used to do these things!  It was terrible; a tedious martyrdom.
+
+Lute--mind you--Lute was not wilfully cruel; no, he was simply and
+irremediably a heedless idiot of a man, just as every married man is,
+for a spell, at least.  But it broke Em's heart, all the same.
+
+Lute's mother came to visit them when their first child was born, and
+she lifted a great deal of trouble off the patient wife.  Old Miss
+Baker always liked Em; had told the minister three years ago that she
+knew Em would make Lute a good Christian wife.  They named the boy
+Moses, after the old judge who was dead, and old Miss Baker said he
+should have his gran'pa's watch when he got to be twenty-one.
+
+Old Miss Baker always stuck by Em; may be she remembered how the old
+judge had talked once on a time about his mother's cooking.  For all
+married men are, as I have said, idiotically cruel about that sort of
+thing.  Yes, old Miss Baker braced Em up wonderful; brought a lot of
+dried catnip out west with her for the baby; taught Em how to make
+salt-rising bread; told her all about stewing things and broiling
+things and roasting things; showed her how to tell the real Yankee
+codfish from the counterfeit--oh, she just did Em lots of good, did old
+Miss Baker!
+
+The rewards of virtue may be slow in coming, but they are sure to come.
+Em's three boys--the three bouncing boys that came to Em and
+Lute--those three boys waxed fat and grew up boisterous, blatant
+appreciators of their mother's cooking.  The way those boys did eat
+mother's doughnuts!  And mother's pies--wow!  Other boys--the
+neighbors' boys--came round regularly in troops, battalions, armies,
+and like a consuming fire licked up the wholesome viands which Em's
+skill and liberality provided for her own boys' enthusiastic playmates.
+And all those boys--there must have been millions of 'em--were living,
+breathing, vociferous testimonials to the unapproachable excellence of
+Em's cooking.
+
+Lute got into politics, and they elected him to the legislature.  After
+the campaign, needing rest, he took it into his head to run down east
+to see his mother; he had not been back home for eight years.  He took
+little Moses with him.  They were gone about three weeks.  Gran'ma
+Baker had made great preparations for them; had cooked up enough pies
+to last all winter, and four plump, beheaded, well-plucked,
+yellow-legged pullets hung stiff and solemn-like in the chill pantry
+off the kitchen, awaiting the last succulent scene of all.
+
+Lute and the little boy got there late of an evening.  The dear old
+lady was so glad to see them; the love that beamed from her kindly eyes
+well nigh melted the glass in her silver-bowed specks.  The table was
+spread in the dining-room; the sheet-iron stove sighed till it seemed
+like to crack with the heat of that hardwood fire.
+
+"Why, Lute, you ain't eatin' enough to keep a fly alive," remonstrated
+old Miss Baker, when her son declined a second doughnut; "and what ails
+the child?" she continued; "ha' n't he got no appetite?  Why, when you
+wuz his age, Lute, seemed as if I could n't cook doughnuts fast enough
+for you!"
+
+Lute explained that both he and his little boy had eaten pretty
+heartily on the train that day.  But all the time of their visit there
+poor old Gran'ma Baker wondered and worried because they did n't eat
+enough--seemed to her as if western folks had n't the right kind of
+appetite.  Even the plump pullets, served in a style that had made Miss
+Baker famed throughout those discriminating parts--even those pullets
+failed to awaken the expected and proper enthusiasm in the visitors.
+
+Home again in Chicago, Lute drew his chair up to the table with an
+eloquent sigh of relief.  As for little Moses, he clamored his delight.
+
+"Chicken pie!" he cried, gleefully; and then he added a soulful "wow!"
+as his eager eyes fell upon a plateful of hot, exuberant, voluptuous
+doughnuts.
+
+"Yes, we are both glad to get back," said Lute.
+
+"But I am afraid," suggested Em, timidly, "that gran'ma's cooking has
+spoiled you."
+
+Little Moses (bless him) howled an indignant, a wrathful remonstrance.
+"Gran'ma can't cook worth a cent!" said he.
+
+Em expected Lute to be dreadfully shocked, but he was n't.
+
+"I would n't let her know it for all the world," remarked Lute,
+confidentially, "but mother has lost her grip on cooking.  At any rate,
+her cooking is n't what it used to be; it has changed."
+
+Then Em came bravely to the rescue.  "No, Lute," says she, and she
+meant it, "your mother's cooking has n't changed, but _you_ have.  The
+man has grown away from the boy, and the tastes, the ways, and the
+delights of boyhood have no longer any fascination for the man."
+
+"May be you 're right," said Lute.  "At any rate, I 'm free to say that
+_your_ cooking beats the world."
+
+Good for Lute!  Virtue triumphs and my true story ends.  But first an
+explanation to concinnate my narrative.
+
+I should never have known this true story if Lute himself had n't told
+it to me at the last dinner of the Sons of New England--told it to me
+right before Em, that dear, patient little martyred wife of his.  And I
+knew by the love light in Em's eyes that she was glad that she had
+endured that martyrdom for Lute's sake.
+
+
+
+
+JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS
+
+One Christmas eve Joel Baker was in a most unhappy mood.  He was
+lonesome and miserable; the chimes making merry Christmas music outside
+disturbed rather than soothed him, the jingle of the sleigh-bells
+fretted him, and the shrill whistling of the wind around the corners of
+the house and up and down the chimney seemed to grate harshly on his
+ears.
+
+"Humph," said Joel, wearily, "Christmas is nothin' to me; there _was_ a
+time when it meant a great deal, but that was long ago--fifty years is
+a long stretch to look back over.  There is nothin' in Christmas now,
+nothin' for _me_ at least; it is so long since Santa Claus remembered
+me that I venture to say he has forgotten that there ever was such a
+person as Joel Baker in all the world.  It used to be different; Santa
+Claus _used_ to think a great deal of me when I was a boy.  Ah!
+Christmas nowadays ain't what it was in the good old time--no, not what
+it used to be."
+
+As Joel was absorbed in his distressing thoughts he became aware very
+suddenly that somebody was entering or trying to enter the room.  First
+came a draft of cold air, then a scraping, grating sound, then a
+strange shuffling, and then,--yes, then, all at once, Joel saw a pair
+of fat legs and a still fatter body dangle down the chimney, followed
+presently by a long white beard, above which appeared a jolly red nose
+and two bright twinkling eyes, while over the head and forehead was
+drawn a fur cap, white with snowflakes.
+
+"Ha, ha," chuckled the fat, jolly stranger, emerging from the chimney
+and standing well to one side of the hearthstone; "ha, ha, they don't
+have the big, wide chimneys they used to build, but they can't keep
+Santa Claus out--no, they can't keep Santa Claus out!  Ha, ha, ha.
+Though the chimney were no bigger than a gas pipe, Santa Claus would
+slide down it!"
+
+It didn't require a second glance to assure Joel that the new-comer was
+indeed Santa Claus.  Joel knew the good old saint--oh, yes--and he had
+seen him once before, and, although that was when Joel was a little
+boy, he had never forgotten how Santa Claus looked.
+
+Nor had Santa Claus forgotten Joel, although Joel thought he had; for
+now Santa Claus looked kindly at Joel and smiled and said: "Merry
+Christmas to you, Joel!"
+
+"Thank you, old Santa Claus," replied Joel, "but I don't believe it's
+going to be a very merry Christmas.  It's been so long since I 've had
+a merry Christmas that I don't believe I 'd know how to act if I had
+one."
+
+"Let's see," said Santa Claus, "it must be going on fifty years since I
+saw you last--yes, you were eight years old the last time I slipped
+down the chimney of the old homestead and filled your stocking.  Do you
+remember it?"
+
+"I remember it well," answered Joel.  "I had made up my mind to lie
+awake and see Santa Claus; I had heard tell of you, but I 'd never seen
+you, and Brother Otis and I concluded we 'd lie awake and watch for you
+to come."
+
+Santa Claus shook his head reproachfully.  "That was very wrong," said
+he, "for I 'm so scarey that if I 'd known you boys were awake I 'd
+never have come down the chimney at all, and then you 'd have had no
+presents."
+
+"But Otis could n't keep awake," explained Joel.  "We talked about
+everythin' we could think of, till father called out to us that if we
+did n't stop talking he 'd have to send one of us up into the attic to
+sleep with the hired man.  So in less than five minutes Otis was sound
+asleep and no pinching could wake him up.  But _I_ was bound to see
+Santa Claus and I don't believe anything would 've put me to sleep.  I
+heard the big clock in the sitting-room strike eleven, and I had begun
+wonderin' if you never were going to come, when all of a sudden I heard
+the tinkle of the bells around your reindeers' necks.  Then I heard the
+reindeers prancin' on the roof and the sound of your sleigh-runners
+cuttin' through the crust and slippin' over the shingles.  I was kind
+o' scared and I covered my head up with the sheet and quilts--only I
+left a little hole so I could peek out and see what was goin' on.  As
+soon as I saw you I got over bein' scared--for you were jolly and
+smilin' like, and you chuckled as you went around to each stockin' and
+filled it up."
+
+"Yes, I can remember the night," said Santa Claus.  "I brought you a
+sled, did n't I?"
+
+"Yes, and you brought Otis one, too," replied Joel.  "Mine was red and
+had 'Yankee Doodle' painted in black letters on the side; Otis' was
+black and had 'Snow Queen' in gilt letters."
+
+"I remember those sleds distinctly," said Santa Claus, "for I made them
+specially for you boys."
+
+"You set the sleds up against the wall," continued Joel, "and then you
+filled the stockin's."
+
+"There were six of 'em, as I recollect?" said Santa Claus.
+
+"Let me see," queried Joel.  "There was mine, and Otis', and Elvira's,
+and Thankful's, and Susan Prickett's--Susan was our help, you know.
+No, there were only five, and, as I remember, they were the biggest we
+could beg or borrer of Aunt Dorcas, who weighed nigh unto two hundred
+pounds.  Otis and I did n't like Susan Prickett, and we were hopin' you
+'d put a cold potato in her stockin'."
+
+"But Susan was a good girl," remonstrated Santa Claus.  "You know I put
+cold potatoes only in the stockin's of boys and girls who are bad and
+don't believe in Santa Claus."
+
+"At any rate," said Joel, "you filled all the stockin's with candy and
+pop-corn and nuts and raisins, and I can remember you said you were
+afraid you 'd run out of pop-corn balls before you got around.  Then
+you left each of us a book.  Elvira got the best one, which was 'The
+Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of
+hearts, and so forth.  Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left
+him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to wear to
+meetin'."
+
+"Of course," said Santa Claus, "I never forgot father and mother."
+
+"Well, it was as much as I could do to lay still," continued Joel, "for
+I 'd been longin' for a sled, an' the sight of that red sled with
+'Yankee Doodle' painted on it jest made me wild.  But, somehow or
+other, I began to get powerful sleepy all at once, and I could n't keep
+my eyes open.  The next thing I knew Otis was nudgin' me in the ribs.
+'Git up, Joel,' says he; 'it's Chris'mas an' Santa Claus has been
+here.'  'Merry Christ'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' we cried as we tumbled
+out o' bed.  Then Elvira an' Thankful came in, not more 'n half
+dressed, and Susan came in, too, an' we just made Rome howl with 'Merry
+Chris'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' to each other.  'Ef you children don't
+make less noise in there,' cried father, 'I'll hev to send you all back
+to bed.'  The idea of askin' boys an' girls to keep quiet on Chris'mas
+mornin' when they 've got new sleds an' 'Garlands of Frien'ship'!"
+
+Santa Claus chuckled; his rosy cheeks fairly beamed joy.
+
+"Otis an' I did n't want any breakfast," said Joel.  "We made up our
+minds that a stockin'ful of candy and pop-corn and raisins would stay
+us for a while.  I do believe there was n't buckwheat cakes enough in
+the township to keep us indoors that mornin'; buckwheat cakes don't
+size up much 'longside of a red sled with 'Yankee Doodle' painted onto
+it and a black sled named 'Snow Queen.'  _We_ did n't care how cold it
+was--so much the better for slidin' down hill!  All the boys had new
+sleds--Lafe Dawson, Bill Holbrook, Gum Adams, Rube Playford, Leander
+Merrick, Ezra Purple--all on 'em had new sleds excep' Martin Peavey,
+and he said he calculated Santa Claus had skipped him this year 'cause
+his father had broke his leg haulin' logs from the Pelham woods and had
+been kep' indoors six weeks.  But Martin had his ol' sled, and he
+didn't hev to ask any odds of any of us, neither."
+
+"I brought Martin a sled the _next_ Christmas," said Santa Claus.
+
+"Like as not--but did you ever slide down hill, Santa Claus?  I don't
+mean such hills as they hev out here in this _new_ country, but one of
+them old-fashioned New England hills that was made 'specially for boys
+to slide down, full of bumpers an' thank-ye-marms, and about ten times
+longer comin' up than it is goin' down!  The wind blew in our faces and
+almos' took our breath away.  'Merry Chris'mas to ye, little boys!' it
+seemed to say, and it untied our mufflers an' whirled the snow in our
+faces, just as if it was a boy, too, an' wanted to play with us.  An
+ol' crow came flappin' over us from the corn field beyond the meadow.
+He said: 'Caw, caw,' when he saw my new sled--I s'pose he 'd never seen
+a red one before.  Otis had a hard time with _his_ sled--the black
+one--an' he wondered why it would n't go as fast as mine would.  'Hev
+you scraped the paint off'n the runners?' asked Wralsey Goodnow.
+'Course I hev,' said Otis; 'broke my own knife an' Lute Ingraham's
+a-doin' it, but it don't seem to make no dif'rence--the darned ol'
+thing won't go!'  Then, what did Simon Buzzell say but that, like 's
+not, it was because Otis's sled's name was 'Snow Queen.'  'Never did
+see a girl sled that was worth a cent, anyway,' sez Simon.  Well, now,
+that jest about broke Otis up in business.  'It ain't a girl sled,' sez
+he, 'and its name ain't "Snow Queen"!  I'm a-goin' to call it "Dan'l
+Webster," or "Ol'ver Optic," or "Sheriff Robbins," or after some other
+big man!'  An' the boys plagued him so much about that pesky girl sled
+that he scratched off the name, an', as I remember, it _did_ go better
+after that!
+
+"About the only thing," continued Joel, "that marred the harmony of the
+occasion, as the editor of the 'Hampshire County Phoenix' used to say,
+was the ashes that Deacon Morris Frisbie sprinkled out in front of his
+house.  He said he was n't going to have folks breakin' their necks
+jest on account of a lot of frivolous boys that was goin' to the
+gallows as fas' as they could!  Oh, how we hated him! and we 'd have
+snowballed him, too, if we had n't been afraid of the constable that
+lived next door.  But the ashes did n't bother us much, and every time
+we slid sidesaddle we 'd give the ashes a kick, and that sort of
+scattered 'em."
+
+The bare thought of this made Santa Claus laugh.
+
+"Goin' on about nine o'clock," said Joel, "the girls come along--Sister
+Elvira an' Thankful, Prudence Tucker, Belle Yocum, Sophrone Holbrook,
+Sis Hubbard, an' Marthy Sawyer.  Marthy's brother Increase wanted her
+to ride on _his_ sled, but Marthy allowed that a red sled was her
+choice every time.  'I don't see how I 'm goin' to hold on,' said
+Marthy.  'Seems as if I would hev my hands full keepin' my things from
+blowin' away.'  'Don't worry about yourself, Marthy,' sez I, 'for if
+you'll look after your things, I kind o' calc'late I'll manage not to
+lose _you_ on the way.'  Dear Marthy--seems as if I could see you now,
+with your tangled hair a-blowin' in the wind, your eyes all bright and
+sparklin', an' your cheeks as red as apples.  Seems, too, as if I could
+hear you laughin' an' callin', jist as you did as I toiled up the old
+New England hill that Chris'mas mornin'--a callin': 'Joel, Joel,
+Joel--ain't ye ever comin', Joel?'  But the hill is long and steep,
+Marthy, an' Joel ain't the boy he used to be; he 's old, an' gray, an'
+feeble, but there 's love an' faith in his heart, an' they kind o' keep
+him totterin' tow'rds the voice he hears a-callin': 'Joel, Joel, Joel!'"
+
+"I know--I see it all," murmured Santa Claus, very softly.
+
+"Oh, that was so long ago," sighed Joel; "so very long ago!  And I've
+had no Chris'mas since--only once, when our little one--Marthy's an'
+mine--you remember him, Santa Claus?"
+
+"Yes," said Santa Claus, "a toddling little boy with blue eyes--"
+
+"Like his mother," interrupted Joel; "an' he was like her, too--so
+gentle an' lovin', only we called him Joel, for that was my father's
+name and it kind o' run in the fam'ly.  He wa' n't more 'n three years
+old when you came with your Chris'mas presents for him, Santa Claus.
+We had told him about you, and he used to go to the chimney every night
+and make a little prayer about what he wanted you to bring him.  And
+you brought 'em, too--a stick-horse, an' a picture-book, an' some
+blocks, an' a drum--they 're on the shelf in the closet there, and his
+little Chris'mas stockin' with 'em--I 've saved 'em all, an' I 've
+taken 'em down an' held 'em in my hands, oh, so many times!"
+
+"But when I came again," said Santa Claus--
+
+"His little bed was empty, an' I was alone.  It killed his
+mother--Marthy was so tender-hearted; she kind o' drooped an' pined
+after that.  So now they 've been asleep side by side in the
+buryin'-ground these thirty years.
+
+"That's why I 'm so sad-like whenever Chris'mas comes," said Joel,
+after a pause.  "The thinkin' of long ago makes me bitter almost.  It's
+so different now from what it used to be."
+
+"No, Joel, oh, no," said Santa Claus.  "'T is the same world, and human
+nature is the same and always will be.  But Christmas is for the little
+folks, and you, who are old and grizzled now, must know it and love it
+only through the gladness it brings the little ones."
+
+"True," groaned Joel; "but how may I know and feel this gladness when I
+have no little stocking hanging in my chimney corner--no child to
+please me with his prattle?  See, I am alone."
+
+"No, you 're not alone, Joel," said Santa Claus.  "There are children
+in this great city who would love and bless you for your goodness if
+you but touched their hearts.  Make them happy, Joel; send by me this
+night some gift to the little boy in the old house yonder--he is poor
+and sick; a simple toy will fill his Christmas with gladness."
+
+"His little sister, too--take _her_ some present," said Joel; "make
+them happy for me, Santa Claus--you are right--make them happy for me."
+
+How sweetly Joel slept!  When he awoke, the sunlight streamed in
+through the window and seemed to bid him a merry Christmas.  How
+contented and happy Joel felt!  It must have been the talk with Santa
+Claus that did it all; he had never known a sweeter sense of peace.  A
+little girl came out of the house over the way.  She had a new doll in
+her arms, and she sang a merry little song and she laughed with joy as
+she skipped along the street.  Ay, and at the window sat the little
+sick boy, and the toy Santa Claus left him seemed to have brought him
+strength and health, for his eyes sparkled and his cheeks glowed, and
+it was plain to see his heart was full of happiness.
+
+And, oh! how the chimes did ring out, and how joyfully they sang their
+Christmas carol that morning!  They sang of Bethlehem and the manger
+and the Babe; they sang of love and charity, till all the Christmas air
+seemed full of angel voices.
+
+  Carol of the Christmas morn--
+    Carol of the Christ-child born--
+  Carol to the list'ning sky
+    Till it echoes back again
+    "Glory be to God on high,
+    Peace on earth, good will tow'rd men!"
+
+
+So all this music--the carol of the chimes, the sound of children's
+voices, the smile of the poor little boy over the way--all this sweet
+music crept into Joel's heart that Christmas morning; yes, and with
+these sweet, holy influences came others so subtile and divine that, in
+its silent communion with them, Joel's heart cried out amen and amen to
+the glory of the Christmas time.
+
+
+
+
+THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE
+
+The clock was in ill humor; so was the vase.  It was all on account of
+the little shoe that had been placed on the mantel-piece that day, and
+had done nothing but sigh dolorously all the afternoon and evening.
+
+"Look you here, neighbor," quoth the clock, in petulant tones, "you are
+sadly mistaken if you think you will be permitted to disturb our peace
+and harmony with your constant sighs and groans.  If you are ill, pray
+let us know; otherwise, have done with your manifestations of distress."
+
+"Possibly you do not know what befell the melancholy plaque that
+intruded his presence upon us last week," said the vase.  "We pitched
+him off the mantelpiece, and he was shattered into a thousand bits."
+
+The little shoe gave a dreadful shudder.  It could not help thinking it
+had fallen among inhospitable neighbors.  It began to cry.  The brass
+candlestick took pity on the sobbing thing, and declared with some show
+of temper that the little shoe should not be imposed on.
+
+"Now tell us why you are so full of sadness," said the brass
+candlestick.
+
+"I do not know how to explain," whimpered the little shoe.  "You see I
+am quite a young thing, albeit I have a rusty appearance and there is a
+hole in my toes and my heel is badly run over.  I feel so lonesome and
+friendless and sort of neglected-like, that it seems as if there were
+nothing for me to do but sigh and grieve and weep all day long."
+
+"Sighing and weeping do no good," remarked the vase, philosophically.
+
+"I know that very well," replied the little shoe; "but once I was so
+happy that my present lonesome lot oppresses me all the more
+grievously."
+
+"You say you once were happy--pray tell us all about it," demanded the
+brass candlestick.
+
+The vase was eager to hear the little shoe's story, and even the proud,
+haughty clock expressed a willingness to listen.  The matchbox came
+from the other end of the mantel-piece, and the pen-wiper, the
+paper-cutter, and the cigar-case gathered around the little shoe, and
+urged it to proceed with its narrative.
+
+"The first thing I can remember in my short life," said the little
+shoe, "was being taken from a large box in which there were many of my
+kind thrown together in great confusion.  I found myself tied with a
+slender cord to a little mate, a shoe so very like me that you could
+not have told us apart.  We two were taken and put in a large window in
+the midst of many grown-up shoes, and we had nothing to do but gaze out
+of the window all day long into the wide, busy street.  That was a very
+pleasant life.  Sometimes the sunbeams would dance through the
+window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate;
+they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very
+much--they were so warm and gentle and merrisome.  Sometimes the
+raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to
+us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness.
+When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at
+us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from behind a cloud to
+give us a kindly smile.  The wind used to sing us lullabies, and in one
+corner of our window there was a little open space where the mice gave
+a grand ball every night to the music of the crickets and a blind frog.
+Altogether we had a merry time."
+
+"I 'd have liked it all but the wind," said the brass candlestick.  "I
+don't know why it is, but I 'm dreadfully put out by the horrid old
+wind!"
+
+"Many people," continued the little shoe, "used to stop and look in at
+the window, and I believe my little mate and I were admired more than
+any of our larger and more pretentious companions.  I can remember
+there was a pair of red-top boots that was exceedingly jealous of us.
+But that did not last long, for one day a very sweet lady came and
+peered in at the window and smiled very joyously when she saw me and my
+little mate.  Then I remember we were taken from the window, and the
+lady held us in her hands and examined us very closely, and measured
+our various dimensions with a string, and finally, I remember, she said
+she would carry us home.  We did not know what that meant, only we
+realized that we would never live in the shop window again, and we were
+loath to be separated from the sunbeams and the mice and the other
+friends that had been so kind to us."
+
+"What a droll little shoe!" exclaimed the vase.  Whereupon the clock
+frowned and ticked a warning to the vase not to interrupt the little
+shoe in the midst of its diverting narrative.
+
+"It is not necessary for me to tell you how we were wrapped in paper
+and carried a weary distance," said the little shoe; "it is sufficient
+to my purpose to say that, after what seemed to us an interminable
+journey and a cruel banging around, we were taken from the paper and
+found ourselves in a quiet, cozy room--yes, in this very apartment
+where we all are now!  The sweet lady held us in her lap, and at the
+sweet lady's side stood a little child, gazing at us with an expression
+of commingled astonishment, admiration, and glee.  We knew the little
+child belonged to the sweet lady, and from the talk we heard we knew
+that henceforth the child was to be our little master."
+
+As if some sudden anguish came upon it, hushing its speech, the little
+shoe paused in its narrative.  The others said never a word.  Perhaps
+it was because they were beginning to understand.  The proud, haughty
+clock seemed to be less imperious for the moment, and its ticking was
+softer and more reverential.
+
+"From that time," resumed the little shoe, "our little master and we
+were inseparable during all the happy day.  We played and danced with
+him and wandered everywhere through the grass, over the carpets, down
+the yard, up the street--ay, everywhere our little master went, we went
+too, sharing his pretty antics and making music everywhere.  Then, when
+evening came and little master was put to sleep, in yonder crib, we
+were set on the warm carpet near his bed where we could watch him while
+he slept, and bid him good-morrow when the morning came.  Those were
+pleasant nights, too, for no sooner had little master fallen asleep
+than the fairies came trooping through the keyholes and fluttering down
+the chimney to dance over his eyes all night long, giving him happy
+dreams, and filling his baby ears with sweetest music."
+
+"What a curious conceit!" said the pen-wiper.
+
+"And is it true that fairies dance on children's eyelids at night?"
+asked the paper-cutter.
+
+"Certainly," the clock chimed in, "and they sing very pretty lullabies
+and very cunning operettas, too.  I myself have seen and heard them."
+
+"I should like to hear a fairy operetta," suggested the pen-wiper.
+
+"I remember one the fairies sang my little master as they danced over
+his eyelids," said the little shoe, "and I will repeat it if you wish."
+
+"Nothing would please me more," said the pen-wiper.
+
+"Then you must know," said the little shoe, "that, as soon as my master
+fell asleep, the fairies would make their appearance, led by their
+queen, a most beautiful and amiable little lady no bigger than a
+cambric needle.  Assembling on the pillow of the crib, they would order
+their minstrels and orchestra to seat themselves on little master's
+forehead.  The minstrels invariably were the cricket, the flea, the
+katydid, and the gnat, while the orchestra consisted of mosquitos,
+bumblebees, and wasps.  Once in a great while, on very important
+occasions, the fairies would bring the old blind hop-toad down the
+chimney and set him on the window-sill, where he would discourse droll
+ditties to the infinite delight of his hearers.  But on ordinary
+occasions, the fairy queen, whose name was Taffie, would lead the
+performance in these pleasing words, sung to a very dulcet air:
+
+  AN INVITATION TO SLEEP
+
+  Little eyelids, cease your winking;
+    Little orbs, forget to beam;
+  Little soul, to slumber sinking,
+    Let the fairies rule your dream.
+  Breezes, through the lattice sweeping,
+    Sing their lullabies the while--
+  And a star-ray, softly creeping
+    To thy bedside, woos thy smile.
+  But no song nor ray entrancing
+    Can allure thee from the spell
+  Of the tiny fairies dancing
+    O'er the eyes they love so well.
+  See, we come in countless number--
+    I, their queen, and all my court--
+  Haste, my precious one, to slumber
+    Which invites our fairy sport.
+
+
+"At the conclusion of this song Prince Whimwham, a tidy little
+gentleman fairy in pink silk small-clothes, approaching Queen Taffie
+and bowing graciously, would say:
+
+  Pray, lady, may I have the pleasure
+  Of leading you this stately measure?
+
+To which her majesty would reply with equal graciousness in the
+affirmative.  Then Prince Whimwham and Queen Taffie would take their
+places on one of my master's eyelids, and the other gentleman fairies
+and lady fairies would follow their example, till at last my master's
+face would seem to be alive with these delightful little beings.  The
+mosquitos would blow a shrill blast on their trumpets, the orchestra
+would strike up, and then the festivities would begin in earnest.  How
+the bumblebees would drone, how the wasps would buzz, and how the
+mosquitos would blare!  It was a delightful harmony of weird sounds.
+The strange little dancers floated hither and thither over my master's
+baby face, as light as thistledowns, and as graceful as the slender
+plumes they wore in their hats and bonnets.  Presently they would weary
+of dancing, and then the minstrels would be commanded to entertain
+them.  Invariably the flea, who was a rattle-headed fellow, would
+discourse some such incoherent song as this:
+
+  COQUETRY
+
+  Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-dee--
+  The spider courted the frisky flea;
+  Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-doo--
+  The flea ran off with the bugaboo!
+      "Oh, tiddle-de-dee!"
+      Said the frisky flea--
+      For what cared she
+      For the miseree
+      The spider knew,
+      When, tiddle-de-doo,
+  The flea ran off with the bugaboo!
+
+  Rumpty-tumpty, pimplety-pan--
+  The flubdub courted a catamaran
+  But timplety-topplety, timpity-tare--
+  The flubdub wedded the big blue bear!
+      The fun began
+      With a pimplety-pan
+      When the catamaran,
+      Tore up a man
+      And streaked the air
+      With his gore and hair
+  Because the flubdub wedded the bear!
+
+
+"I remember with what dignity the fairy queen used to reprove the flea
+for his inane levity:
+
+  Nay, futile flea; these verses you are making
+  Disturb the child--for, see, he is awaking!
+  Come, little cricket, sing your quaintest numbers,
+  And they, perchance, shall lull him back to slumbers.
+
+
+"Upon this invitation the cricket, who is justly one of the most famous
+songsters in the world, would get his pretty voice in tune and sing as
+follows:
+
+  THE CRICKET'S SONG
+
+  When all around from out the ground
+    The little flowers are peeping,
+  And from the hills the merry rills
+    With vernal songs are leaping,
+  I sing my song the whole day long
+    In woodland, hedge, and thicket--
+  And sing it, too, the whole night through,
+    For I 'm a merry cricket.
+
+  The children hear my chirrup clear
+    As, in the woodland straying,
+  They gather flow'rs through summer hours--
+    And then I hear them saying:
+  "Sing, sing away the livelong day,
+    Glad songster of the thicket--
+  With your shrill mirth you gladden earth,
+    You merry little cricket!"
+
+  When summer goes, and Christmas snows
+    Are from the north returning,
+  I quit my lair and hasten where
+    The old yule-log is burning.
+  And where at night the ruddy light
+    Of that old log is flinging
+  A genial joy o'er girl and boy,
+    There I resume my singing.
+
+  And, when they hear my chirrup clear,
+    The children stop their playing--
+  With eager feet they haste to greet
+    My welcome music, saying:
+  "The little thing has come to sing
+    Of woodland, hedge, and thicket--
+  Of summer day and lambs at play--
+    Oh, how we love the cricket!"
+
+
+"This merry little song always seemed to please everybody except the
+gnat.  The fairies appeared to regard the gnat as a pestiferous insect,
+but a contemptuous pity led them to call upon him for a recitation,
+which invariably was in the following strain:
+
+  THE FATE OF THE FLIMFLAM
+
+  A flimflam flopped from a fillamaloo,
+    Where the pollywog pinkled so pale,
+  And the pipkin piped a petulant "pooh"
+    To the garrulous gawp of the gale.
+  "Oh, woe to the swap of the sweeping swipe
+    That booms on the hobbling bay!"
+  Snickered the snark to the snoozing snipe
+    That lurked where the lamprey lay.
+
+  The gluglug glinked in the glimmering gloam,
+    Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee--
+  When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam,
+    From the sozzling and succulent sea.
+  "Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!"
+    She swore as she swayed in a swoon,
+  And a doleful dank dumped over the deep,
+    To the lay of the limpid loon!
+
+
+"This was simply horrid, as you all will allow.  The queen and her
+fairy followers were much relieved when the honest katydid narrated a
+pleasant moral in the form of a ballad to this effect:
+
+  CONTENTMENT
+
+  Once on a time an old red hen
+    Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks,
+  For she had little babies ten,
+    A part of which were tiny ducks.
+  "'T is very rare that hens," said she,
+    "Have baby ducks as well as chicks--
+  But I possess, as you can see,
+    Of chickens four and ducklings six!"
+
+  A season later, this old hen
+    Appeared, still cackling of her luck,
+  For, though she boasted babies ten,
+    Not one among them was a duck!
+  "'T is well," she murmured, brooding o'er
+    The little chicks of fleecy down--
+  "My babies now will stay ashore,
+    And, consequently, cannot drown!"
+
+  The following spring the old red hen
+    Clucked just as proudly as of yore--
+  But lo! her babes were ducklings ten,
+    Instead of chickens, as before!
+  "'T is better," said the old red hen,
+    As she surveyed her waddling brood;
+  "A little water now and then
+    Will surely do my darlings good!"
+
+  But oh! alas, how very sad!
+    When gentle spring rolled round again
+  The eggs eventuated bad,
+    And childless was the old red hen!
+  Yet patiently she bore her woe,
+    And still she wore a cheerful air,
+  And said: "'T is best these things are so,
+    For babies are a dreadful care!"
+
+  I half suspect that many men,
+    And many, many women, too,
+  Could learn a lesson from the hen
+    With foliage of vermilion hue;
+  She ne'er presumed to take offence
+    At any fate that might befall,
+  But meekly bowed to Providence--
+    She was contented--that was all!
+
+
+"Then the fairies would resume their dancing.  Each little gentleman
+fairy would bow to his lady fairy and sing in the most musical of
+voices:
+
+      Sweet little fairy,
+      Tender and airy,
+  Come, let us dance on the good baby-eyes;
+      Merrily skipping,
+      Cheerily tripping,
+  Murmur we ever our soft lullabies.
+
+
+"And then, as the rest danced, the fairy queen sang the following
+slumber-song, accompanied by the orchestra:
+
+  A FAIRY LULLABY
+
+  There are two stars in yonder steeps
+  That watch the baby while he sleeps.
+    But while the baby is awake
+      And singing gayly all day long,
+    The little stars their slumbers take
+      Lulled by the music of his song.
+  So sleep, dear tired baby, sleep
+  While little stars their vigils keep.
+
+  Beside his loving mother-sheep
+  A little lambkin is asleep;
+    What does he know of midnight gloom---
+      He sleeps, and in his quiet dreams
+    He thinks he plucks the clover bloom
+      And drinks at cooling, purling streams.
+  And those same stars the baby knows
+  Sing softly to the lamb's repose.
+
+  Sleep, little lamb; sleep, little child--
+  The stars are dim--the night is wild;
+    But o'er the cot and o'er the lea
+      A sleepless eye forever beams--
+    A shepherd watches over thee
+      In all thy little baby dreams;
+  The shepherd loves his tiny sheep--
+  Sleep, precious little lambkin, sleep!
+
+
+"That is very pretty, indeed!" exclaimed the brass candlestick.
+
+"So it is," replied the little shoe, "but you should hear it sung by
+the fairy queen!"
+
+"Did the operetta end with that lullaby?" inquired the cigar-case.
+
+"Oh, no," said the little shoe.  "No sooner had the queen finished her
+lullaby than an old gran'ma fairy, wearing a quaint mob-cap and large
+spectacles, limped forward with her crutch and droned out a curious
+ballad, which seemed to be for the special benefit of the boy and girl
+fairies, very many of whom were of the company.  This ballad was as
+follows:
+
+  BALLAD OF THE JELLY-CAKE
+
+  A little boy whose name was Tim
+    Once ate some jelly-cake for tea--
+  Which cake did not agree with him,
+    As by the sequel you shall see.
+  "My darling child," his mother said,
+    "Pray do not eat that jelly-cake,
+  For, after you have gone to bed,
+    I fear 't will make your stomach ache!"
+  But foolish little Tim demurred
+  Unto his mother's warning word.
+
+  That night, while all the household slept,
+    Tim felt an awful pain, and then
+  From out the dark a nightmare leapt
+    And stood upon his abdomen!
+  "I cannot breathe!" the infant cried--
+    "Oh, Mrs. Nightmare, pity take!"
+  "There is no mercy," she replied,
+    "For boys who feast on jelly-cake!"
+  And so, despite the moans of Tim,
+  The cruel nightmare went for him.
+
+  At first, she 'd tickle Timmy's toes
+    Or roughly smite his baby cheek--
+  And now she 'd rudely tweak his nose
+    And other petty vengeance wreak;
+  And then, with hobnails in her shoes
+    And her two horrid eyes aflame,
+  The mare proceeded to amuse
+    Herself by prancing o'er his frame---
+  First to his throbbing brow, and then
+  Back to his little feet again.
+
+  At last, fantastic, wild, and weird,
+    And clad in garments ghastly grim,
+  A scowling hoodoo band appeared
+    And joined in worrying little Tim.
+  Each member of this hoodoo horde
+    Surrounded Tim with fierce ado
+  And with long, cruel gimlets bored
+    His aching system through and through,
+  And while they labored all night long
+  The nightmare neighed a dismal song.
+
+  Next morning, looking pale and wild,
+    Poor little Tim emerged from bed--
+  "Good gracious! what can ail the child!"
+    His agitated mother said.
+  "We live to learn," responded he,
+    "And I have lived to learn to take
+  Plain bread and butter for my tea,
+    And never, never, jelly-cake!
+  For when my hulk with pastry teems,
+  I must _expect_ unpleasant dreams!"
+
+
+"Now you can imagine this ballad impressed the child fairies very
+deeply," continued the little shoe.  "Whenever the gran'ma fairy sang
+it, the little fairies expressed great surprise that boys and girls
+ever should think of eating things which occasioned so much trouble.
+So the night was spent in singing and dancing, and our master would
+sleep as sweetly as you please.  At last the lark--what a beautiful
+bird she is--would flutter against the window panes, and give the
+fairies warning in these words:
+
+  MORNING SONG
+
+  The eastern sky is streaked with red,
+    The weary night is done,
+  And from his distant ocean bed
+    Rolls up the morning sun.
+  The dew, like tiny silver beads
+    Bespread o'er velvet green,
+  Is scattered on the wakeful meads
+    By angel hands unseen.
+  "Good-morrow, robin in the trees!"
+    The star-eyed daisy cries;
+  "Good-morrow," sings the morning breeze
+    Unto the ruddy skies;
+  "Good-morrow, every living thing!"
+    Kind Nature seems to say,
+  And all her works devoutly sing
+    A hymn to birth of day,
+  So, haste, without delay,
+    Haste, fairy friends, on silver wing,
+  And to your homes away!
+
+
+"But the fairies could never leave little master so unceremoniously.
+Before betaking themselves to their pretty homes under the rocks near
+the brook, they would address a parting song to his eyes, and this song
+they called a matin invocation:
+
+  TO A SLEEPING BABY'S EYES
+
+  And thou, twin orbs of love and joy!
+      Unveil thy glories with the morn--
+      Dear eyes, another day is born--
+  Awake, O little sleeping boy!
+  Bright are the summer morning skies,
+      But in this quiet little room
+      There broods a chill, oppressive gloom--
+  All for the brightness of thine eyes.
+  Without those radiant orbs of thine
+      How dark this little world would be--
+      This sweet home-world that worships thee--
+  So let their wondrous glories shine
+  On those who love their warmth and joy--
+  Awake, O sleeping little boy.
+
+
+"So that ended the fairy operetta, did it?" inquired the match-box.
+
+"Yes," said the little shoe, with a sigh of regret.  "The fairies were
+such bewitching creatures, and they sang so sweetly, I could have
+wished they would never stop their antics and singing.  But, alas!  I
+fear I shall never see them again."
+
+"What makes you think so?" asked the brass candlestick.
+
+"I 'm sure I can't tell," replied the little shoe; "only everything is
+so strange-like and so changed from what it used to be that I hardly
+know whether indeed I am still the same little shoe I used to be."
+
+"Why, what can you mean?" queried the old clock, with a puzzled look on
+her face.
+
+"I will try to tell you," said the little shoe.  "You see, my mate and
+our master and I were great friends; as I have said, we roamed and
+frolicked around together all day, and at night my little mate and I
+watched at master's bedside while he slept.  One day we three took a
+long ramble, away up the street and beyond where the houses were built,
+until we came into a beautiful green field, where the grass was very
+tall and green, and where there were pretty flowers of every kind.  Our
+little master talked to the flowers and they answered him, and we all
+had a merry time in the meadow that afternoon, I can tell you.  'Don't
+go away, little child,' cried the daisies, 'but stay and be our
+playfellow always.'  A butterfly came and perched on our master's hand,
+and looked up and smiled, and said: 'I 'm not afraid of _you_; you
+would n't hurt me, would you?'  A little mouse told us there was a
+thrush's nest in the bush yonder, and we hurried to see it.  The lady
+thrush was singing her four babies to sleep.  They were strange-looking
+babies, with their gaping mouths, bulbing eyes, and scant feathers!
+'Do not wake them up,' protested the lady thrush.  'Go a little further
+on and you will come to the brook.  I will join you presently.'  So we
+went to the brook."
+
+"Oh, but I would have been afraid," suggested the pen-wiper.
+
+"Afraid of the brook!" cried the little shoe.  "Oh, no; what could be
+prettier than the brook!  We heard it singing in the distance.  We
+called to it and it bade us welcome.  How it smiled in the sunshine!
+How restless and furtive and nimble it was, yet full of merry prattling
+and noisy song.  Our master was overjoyed.  He had never seen the brook
+before; nor had we, for that matter.  'Let me cool your little feet,'
+said the brook, and, without replying, our master waded knee-deep into
+the brook.  In an instant we were wet through--my mate and I; but how
+deliciously cool it was here in the brook, and how smooth and bright
+the pebbles were!  One of the pebbles told me it had come many, many
+miles that day from its home in the hills where the brook was born."
+
+"Pooh, I don't believe it," sneered the vase.
+
+"Presently our master toddled back from out the brook," continued the
+little shoe, heedless of the vase's interruption, "and sat among the
+cowslips and buttercups on the bank.  The brook sang on as merrily as
+before.  'Would you like to go sailing?' asked our master of my mate.
+'Indeed I would,' replied my mate, and so our master pulled my mate
+from his little foot and set it afloat upon the dancing waves of the
+brook.  My mate was not the least alarmed.  It spun around gayly
+several times at first and then glided rapidly away.  The butterfly
+hastened and alighted upon the merry little craft.  'Where are you
+going?' I cried.  'I am going down to the sea,' replied my little mate,
+with laughter.  'And I am going to marry the rose in the far-away
+south,' cried the butterfly.  'But will you not come back?' I cried.
+They answered me, but they were so far away I could not hear them.  It
+was very distressing, and I grieved exceedingly.  Then, all at once, I
+discovered my little master was asleep, fast asleep among the cowslips
+and buttercups.  I did not try to wake him--only I felt very miserable,
+for I was so cold and wet.  Presently the lady thrush came, as she had
+said she would.  The child is asleep--he will be ill--I must hasten to
+tell his mother,' she cried, and away she flew."
+
+"And was he sick?" asked the vase.
+
+"I do not know," said the little shoe.  "I can remember it was late
+that evening when the sweet lady and others came and took us up and
+carried us back home, to this very room.  Then I was pulled off very
+unceremoniously and thrown under my little master's bed, and I never
+saw my little master after that.
+
+"How very strange!" exclaimed the match-safe.
+
+"Very, very strange," repeated the shoe.  "For many days and nights I
+lay under the crib all alone.  I could hear my little master sighing
+and talking as if in a dream.  Sometimes he spoke of me, and of the
+brook, and of my little mate dancing to the sea, and one night he
+breathed very loud and quick and he cried out and seemed to struggle,
+and then, all at once, he stopped, and I could hear the sweet lady
+weeping.  But I remember all this very faintly.  I was hoping the
+fairies would come back, but they never came.
+
+"I remember," resumed the little shoe, after a solemn pause, "I
+remember how, after a long, long time, the sweet lady came and drew me
+from under the crib and held me in her lap and kissed me and wept over
+me.  Then she put me in a dark, lonesome drawer, where there were
+dresses and stockings and the little hat my master used to wear.  There
+I lived, oh! such a weary time, and we talked--the dresses, the
+stockings, the hat, and I did--about our little master, and we wondered
+that he never came.  And every little while the sweet lady would take
+us from the drawer and caress us, and we saw that she was pale and that
+her eyes were red with weeping."
+
+"But has your little master never come back!" asked the old clock.
+
+"Not yet," said the little shoe, "and that is why I am so very
+lonesome.  Sometimes I think he has gone down to the sea in search of
+my little mate and that the two will come back together.  But I do not
+understand it.  The sweet lady took me from the drawer to-day and
+kissed me and set me here on the mantelpiece."
+
+"You don't mean to say she kissed you?" cried the haughty vase, "you
+horrid little stumped-out shoe!"
+
+"Indeed she did," insisted the lonesome little shoe, "and I know she
+loves me.  But why she loves me and kisses me and weeps over me I do
+not know.  It is all very strange.  I do not understand it at all."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***
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+<h1 align="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Holy Cross and Other Tales, by Eugene
+Field, Illustrated by S. W. Van Schaik</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Holy Cross and Other Tales</p>
+<p>Author: Eugene Field</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 11, 2007  [eBook #21807]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;Presently the whole company was moved by a gentle pity.&quot;  Drawn by S. W. Van Schaik." BORDER="2" WIDTH="306" HEIGHT="462">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 306px">
+&quot;Presently the whole company was moved by a gentle pity.&quot;<BR>Drawn by S. W. Van Schaik.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE WORKS OF EUGENE FIELD
+<BR>
+Vol. V
+<BR><BR>
+THE WRITINGS IN PROSE AND VERSE OF EUGENE FIELD
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES
+</H1>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+<BR>
+NEW YORK
+<BR>
+1911
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Copyright, 1893, by
+<BR>
+EUGENE FIELD.
+<BR><BR>
+Copyright, 1896, by
+<BR>
+JULIA SUTHERLAND FIELD.
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DEDICATED WITH LOVE
+<BR>
+AND GRATITUDE TO
+<BR>
+ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NOTE.
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+To this volume as it was originally issued have been added five Tales,
+beginning with "The Platonic Bassoon," which are characteristic of the
+various moods, serious, gay, or pathetic, out of which grew the best
+work of the author's later years.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+INTRODUCTION
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ALAS, POOR YORICK!
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene
+Field&mdash;the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight
+with him"&mdash;one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a
+jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick.  He was
+not only,&mdash;so the writer implied,&mdash;the maker of jibes and fantastic
+devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical
+conceits; he was the laureate of children&mdash;dear for his "Wynken,
+Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover,
+withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight
+a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who collected rare
+books, and brought out his own "Little Books" of "Western Verse" and
+"Profitable Tales" in high-priced limited editions, with broad margins
+of paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which tempts
+bibliomaniacs to break through and steal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very forecast, in
+imaginative literature, of our various Eugene.  Surely Shakespeare
+conceived the "mad rogue" of Elsinore as made up of grave and gay, of
+wit and gentleness, and not as a mere clown or "jig maker."  It is true
+that when Field put on his cap and bells, he too was "wont to set the
+table on a roar," as the feasters at a hundred tables, from "Casey's
+Table d'Hôte" to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise to testify.
+But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick, that mirth was not
+his sole attribute,&mdash;that his motley covered the sweetest nature and
+the tenderest heart.  It could be no otherwise with one who loved and
+comprehended childhood and whom the children loved.  And what does
+Hamlet say?&mdash;"He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times&nbsp;&#8230;
+Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft!"  Of what
+is he thinking but of his boyhood, before doubts and contemplation
+wrapped him in the shadow, and when in his young grief or frolic the
+gentle Yorick, with his jest, his "excellent fancy," and his songs and
+gambols, was his comrade?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene Field seems to
+be most like the survival, or revival, of the ideal jester of knightly
+times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior bearer
+of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of France, or of English King
+Hal, had come to life again&mdash;as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at
+the Court of Arthur; but not out of place,&mdash;for he fitted himself as
+aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood
+near Athens.  In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see,
+was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those
+he made his butt&mdash;the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the
+swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty
+itself.  And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw
+him.  Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touchstone than Le
+Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one of his brutal mockers?  Was not
+the redoubtable Chicot, with his sword and brains, the true ruler of
+France?  To come to the jesters of history&mdash;which is so much less real
+than fiction&mdash;what laurels are greener than those of Triboulet, and
+Will Somers, and John Heywood&mdash;dramatist and master of the king's merry
+Interludes?  Their shafts were feathered with mirth and song, but
+pointed with wisdom, and well might old John Trussell say "That it
+often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is
+tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be
+delivered in jest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, Field "caught on" to his time&mdash;a complex American, with the
+obstreperous <I>bizarrerie</I> of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of
+our oldest culture always at odds within him&mdash;but he was, above all, a
+child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in
+any time or country.  Fortune had given him that unforgettable mummer's
+face,&mdash;that clean-cut, mobile visage,&mdash;that animated natural mask!  No
+one else had so deep and rich a voice for the rendering of the music
+and pathos of a poet's lines, and no actor ever managed both face and
+voice better than he in delivering his own verses merry or sad.  One
+night, he was seen among the audience at "Uncut Leaves," and was
+instantly requested to do something towards the evening's
+entertainment.  As he was not in evening dress, he refused to take the
+platform, but stood up in the lank length of an ulster, from his corner
+seat, and recited "Dibdin's Ghost" and "Two Opinions" in a manner which
+blighted the chances of the readers that came after him.  It is true
+that no clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness of his practical
+jokes.  Above all, every friend that he had&mdash;except the Dean of his
+profession, for whom he did exhibit unbounded and filial reverence&mdash;was
+soon or late a victim of his whimsicality, or else justly distrusted
+the measure of Field's regard for him.  Nor was the friendship
+perfected until one bestirred himself to pay Eugene back in kind.  As
+to this, I am only one of scores now speaking from personal experience.
+There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim of his fun,
+even when it outraged common sensibilities, <I>must</I> enjoy it as much as
+he.  Who but Eugene, after being the welcome guest, at a European
+capital, of one of our most ambitious and refined ambassadors, would
+have written a lyric, sounding the praises of a German "onion pie,"
+ending each stanza with
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Ach, Liebe!  Ach, mein Gott!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and would have printed it in America, with his host's initials affixed?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+My own matriculation at Eugene's College of Unreason was in this wise.
+In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, the Boston publisher, was complaining that he
+needed some new and promising authors to enlarge his book-list.  The
+New York "Sun" and "Tribune" had been copying Field's rhymes and prose
+extravaganzas&mdash;the former often very charming, the latter the broadest
+satire of Chicago life and people.  I suggested to Mr. Ticknor that he
+should ask the poet-humorist to collect, for publication in book-form,
+the choicest of his writings thus far.  To make the story brief, Mr.
+Field did so, and the outcome&mdash;at which I was somewhat taken aback&mdash;was
+the remarkable book, "Culture's Garland," with its title imitated from
+the sentimental "Annuals" of long ago, and its cover ornamented with
+sausages linked together as a coronal wreath!  The symbol certainly
+fitted the greater part of the contents, which ludicrously scored the
+Chicago "culture" of that time, and made Pullman, Armour, and other
+commercial magnates of the Lakeside City special types in illustration.
+All this had its use, and many of the sufferers long since became the
+<I>farceur's</I> devoted friends.  The Fair showed the country what Chicago
+really was and is.  Certainly there is no other American city where the
+richest class appear so enthusiastic with respect to art and
+literature.  "The practice of virtue makes men virtuous," and even if
+there was some pretence and affectation in the culture of ten years
+ago, it has resulted in as high standards of taste as can elsewhere be
+found.  Moreover, if our own "four hundred" had even affected, or made
+it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes for real culture,
+the intellectual life of this metropolis would not now be so far apart
+from the "social swim."  There were scattered through "Culture's
+Garland" not a few of Field's delicate bits of verse.  In some way he
+found that I had instigated Mr. Ticknor's request, and, although I was
+thinking solely of the publisher's interests, he expressed unstinted
+gratitude.  Soon afterwards I was delighted to receive from him a
+quarto parchment "breviary," containing a dozen ballads, long and
+short, engrossed in his exquisitely fine handwriting, and illuminated
+with colored borders and drawings by the poet himself.  It must have
+required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly I would not
+now exchange it for its weight in diamonds.  This was the way our
+friendship began.  It was soon strengthened by meetings and
+correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture, at the
+invitation of its famous social and literary "Twentieth Century Club."
+This was Eugene's opportunity, and I ought not to have been as
+dumfounded as I was, one day, when our evening papers copied from the
+"Chicago Record" a "very pleasant joke" at the expense of his town and
+myself!  It was headed: "Chicago Excited!  Tremendous Preparations for
+His Reception," and went on to give the order and route of a procession
+that was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort me to my
+quarters&mdash;stopping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries on
+the way.  It included the "Twentieth Century Club" in carriages, the
+"Browning Club" in busses, and the "Homer Club" in drays; ten
+millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn
+by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred Chicago poets
+afoot!  I have no doubt that Eugene thought I would enjoy this kind of
+advertisement as heartily as he did.  If so, he lacked the gift of
+putting himself in the other man's place.  But his sardonic face,
+a-grin like a school-boy's, was one with two others which shone upon me
+when I did reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to
+prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to which he bore me
+off in triumph.  I did promise to square accounts with him, in time,
+and this is how I fulfilled my word.  The next year, at a meeting of a
+suburban "Society of Authors," a certain lady-journalist was chaffed as
+to her acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of addressing him as
+"Gene."  At this she took umbrage, saying: "It's true we worked
+together on the same paper for five years, but he was always a perfect
+gentleman.  I <I>never</I> called him 'Gene.'"  This was reported by the
+press, and gave me the refrain for a skit entitled "Katharine and
+Eugenio:"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Five years she sate a-near him<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Within that type-strewn loft;</SPAN><BR>
+She handed him the paste-pot,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">He passed the scissors oft;</SPAN><BR>
+They dipped in the same inkstand<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That crowned their desk between,</SPAN><BR>
+Yet&mdash;he never called her Katie,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">She never called him "Gene."</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Though close&mdash;ah! close&mdash;the droplight<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That classic head revealed,</SPAN><BR>
+She was to him Miss Katharine,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">He&mdash;naught but Mister Field;</SPAN><BR>
+Decorum graced his upright brow<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And thinned his lips serene,</SPAN><BR>
+And, though he wrote a poem each hour,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Why should she call him "Gene?"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+She gazed at his sporadic hair&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">She knew his hymns by rote;</SPAN><BR>
+They longed to dine together<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">At Casey's table d'hôte;</SPAN><BR>
+Alas, that Fortune's "hostages"&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">But let us draw a screen!</SPAN><BR>
+He dared not call her Katie;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">How <I>could</I> she call him "Gene?"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+I signed my verses "By one of Gene's Victims"; they appeared in <I>The
+Tribune</I>, and soon were copied by papers in every part of the country.
+Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by the funny men of
+the southern and western press, and it was months before 'Gene' saw the
+last of them.  The word "Eugenio," which was the name by which I always
+addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no doubt as to the
+initiator of the series, and so our "Merry War" ended, I think, with a
+fair quittance to either side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's premature death, it is a
+solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last interchange of
+written words.  Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, but
+recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me a sweetly serious
+letter&mdash;with here and there a sparkle in it&mdash;but in a tone sobered by
+illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship with his
+friends.  At the same time he sent me the first editions, long ago
+picked up, of all my earlier books, and begged me to write on their
+fly-leaves.  This I did; with pains to gratify him as much as possible,
+and in one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+TO EUGENE FIELD
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Death thought to claim you in this year of years,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">But Fancy cried&mdash;and raised her shield between&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+"Still let men weep, and smile amid their tears;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Take any two beside, but spare Eugene!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such there was, might
+well be pardoned, and it touched Eugene so manifestly that&mdash;now that
+the eddy indeed has swept him away, and the Sabine Farm mourns for its
+new-world Horace&mdash;I cannot be too thankful that such was my last
+message to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eugene Field was so mixed a compound that it will always be impossible
+quite to decide whether he was wont to judge critically of either his
+own conduct or his literary creations.  As to the latter, he put the
+worst and the best side by side, and apparently cared alike for both.
+That he did much beneath his standard, fine and true at times,&mdash;is
+unquestionable, and many a set of verses went the rounds that harmed
+his reputation.  On the whole, I think this was due to the fact that he
+got his stated income as a newspaper poet and jester, and had to
+furnish his score of "Sharps and Flats" with more or less regularity.
+For all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact of the rarer
+elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him a unique place among
+America's most original characters, scholarly wits, and poets of
+brightest fancy.  Yorick is no more!  But his genius will need no
+chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance.  When all is
+sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than to decline.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+[Originally contributed to the "Souvenir Book" of the N.Y. Hebrew Fair,
+December, 1895.]
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+Contents
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<A HREF="#chap01">THE HOLY CROSS</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap02">THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap03">THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap04">FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap05">THE TOUCH IN THE HEART</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap06">DANIEL AND THE DEVIL</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap07">METHUSELAH</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap08">FÉLICE AND PETIT-POULAIN</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap09">THE RIVER</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap10">FRANZ ABT</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap11">MISTRESS MERCILESS</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap12">THE PLATONIC BASSOON</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap13">HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap14">LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap15">JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap16">THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE HOLY CROSS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Whilst the noble Don Esclevador and his little band of venturesome
+followers explored the neighboring fastnesses in quest for gold, the
+Father Miguel tarried at the shrine which in sweet piety they had hewn
+out of the stubborn rock in that strangely desolate spot.  Here, upon
+that serene August morning, the holy Father held communion with the
+saints, beseeching them, in all humility, to intercede with our beloved
+Mother for the safe guidance of the fugitive Cortes to his native
+shores, and for the divine protection of the little host, which,
+separated from the Spanish army, had wandered leagues to the northward,
+and had sought refuge in the noble mountains of an unknown land.  The
+Father's devotions were, upon a sudden, interrupted by the approach of
+an aged man who toiled along the mountain-side path,&mdash;a man so aged and
+so bowed and so feeble that he seemed to have been brought down into
+that place, by means of some necromantic art, out of distant centuries.
+His face was yellow and wrinkled like ancient parchment, and a beard
+whiter than Samite streamed upon his breast, whilst about his withered
+body and shrunken legs hung faded raiment which the elements had
+corroded and the thorns had grievously rent.  And as he toiled along,
+the aged man continually groaned, and continually wrung his palsied
+hands, as if a sorrow, no lighter than his years, afflicted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In whose name comest thou?" demanded the Father Miguel, advancing a
+space toward the stranger, but not in threatening wise; whereat the
+aged man stopped in his course and lifted his eyebrows, and regarded
+the Father a goodly time, but he spake no word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In whose name comest thou?" repeated the priestly man.  "Upon these
+mountains have we lifted up the cross of our blessed Lord in the name
+of our sovereign liege, and here have we set down a tabernacle to the
+glory of the Virgin and of her ever-blessed son, our Redeemer and
+thine,&mdash;whoso thou mayest be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is thy king I know not," quoth the aged man, feebly; "but the
+shrine in yonder wall of rock I know; and by that symbol which I see
+therein, and by thy faith for which it stands, I conjure thee, as thou
+lovest both, give me somewhat to eat and to drink, that betimes I may
+go upon my way again, for the journey before me is a long one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These words spake the old man in tones of such exceeding sadness that
+the Father Miguel, touched by compassion, hastened to meet the
+wayfarer, and, with his arms about him, and with whisperings of sweet
+comfort, to conduct him to a resting-place.  Coarse food in goodly
+plenty was at hand; and it happily fortuned, too, that there was a
+homely wine, made by Pietro del y Saguache himself, of the wild grapes
+in which a neighboring valley abounded.  Of these things anon the old
+man partook, greedily but silently, and all that while he rolled his
+eyes upon the shrine; and then at last, struggling to his feet, he made
+as if to go upon his way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nay," interposed the Father Miguel, kindly; "abide with us a season.
+Thou art an old man and sorely spent.  Such as we have thou shalt have,
+and if thy soul be distressed, we shall pour upon it the healing balm
+of our blessed faith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Little knowest thou whereof thou speakest," quoth the old man, sadly.
+"There is no balm can avail me.  I prithee let me go hence, ere,
+knowing what manner of man I am, thou hatest me and doest evil unto
+me."  But as he said these words he fell back again even then into the
+seat where he had sat, and, as through fatigue, his hoary head dropped
+upon his bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art ill!" cried the Father Miguel, hastening to his side.  "Thou
+shalt go no farther this day!  Give me thy staff,"&mdash;and he plucked it
+from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then said the old man: "As I am now, so have I been these many hundred
+years.  Thou hast heard tell of me,&mdash;canst thou not guess my name;
+canst thou not read my sorrow in my face and in my bosom?  As thou art
+good and holy through thy faith in that symbol in yonder shrine,
+hearken to me, for I will tell thee of the wretch whom thou hast
+succored.  Then, if it be thy will, give me thy curse and send me on my
+way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much marvelled the Father Miguel at these words, and he deemed the old
+man to be mad; but he made no answer.  And presently the old man,
+bowing his head upon his hands, had to say in this wise:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Upon a time," he quoth, "I abided in the city of the Great
+King,&mdash;there was I born and there I abided.  I was of good stature, and
+I asked favor of none.  I was an artisan, and many came to my shop, and
+my cunning was sought of many,&mdash;for I was exceeding crafty in my trade;
+and so, therefore, speedily my pride begot an insolence that had
+respect to none at all.  And once I heard a tumult in the street, as of
+the cries of men and boys commingled, and the clashing of arms and
+staves.  Seeking to know the cause thereof, I saw that one was being
+driven to execution,&mdash;one that had said he was the Son of God and the
+King of the Jews, for which blasphemy and crime against our people he
+was to die upon the cross.  Overcome by the weight of this cross, which
+he bore upon his shoulders, the victim tottered in the street and
+swayed this way and that, as though each moment he were like to fall,
+and he groaned in sore agony.  Meanwhile about him pressed a multitude
+that with vast clamor railed at him and scoffed him and smote him, to
+whom he paid no heed; but in his agony his eyes were alway uplifted to
+heaven, and his lips moved in prayer for them that so shamefully
+entreated him.  And as he went his way to Calvary, it fortuned that he
+fell and lay beneath the cross right at my very door, whereupon,
+turning his eyes upon me as I stood over against him, he begged me that
+for a little moment I should bear up the weight of the cross whilst
+that he wiped the sweat from off his brow.  But I was filled with
+hatred, and I spurned him with my foot, and I said to him: 'Move on,
+thou wretched criminal, move on.  Pollute not my doorway with thy
+touch,&mdash;move on to death, I command thee!'  This was the answer I gave
+to him, but no succor at all.  Then he spake to me once again, and he
+said: 'Thou, too, shalt move on, O Jew!  Thou shalt move on forever,
+but not to death!'  And with these words he bore up the cross again and
+went upon his way to Calvary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then of a sudden," quoth the old man, "a horror filled my breast, and
+a resistless terror possessed me.  So was I accursed forevermore.  A
+voice kept saying always to me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on forever!'
+From home, from kin, from country, from all I knew and loved I fled;
+nowhere could I tarry,&mdash;the nameless horror burned in my bosom, and I
+heard continually a voice crying unto me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forever!'  So, with the years, the centuries, the ages, I have fled
+before that cry and in that nameless horror; empires have risen and
+crumbled, races have been born and are extinct, mountains have been
+cast up and time hath levelled them,&mdash;still I do live and still I
+wander hither and thither upon the face of the earth, and am an
+accursed thing.  The gift of tongues is mine,&mdash;all men I know, yet
+mankind knows me not.  Death meets me face to face, and passes me by;
+the sea devours all other prey, but will not hide me in its depths;
+wild beasts flee from me, and pestilences turn their consuming breaths
+elsewhere.  On and on and on I go,&mdash;not to a home, nor to my people,
+nor to my grave, but evermore into the tortures of an eternity of
+sorrow.  And evermore I feel the nameless horror burn within, whilst
+evermore I see the pleading eyes of him that bore the cross, and
+evermore I hear his voice crying: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forevermore!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art the Wandering Jew!" cried the Father Miguel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am he," saith the aged man.  "I marvel not that thou dost revolt
+against me, for thou standest in the shadow of that same cross which I
+have spurned, and thou art illumined with the love of him that went his
+way to Calvary.  But I beseech thee bear with me until I have told thee
+all,&mdash;then drive me hence if thou art so minded."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speak on," quoth the Father Miguel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then said the Jew: "How came I here I scarcely know; the seasons are
+one to me, and one day but as another; for the span of my life, O
+priestly man! is eternity.  This much know you: from a far country I
+embarked upon a ship,&mdash;I knew not whence 't was bound, nor cared I.  I
+obeyed the voice that bade me go.  Anon a mighty tempest fell upon the
+ship and overwhelmed it.  The cruel sea brought peace to all but me; a
+many days it tossed and buffeted me, then with a cry of exultation cast
+me at last upon a shore I had not seen before, a coast far, far
+westward whereon abides no human thing.  But in that solitude still
+heard I from within the awful mandate that sent me journeying onward,
+'Move on, O Jew! move on;' and into vast forests I plunged, and mighty
+plains I traversed; onward, onward, onward I went, with the nameless
+horror in my bosom, and&mdash;that cry, that awful cry!  The rains beat upon
+me; the sun wrought pitilessly with me; the thickets tore my flesh; and
+the inhospitable shores bruised my weary feet,&mdash;yet onward I went,
+plucking what food I might from thorny bushes to stay my hunger, and
+allaying my feverish thirst at pools where reptiles crawled.  Sometimes
+a monster beast stood in my pathway and threatened to devour me; then
+would I spread my two arms thus, and welcome death, crying: 'Rend thou
+this Jew in twain, O beast! strike thy kindly fangs deep into this
+heart,&mdash;be not afeard, for I shall make no battle with thee, nor any
+outcry whatsoever!'  But, lo, the beast would cower before me and skulk
+away.  So there is no death for me; the judgment spoken is irrevocable;
+my sin is unpardonable, and the voice will not be hushed!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus and so much spake the Jew, bowing his hoary head upon his hands.
+Then was the Father Miguel vastly troubled; yet he recoiled not from
+the Jew,&mdash;nay, he took the old man by the hand and sought to soothe him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thy sin was most heinous, O Jew!" quoth the Father; "but it falleth in
+our blessed faith to know that whoso repenteth of his sin, what it
+soever may be, the same shall surely be forgiven.  Thy punishment hath
+already been severe, and God is merciful, for even as we are all his
+children, even so his tenderness to us is like unto the tenderness of a
+father unto his child&mdash;yea, and infinitely tenderer and sweeter, for
+who can estimate the love of our heavenly Father?  Thou didst deny thy
+succor to the Nazarene when he besought it, yet so great compassion
+hath he that if thou but callest upon him he will forget thy
+wrong,&mdash;leastwise will pardon it.  Therefore be thou persuaded by me,
+and tarry here this night, that in the presence of yonder symbol and
+the holy relics our prayers may go up with thine unto our blessed
+Mother and to the saints who haply shall intercede for thee in
+Paradise.  Rest here, O sufferer,&mdash;rest thou here, and we shall
+presently give thee great comfort."  The Jew, well-nigh fainting with
+fatigue, being persuaded by the holy Father's gentle words, gave
+finally his consent unto this thing, and went anon unto the cave beyond
+the shrine, and entered thereinto, and lay upon a bed of skins and
+furs, and made as if to sleep.  And when he slept his sleep was
+seemingly disturbed by visions, and he tossed as doth an one that sees
+full evil things, and in that sleep he muttered somewhat of a voice he
+seemed to hear, though round about there was no sound whatsoever, save
+only the soft music of the pine-trees on the mountain-side.  Meanwhile
+in the shrine, hewn out of those rocks, did the Father Miguel bow
+before the sacred symbol of his faith and plead for mercy for that same
+Jew that slumbered anear.  And when, as the deepening blue mantle of
+night fell upon the hilltops and obscured the valleys round about, Don
+Esclevador and his sturdy men came clamoring along the mountain-side,
+the holy Father met them a way off and bade them have regard to the
+aged man that slept in yonder cave.  But when he told them of that Jew
+and of his misery and of the secret causes thereof, out spake the noble
+Don Esclevador, full hotly,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By our sweet Christ," he cried, "shall we not offend our blessed faith
+and do most impiously in the Virgin's sight if we give this harbor and
+this succor unto so vile a sinner as this Jew that hath denied our dear
+Lord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Which words had like to wrought great evil with the Jew, for instantly
+the other men sprang forward as if to awaken the Jew and drive him
+forth into the night.  But the Father Miguel stretched forth his hands
+and commanded them to do no evil unto the Jew, and so persuasively did
+he set forth the godliness and the sweetness of compassion that
+presently the whole company was moved with a gentle pity toward that
+Jew.  Therefore it befell anon, when night came down from the skies and
+after they had feasted upon their homely food as was their wont, that
+they talked of the Jew, and thinking of their own hardships and
+misfortunes (whereof it is not now to speak), they had all the more
+compassion to that Jew, which spake them passing fair, I ween.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now all this while lay the Jew upon the bed of skins and furs within
+the cave, and though he slept (for he was exceeding weary), he tossed
+continually from side to side, and spoke things in his sleep, as if his
+heart were sorely troubled, and as if in his dreams he beheld grievous
+things.  And seeing the old man, and hearing his broken speech, the
+others moved softly hither and thither and made no noise soever lest
+they should awaken him.  And many an one&mdash;yes, all that valiant company
+bowed down that night before the symbol in the shrine, and with sweet
+reverence called upon our blessed Virgin to plead in the cause of that
+wretched Jew.  Then sleep came to all, and in dreams the noble Don
+Esclevador saw his sovereign liege, and kneeled before his throne, and
+heard his sovereign liege's gracious voice; in dreams the heartweary
+soldier sailed the blue waters of the Spanish main, and pressed his
+native shore, and beheld once again the lovelight in the dark eyes of
+her that awaited him; in dreams the mountain-pines were kissed of the
+singing winds, and murmured drowsily and tossed their arms as do little
+children that dream of their play; in dreams the Jew swayed hither and
+thither, scourged by that nameless horror in his bosom, and seeing the
+pleading eyes of our dying Master, and hearing that awful mandate:
+"Move on, O Jew! move on forever!"  So each slept and dreamed his
+dreams,&mdash;all slept but the Father Miguel, who alone throughout the
+night kneeled in the shrine and called unto the saints and unto our
+Mother Mary in prayer.  And his supplication was for that Jew; and the
+mists fell upon that place and compassed it about, and it was as if the
+heavens had reached down their lips to kiss the holy shrine.  And
+suddenly there came unto the Jew a quiet as of death, so that he tossed
+no more in his sleep and spake no word, but lay exceeding still,
+smiling in his sleep as one who sees his home in dreams, or his mother,
+or some other such beloved thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came to pass that early in the morning the Jew came from the cavern
+to go upon his way, and the Father Miguel besought him to take with him
+a goodly loaf in his wallet as wise provision against hunger.  But the
+Jew denied this, and then he said: "Last night while I slept methought
+I stood once more in the city of the Great King,&mdash;ay, in that very
+doorway where I stood, swart and lusty, when I spurned him that went
+his way to Calvary.  In my bosom burned the terror as of old, and my
+soul was consumed of a mighty anguish.  None of those that passed in
+that street knew me; centuries had ground to dust all my kin.  'O God!'
+I cried in agony, 'suffer my sin to be forgotten,&mdash;suffer me to sleep,
+to sleep forever beneath the burden of the cross I sometime spurned!'
+As I spake these words there stood before me one in shining raiment,
+and lo! 't was he who bore the cross to Calvary!  His eyes that had
+pleaded to me on a time now fell compassionately upon me, and the voice
+that had commanded me move on forever, now broke full sweetly on my
+ears: 'Thou shalt go on no more, O Jew, but as thou hast asked, so
+shall it be, and thou shalt sleep forever beneath the cross.'  Then
+fell I into a deep slumber, and, therefrom but just now awaking, I feel
+within me what peace bespeaketh pardon for my sin.  This day am I
+ransomed; so suffer me to go my way, O holy man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So went the Jew upon his way, not groaningly and in toilsome wise, as
+was his wont, but eagerly, as goeth one to meet his bride, or unto some
+sweet reward.  And the Father Miguel stood long, looking after him and
+being sorely troubled in mind; for he knew not what interpretation he
+should make of all these things.  And anon the Jew was lost to sight in
+the forest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But once, a little space thereafter, while that José Conejos, the
+Castilian, clambered up the yonder mountain-side, he saw amid the
+grasses there the dead and withered body of an aged man, and thereupon
+forthwith made he such clamor that Don Esclevador hastened thither and
+saw it was the Jew; and since there was no sign that wild beasts had
+wrought evil with him, it was declared that the Jew had died of age and
+fatigue and sorrow, albeit on the wrinkled face there was a smile of
+peace that none had seen thereon while yet the Jew lived.  And it was
+accounted to be a most wondrous thing that, whereas never before had
+flowers of that kind been seen in those mountains, there now bloomed
+all round about flowers of the dye of blood, which thing the noble Don
+Esclevador took full wisely to be a symbol of our dear Lord's most
+precious blood, whereby not only you and I but even the Jew shall be
+redeemed to Paradise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within the spot where they had found the Jew they buried him, and there
+he sleeps unto this very day.  Above the grave the Father Miguel said a
+prayer; and the ground of that mountain they adjudged to be holy
+ground; but over the grave wherein lay the Jew they set up neither
+cross nor symbol of any kind, fearing to offend their holy faith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that very night, when that they were returned unto their camp half
+a league distant, there arose a mighty tempest, and there was such an
+upheaval and rending of the earth as only God's hand could make; and
+there was a crashing and a groaning as if the world were smitten in
+twain, and the winds fled through the valleys in dismay, and the trees
+of the forest shrieked in terror and fell upon their faces.  Then in
+the morning when the tempest ceased and all the sky was calm and
+radiant they saw that an impassable chasm lay between them and that
+mountain-side wherein the Jew slept the sleep of death; that God had
+traced with his finger a mighty gulf about that holy ground which held
+the bones of the transgressor.  Between heaven and earth hung that
+lonely grave, nor could any foot scale the precipice that guarded it;
+but one might see that the spot was beautiful with kindly mountain
+verdure and that flowers of blood-red dye bloomed in that lonely place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was the happening in a summer-time a many years ago; to the mellow
+grace of that summer succeeded the purple glory of the autumn, and then
+came on apace the hoary dignity of winter.  But the earth hath its
+resurrection too, and anon came the beauteous spring-time with warmth
+and scents and new life.  The brooks leapt forth once more from their
+hiding-places, the verdure awaked, and the trees put forth their
+foliage.  Then from the awful mountain peaks the snow silently and
+slowly slipped to the valleys, and in divers natural channels went
+onward and ever downward to the southern sea, and now at last 't was
+summer-time again and the mellow grace of August brooded over the
+earth.  But in that yonder mountain-side had fallen a symbol never to
+be removed,&mdash;ay, upon that holy ground where slept the Jew was
+stretched a cross, a mighty cross of snow on which the sun never fell
+and which no breath of wind ever disturbed.  Elsewhere was the tender
+warmth of verdure and the sacred passion of the blood-red flowers, but
+over that lonely grave was stretched the symbol of him that went his
+way to Calvary, and in that grave slept the Jew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mightily marvelled Don Esclevador and his warrior host at this thing;
+but the Father Miguel knew its meaning; for he was minded of that
+vision wherein it was foretold unto the Jew that, pardoned for his sin,
+he should sleep forever under the burden of the cross he spurned.  All
+this the Father Miguel showed unto Don Esclevador and the others, and
+he said: "I deem that unto all ages this holy symbol shall bear witness
+of our dear Christ's mercy and compassion.  Though we, O exiled
+brothers, sleep in this foreign land in graves which none shall know,
+upon that mountain height beyond shall stretch the eternal witness to
+our faith and to our Redeemer's love, minding all that look thereon,
+not of the pains and the punishments of the Jew, but of the exceeding
+mercy of our blessed Lord, and of the certain eternal peace that cometh
+through his love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How long ago these things whereof I speak befell, I shall not say.
+They never saw&mdash;that Spanish host&mdash;they never saw their native land,
+their sovereign liege, their loved ones' faces again; they sleep, and
+they are dust among those mighty mountains in the West.  Where is the
+grave of the Father Miguel, or of Don Esclevador, or of any of the
+valiant Spanish exiles, it is not to tell; God only knoweth, and the
+saints: all sleep in the faith, and their reward is certain.  But where
+sleepeth the Jew all may see and know; for on that awful mountain-side,
+in a spot inaccessible to man, lieth the holy cross of snow.  The winds
+pass lightly over that solemn tomb, and never a sunbeam lingereth
+there.  White and majestic it lies where God's hands have placed it,
+and its mighty arms stretch forth as in a benediction upon the fleeting
+dust beneath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So shall it bide forever upon that mountain-side, and the memory of the
+Jew and of all else human shall fade away and be forgotten in the
+surpassing glory of the love and the compassion of him that bore the
+redeeming burden to Calvary.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was none other in the quiet valley so happy as the
+rose-tree,&mdash;none other so happy unless perchance it was the thrush who
+made his home in the linden yonder.  The thrush loved the rose-tree's
+daughter, and he was happy in thinking that some day she would be his
+bride.  Now the rose-tree had many daughters, and each was beautiful;
+but the rose whom the thrush loved was more beautiful than her sisters,
+and all the wooers came wooing her until at last the fair creature's
+head was turned, and the rose grew capricious and disdainful.  Among
+her many lovers were the south wind and the fairy Dewlove and the
+little elf-prince Beambright and the hoptoad, whom all the rest called
+Mr. Roughbrown.  The hoptoad lived in the stone-wall several yards
+away; but every morning and evening he made a journey to the rose-tree,
+and there he would sit for hours gazing with tender longings at the
+beautiful rose, and murmuring impassioned avowals.  The rose's disdain
+did not chill the hoptoad's ardor.  "See what I have brought you, fair
+rose," he would say.  "A beautiful brown beetle with golden wings and
+green eyes!  Surely there is not in all the world a more delicious
+morsel than a brown beetle!  Or, if you but say the word, I will fetch
+you a tender little fly, or a young gnat,&mdash;see, I am willing to undergo
+all toils and dangers for your own sweet sake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Mr. Roughbrown!  His wooing was very hopeless.  And all the time
+he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her
+home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as
+ever you saw, and her eyes were full of envy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Mr. Roughbrown had any sense," she said to herself, "he would waste
+no time on that vain and frivolous rose.  He is far too good a catch
+for <I>her</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The south wind was forever sighing and sobbing about.  He lives, you
+know, very many miles from here.  His home is beyond a great sea; in
+the midst of a vast desert there is an oasis, and it is among the
+palm-trees and the flowers of this oasis that the south wind abides.
+When spring calls from the North, "O south wind, where are you?  Come
+hither, my sunny friend!" the south wind leaps from his couch in the
+far-off oasis, and hastens whither the spring-time calls.  As he speeds
+across the sea the mermaids seek to tangle him in their tresses, and
+the waves try to twine their white arms about him; but he shakes them
+off and laughingly flies upon his way.  Wheresoever he goes he is
+beloved.  With their soft, solemn music the pine-trees seek to detain
+him; the flowers of earth lift up their voices and cry, "Abide with us,
+dear spirit,"&mdash;but to all he answers: "The spring-time calls me in the
+North, and I must hasten whither she calls."  But when the south wind
+came to the rose-tree he would go no farther; he loved the rose, and he
+lingered about her with singing and sighing and protestations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not until late in the evening that Dewlove and the elf-prince
+appeared.  Just as the moon rolled up in the horizon and poured a broad
+streak of silver through the lake the three crickets went "Chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," and then out danced Dewlove and Beambright
+from their hiding-places.  The cunning little fairy lived under the
+moss at the foot of the oak-tree; he was no bigger than a cambric
+needle,&mdash;but he had two eyes, and in this respect he had quite the
+advantage of the needle.  As for the elf-prince, his home was in the
+tiny, dark subterranean passage which the mole used to live in; he was
+plump as a cupid, and his hair was long and curly, although if you
+force me to it I must tell you that the elf-prince was really no larger
+than your little finger,&mdash;so you will see that so far as physical
+proportions were concerned Dewlove and Beambright were pretty well
+matched.  Merry, merry fellows they were, and I should certainly fail
+most lamentably did I attempt to tell you how prettily they danced upon
+the greensward of the meadowlands throughout the summer nights.
+Sometimes the other fairies and elves joined them,&mdash;delicate little
+lady fairies with gossamer wings, and chubby little lady elves clad in
+filmy spider webs,&mdash;and they danced and danced and danced, while the
+three crickets went "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," all night
+long.  Now it was very strange&mdash;was it not?&mdash;that instead of loving one
+of these delicate little lady fairies, or one of these chubby little
+lady elves, both Dewlove and Beambright loved the rose.  Yet, she was
+indeed very beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thrush did not pester the rose with his protestations of love.  He
+was not a particularly proud fellow, but he thought too much of the
+rose to vex her with his pleadings.  But all day long he would perch in
+the thicket and sing his songs as only a thrush can sing to the
+beautiful rose he loves.  He sung, we will say, of the forests he had
+explored, of the famous river he had once seen, of the dew which the
+rose loved, of the storm-king that slew the old pine and made his cones
+into a crown,&mdash;he sung of a thousand things which we might not
+understand, but which pleased the rose because she understood them.
+And one day the thrush swooped down from the linden upon a monstrous
+devil's darning-needle that came spinning along and poised himself to
+stab the beautiful rose.  Yes, like lightning the thrush swooped down
+on this murderous monster, and he bit him in two, and I am glad of it,
+and so are you if your heart be not wholly callous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How comes it," said the rose-tree to the thrush that day,&mdash;"how comes
+it that you do not woo my daughter?  You have shown that you love her;
+why not speak to her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I will wait," answered the thrush.  "She has many wooers, and each
+wooes her in his own way.  Let me show her by my devotion that I am
+worthy of her, and then perchance she will listen kindly to me when I
+speak to her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rose-tree thought very strange of this; in all her experience of
+bringing out her fair daughters into society she had never before had
+to deal with so curious a lover as the thrush.  She made up her mind to
+speak for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My daughter," said she to the rose, "the thrush loves you; of all your
+wooers he is the most constant and the most amiable.  I pray that you
+will hear kindly to his suit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rose laughed carelessly,&mdash;yes, merrily,&mdash;as if she heeded not the
+heartache which her indifference might cause the honest thrush.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother," said the rose, "these suitors are pestering me beyond all
+endurance.  How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is
+forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy
+wheezing?  And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,&mdash;why, it is a
+husband I want, not a father!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prince Beambright pleases you, then?" asked the rose-tree.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is a merry, capering fellow," said the daughter, "and so is his
+friend Dewlove; but I do not fancy either.  And as for the thrush who
+sends you to speak for him,&mdash;why, he is quite out of the question, I
+assure you.  The truth is, mother, that I am to fill a higher station
+than that of bride to any of these simple rustic folk.  Am I not more
+beautiful than any of my companions, and have I not ambitions above all
+others of my kind?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom have you seen that you talk so vain-gloriously?" cried the
+rose-tree in alarm.  "What flattery has instilled into you this fatal
+poison?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you not seen the poet who comes this way every morning?" asked
+the rose.  "His face is noble, and he sings grandly to the pictures
+Nature spreads before his eyes.  I should be his bride.  Some day he
+will see me; he will bear me away upon his bosom; he will indite to me
+a poem that shall live forever!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These words the thrush heard, and his heart sank within him.  If his
+songs that day were not so blithe as usual it was because of the words
+that the rose had spoken.  Yet the thrush sang on, and his song was
+full of his honest love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the next morning that the poet came that way.  He lived in the
+city, but each day he stole away from the noise and crowd of the city
+to commune with himself and with Nature in the quiet valley where
+bloomed the rose-tree, where the thrush sung, and where dwelt the fays
+and the elves of whom it has been spoken.  The sun shone fiercely;
+withal the quiet valley was cool, and the poet bared his brow to the
+breeze that swept down the quiet valley from the lake over yonder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The south wind loves the rose!  Aha, aha, foolish brother to love the
+rose!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was what the breeze said, and the poet heard it.  Then his eyes
+fell upon the rose-tree and upon her blooming daughters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The hoptoad loves the rose!  Foolish old Roughbrown to love the rose,
+aha, aha!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a malicious squeakiness in this utterance,&mdash;of course it came
+from that envious Miss Dormouse, who was forever peeping out of her
+habitation in the hedge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a beautiful rose!" cried the poet, and leaping over the old
+stone-wall he plucked the rose from the mother-tree,&mdash;yes, the poet
+bore away this very rose who had hoped to be the poet's bride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the rose-tree wept bitterly, and so did her other daughters; the
+south wind wailed, and the old hoptoad gave three croaks so dolorous
+that if you had heard them you would have said that his heart was truly
+broken.  All were sad,&mdash;all but the envious dormouse, who chuckled
+maliciously, and said it was no more than they deserved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thrush saw the poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the
+fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader?
+What could he do but twitter in anguish?  So there are tragedies and
+heartaches in lives that are not human.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the poet returned to the city he wore the rose upon his breast.  The
+rose was happy, for the poet spoke to her now and then, and praised her
+loveliness, and she saw that her beauty had given him an inspiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rose despised my brother!  Aha, aha, foolish rose,&mdash;but she shall
+wither!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the breeze that spake; far away from the lake in the quiet
+valley its voice was very low, but the rose heard and trembled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a lie," cried the rose.  "I shall not die.  The poet loves me,
+and I shall live forever upon his bosom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet a singular faintness&mdash;a faintness never felt before&mdash;came upon the
+rose; she bent her head and sighed.  The heat&mdash;that was all&mdash;was very
+oppressive, and here at the entrance to the city the tumult aroused an
+aggravating dust.  The poet seemed suddenly to forget the rose.  A
+carriage was approaching, and from the carriage leaned a lady, who
+beckoned to the poet.  The lady was very fair, and the poet hastened to
+answer her call.  And as he hastened the rose fell from his bosom into
+the hot highway, and the poet paid no heed.  Ascending into the
+carriage with the lady (I am sure she must have been a princess!) the
+poet was whirled away, and there in the stifling dust lay the fainting
+rose, all stained and dying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sparrows flew down and pecked at her inquisitively; the cruel
+wagons crushed her beneath their iron wheels; careless feet buffeted
+her hither and thither.  She was no longer a beautiful rose; no, nor
+even a reminiscence of one,&mdash;simply a colorless, scentless, ill-shapen
+mass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But all at once she heard a familiar voice, and then she saw familiar
+eyes.  The voice was tender and the eyes were kindly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O honest thrush," cried the rose, "is it you who have come to reproach
+me for my folly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, dear rose," said the thrush, "how should I speak ill to you?
+Come, rest your poor head upon my breast, and let me bear you home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me rather die here," sighed the rose, "for it was here that my
+folly brought me.  How could I go back with you whom I never so much as
+smiled upon?  And do they not hate and deride me in the valley?  I
+would rather die here in misery than there in shame!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor, broken flower, they love you," urged the thrush.  "They grieve
+for you; let me bear you back where the mother-tree will shade you, and
+where the south wind will nurse you&mdash;for&mdash;for he loves you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the thrush bore back the withering rose to her home in the quiet
+valley.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So she has come back, has she?" sneered the dormouse.  "Well, she has
+impudence, if nothing else!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was pretty once," said the old hoptoad; "but she lost her
+opportunity when I made up my mind to go wooing a certain glossy damsel
+in the hedge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rose-tree reached out her motherly arms to welcome her dying
+daughter, and she said: "Rest here, dear one, and let me rock you to
+repose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was evening in the quiet valley now.  Where was the south wind that
+he came not with his wooing?  He had flown to the North, for that day
+he had heard the spring-time's voice a-calling, and he went in answer
+to its summons.  Everything was still.  "Chirp-chirp,  chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp," piped the three crickets, and forthwith the fairy boy and
+the elf-prince danced from their habitations.  Their little feet
+tinkled over the clover and the daisies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, little folk," cried the rose-tree.  "Do not dance to-night,&mdash;the
+rose is dying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But they danced on.  The rose did not hear them; she heard only the
+voice of the thrush, who perched in the linden yonder, and, with a
+breaking heart, sung to the dying flower.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE[1]
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It is to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib; comely was
+he to look upon, and a braver than he lived not in these islands, nor
+one more beloved of all people.  But it chanced upon a time, while he
+was still in early manhood, that a grievous sorrow befell him; for on a
+day his mother Eleanor came to her end in this full evil wise.  It was
+her intent to go unto the neighboring island, where grazed the goats
+and the kine, and it fortuned that, as she made her way thither in the
+boat, she heard sweet music, as if one played upon a harp in the
+waters, and, looking over the side of the boat, she beheld down in the
+waters a sea-maiden making those exceeding pleasant sounds.  And the
+sea-maiden ceased to play, and smiled up at Eleanor, and stretched up
+her hands and besought Eleanor to pluck her from the sea into the boat,
+which seeking to do, Eleanor fell headlong into the waters, and was
+never thereafter seen either alive or dead by any of her kin.  Now
+under this passing heavy grief Egbert, the son of Ib, being old and
+spent by toil, brake down, and on a night died, making with his latest
+breath most heavy lamentation for Eleanor, his wife; so died he, and
+his soul sped, as they tell, to that far northern land where the souls
+of the departed make merry all the night, which merriment sendeth forth
+so vast and so beautiful a light that all the heavens are illumined
+thereby.  But Harold, the son of Egbert and of Eleanor, was left alone,
+having neither brother, nor sister, nor any of kin, save an uncle
+abiding many leagues distant in Jutland.  Thereupon befell a wonderful
+thing; if it had not happened it would not be told.  It chanced that,
+on a certain evening in the summer-time, Harold walked alone where a
+Druid circle lay coiled like a dark serpent on a hillside; his heart
+was filled with dolor, for he thought continually of Eleanor, his
+mother, and he wept softly to himself through love of that dear mother.
+While thus he walked in vast heaviness of soul, he was beheld of
+Membril, the fairy that with her goodly subjects dwelt in the ruin of
+the Pict's house hard by the Druid circle.  And Membril had compassion
+upon Harold, and upon the exceeding fine down of a tiny sea-bird she
+rode out to meet him, and it was before his eyes as if a star shined
+out of a mist in his pathway.  So it was that Membril the fairy made
+herself known to him, and having so done, she said and she sung:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+I am Membril, queen of Fay,<BR>
+That would charm thy grief away!<BR>
+Thou art like the little bark<BR>
+Drifting in the cold and dark,&mdash;<BR>
+Drifting through the tempest's roar<BR>
+To a rocky, icy shore;<BR>
+All the torment dost thou feel<BR>
+Of the spent and fearful seal<BR>
+Wounded by the hunter's steel.<BR>
+I am Membril,&mdash;hark to me:<BR>
+Better times await on thee!<BR>
+Wouldst thou clasp thy mother dear,&mdash;<BR>
+Strange things see and stranger hear?<BR>
+Straight betake thee to thy boat<BR>
+And to yonder haven float,&mdash;<BR>
+Go thy way, and silent be,&mdash;<BR>
+It is Membril counsels thee;<BR>
+Go thy way, and thou shalt see!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Great marvel had Harold to this thing; nevertheless he did the bidding
+of Membril the fairy, and it was full wisely done.  And presently he
+came to where his boat lay, half on the shore and half in the waters,
+and he unloosed the thong that held it, and entered into the boat; but
+he put neither hand to the oars thereof, for he was intent to do the
+bidding of Membril the fairy.  Then as if of its own accord, or as if
+the kindly waves themselves bore it along, the boat moved upon the
+waters and turned toward the yonder haven whereof it was said and sung.
+Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows fell
+from the hilltops in their sleep and lay, as they had been little weary
+children, in the valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in
+the cradles of those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung
+softly to them.  Upon the one side lay the island where grazed the
+goats and the kine, and upon the other side lay the island where Harold
+and other people abode; between these islands crept the sea with its
+gentle murmurings, and upon this sea drifted the boat bearing Harold to
+the yonder haven.  Now the haven whereunto the course lay brooded
+almost beneath the shadow of the Stennis stones, and the waters thereof
+were dark, as if, forsooth, the sea frowned whensoever it saw those
+bloody stones peering down into its tranquil bosom.  And some said that
+the place was haunted, and that upon each seventh night came thereunto
+the spirits of them that had been slain upon those stones, and waved
+their ghostly arms and wailed grievously; but of latter times none
+believeth this thing to be true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It befell that, coming into the haven and bearing toward the shore
+thereof, Harold was 'ware of sweet music, and presently he saw figures
+as of men and women dancing upon the holm; but neither could he see who
+these people were, nor could he tell wherefrom the music came.  But
+such fair music never had he heard before, and with great marvel he
+came from the boat into the cluster of beech-trees that stood between
+the haven and that holm where the people danced.  Then of a sudden
+Harold saw twelve skins lying upon the shore in the moonlight; and they
+were the comeliest and most precious sealskins that ever he saw, and he
+coveted them.  So presently he took up one of the sealskins and bore it
+with him into his boat, and pushed the boat from the shore into the
+waters of the haven again, and, so doing, there was such plashing of
+the waters that those people dancing upon the fair green holm became
+'ware of Harold's presence, and were afeared, so that, ceasing from
+their sport, they made haste down to the shore and did on the skins and
+dived into the waters with shrill cries.  But there was one of them
+that could not do so, because Harold bore off that skin wherewith she
+was wont to begird herself, and when she found it not she wailed and
+wept and besought Harold to give her that skin again,&mdash;and, lo! it was
+Eleanor, the wife of Egbert!  Now when Harold saw that it was his
+mother that so entreated him he was filled with wonder, and he drew
+nearer the shore to regard her and to hear her words, for he loved her
+passing well.  But he denied her that skin, knowing full well that so
+soon as she possessed it she would leave him and he should never again
+behold her.  Then Eleanor related to him how that she had been drowned
+in the sea through treachery of the harp-maiden, and how that the souls
+of drowned people entered into the bodies of seals, nor were permitted
+to return to earth, save only one night in every month, at which time
+each recovered his human shape and was suffered to dance in the
+moonlight upon the fair green holm from the hour of sunset unto the
+hour of sunrise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me the skin, I pray thee," she cried, "for if the sun came upon
+me unawares I should crumble into dust before thine eyes, and that
+moment would a curse fall upon you.  I am happy as I am; the sea and
+those who dwell therein are good to me,&mdash;give me the skin, I beseech
+thee, that I may return whence I came, and thereby shall a great
+blessing accrue to thee and thine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Harold said: "Nay, mother, I were a fool to part so cheerfully with
+one whom I love dearer than life itself!  I shall not let you go so
+easily; you shall come with me to our home, where I have lived alone
+too long already.  I shall be alone no longer,&mdash;come with me, I say,
+for I will not deliver up this skin, nor shall any force wrest it from
+me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Eleanor, his mother, reasoned a space with him, and anon she
+showed him the folly of his way; but still he hung his head upon his
+breast and was loath to do her bidding, until at last she sware unto
+him that if he gave to her that skin he should, upon the next dancing
+night, have to wife the most beautiful maiden in the world, and
+therefore should be alone in the world no more.  To this presently
+Harold gave assent, and then Eleanor, his mother, bade him come to that
+same spot one month hence, and do what she should then bid him do.
+Receiving, therefore, the skin from him, she folded it about her and
+threw herself into the sea, and Harold betook himself unto his home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now wit ye well that full wearily dragged the days and the nights until
+that month was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and
+upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting.
+It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from
+his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of
+the moon from out the silver waters yonder.  While thus he stood there
+appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him she said and
+she sung:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+I am Membril, queen of Fay,<BR>
+Come to urge thee on thy way;<BR>
+Haste to yonder haven-side<BR>
+Where awaits thy promised bride;<BR>
+Daughter of a king is she,&mdash;<BR>
+Many leagues she comes to thee,<BR>
+Thine and only thine to be.<BR>
+Haste and see, then come again<BR>
+To thy pretty home, and, when<BR>
+Smiles the sun on earth once more,<BR>
+Will come knocking at thy door;<BR>
+Open then, and to thy breast<BR>
+Clasp whom thou shalt love the best!<BR>
+It is Membril counsels thee,&mdash;<BR>
+Haste and see what thou shalt see!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Now by this thing was Harold mightily rejoiced, and he believed it to
+be truth that great good was in store for him; for he had seen pleasant
+things in the candle a many nights, and the smoke from his fire blew
+cheerily and lightly to the westward, and a swan had circled over his
+house that day week, and in his net each day for twice seven days had
+he drawn from the sea a fish having one golden eye and one silver eye:
+which things, as all men know, portend full goodly things, or else they
+portend nothing at all whatsoever.  So, being pleasantly minded, Harold
+returned in kind unto Membril, the fairy queen, that bespoke him so
+courteously, and to her and to them that bore her company he said and
+he sung:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">For thou speakest pleasing words;</SPAN><BR>
+Thou shalt have a gill of whey<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And a thimblefull of curds;</SPAN><BR>
+In this rose is honey-dew<BR>
+That a bee hath brought for you!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Call thy sisters from the gloam,</SPAN><BR>
+And, whilst I am on my way,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Feast and frolic in my home,&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Kiss the moonbeams, blanching white,<BR>
+Shrinking, shivering with affright!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Welcome, all, and have no fear,&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">There is flax upon the sill,</SPAN><BR>
+No foul sprite can enter here,&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Feast and frolic as you will;</SPAN><BR>
+Feast and frisk till break of day,&mdash;<BR>
+Welcome, little folk of Fay!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Thus having said and thus having sung, Harold went upon his way, and
+came to his boat and entered into it and journeyed to the haven where
+some time he had seen and discoursed with Eleanor, his mother.  His
+course to this same haven lay, as before, over the waters that stole in
+between the two islands from the great sea beyond.  Fair shone the
+moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows rolled from the
+hilltops in their sleep and lay like little weary children in the
+valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in the cradles of
+those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung softly to them.
+Upon this hand lay the island where the goats and the kine found sweet
+pasturage, and upon the other hand stretched the island where people
+abode, and where the bloody Stennis stones rebuked the smiling sky, and
+where ghosts walked and wailed and waved their white arms in the
+shadows of those haunted ruins where once upon a time the Picts had
+dwelt.  And Harold's heart was full of joy, the more in especial when,
+as he bore nigh unto the haven, he heard sweet music and beheld a
+goodly company of people that danced in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  Then, when presently his boat touched the inner shore of
+the haven, and he departed therefrom and drew the boat upon the shore,
+he saw wherefrom issued the beautiful music to which the people danced;
+he saw that the waters reached out their white fingers and touched the
+kale and the fair pebbles and the brittle shells and the moss upon the
+beach, and these things gave forth sweet sounds, which were as if a
+thousand attuned harps vied with the singing of the summer-night winds.
+Then, as before, Harold saw sealskins lying upon the shore, and
+presently came Eleanor, his mother, and pointing to a certain fair
+velvet skin, she said: "Take that fair velvet skin into thy boat and
+speed with all haste to thy home.  To-morrow at sunrise thy bride shall
+come knocking at thy door.  And so, farewell, my son,&mdash;oh, Harold, my
+only son!"  Which saying, Eleanor, the wife of Egbert, drew a skin
+about her and leapt into the sea; nor was she ever thereafter beholden
+of human eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Harold took up the fair velvet skin to which his mother had
+directed him, and he bore it away with him in his boat.  So softly went
+he upon the waters that none of them that danced upon the fair green
+holm either saw or heard him.  Still danced they on to the sweet music
+made by the white fingers of the waves, and still shone the white moon
+upon the fair green holm where they so danced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now when came Harold to his home, bearing the precious skin with him,
+he saw the fairies at play upon the floor of his hut, and they feared
+no evil, for there was barley strewn upon the sill so that no wicked
+sprite could enter there.  And when Membril, the fairy queen, saw him
+bringing the skin that he had found upon the shore, she bade him good
+welcome, and she said and she sung:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+I am Membril, queen of Fay,&mdash;<BR>
+Ponder well what words I say;<BR>
+Hide that fair and velvet skin<BR>
+Some secluded spot within;<BR>
+In the tree where ravens croak,&mdash;<BR>
+In the hollow of the oak,<BR>
+In the cave with mosses lined,<BR>
+In the earth where none may find;<BR>
+Hide it quick and hide it deep,&mdash;<BR>
+So secure shall be thy sleep,<BR>
+Thine shall bride and blessings be,<BR>
+Thine a fair posterity,&mdash;<BR>
+So doth Membril counsel thee!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+So, pondering upon this counsel and thinking well of it, Harold took
+the fair velvet skin and hid it, and none knew where it was hid,&mdash;none
+save only the raven that lived in the hollow oak.  And when he had so
+done he returned unto his home and lay upon his bed and slept.  It came
+to pass that early upon the morrow, when the sun made all the eastward
+sky blush for the exceeding ardor of his morning kiss, there came a
+knocking at the door of Harold's hut, and Harold opened the door, and
+lo! there stood upon the threshold the fairest maiden that eyes ever
+beheld.  Unlike was she to maidens dwelling in those islands, for her
+hair was black as the waters of the long winter night, and her eyes
+were as the twin midnight rocks that look up from the white waves of
+the moonlit sea in yonder reef; withal was she most beautiful to look
+upon, and her voice was as music that stealeth to one over pleasant
+waters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The maiden's name was Persis, and she was the daughter of a Pagan king
+that ruled in a country many, many&mdash;oh, many leagues to the southward
+of these islands, in a country where unicorns and dragons be, and where
+dwelleth the phoenix and hippogriffins and the cockatrix, and where
+bloometh a tree that runneth blood, and where mighty princes do
+wondrous things.  Now it fortuned that the king was minded to wed his
+daughter Persis unto a neighboring prince, a high and mighty prince,
+but one whom Persis loved not, neither could she love.  So for the
+first time Persis said, "Nay, I will not," unto her father's mandate,
+whereat the king was passing wroth, and he put his daughter in a place
+that was like a jail to her, for it was where none might see her, and
+where she might see none,&mdash;none but those that attended upon her.  This
+much told Persis, the Pagan princess, unto Harold, and then,
+furthermore, she said: "The place wherein I was put by the king, my
+father, was hard by the sea, and oftentimes I went thereon in my little
+boat, and once, looking down from that boat into the sea, I saw the
+face of a fair young man within a magic mirror that was held up in the
+waters of the sea by two ghostly hands, and the fair young man moved
+his lips and smiled at me, and methought I heard him say: 'Come, be my
+bride, O fair and gentle Persis!'  But, vastly afeared, I cried out and
+put back again to shore.  Yet in my dreams I saw that face and heard
+that voice, nor could I find any rest until I came upon the sea again
+in hope to see the face and hear the voice once more.  Then, that
+second time, as I looked into the sea, another face came up from below
+and lifted above the waters, and a woman's voice spake thus to me: 'I
+am mother of him that loveth thee and whom thou lovest; his face hast
+thou seen in the mirror, and of thee I have spoken to him; come, let me
+bear thee as a bride to him!'  And in that moment a faintness came upon
+me and I fell into her arms, and so was I drowned (as men say), and so
+was I a seal a little space until last dancing night, when, lo! some
+one brought me to life again, and one that said her name was Membril
+showed me the way unto thy door.  And now I look upon thy face in
+truth, and thou art he who shall have me to his wife, for thou art he
+whose face I saw within the mirror which the ghostly hands bore up to
+me that day upon the sea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Great then was Harold's joy, and he folded her in his arms, and he
+spake sweet words to her, and she was content.  So they were wed that
+very day, and there came to do them honor all the folk upon these
+islands: Dougal and Tam and Ib and Robbie and Nels and Gram and Rupert
+and Rolf and many others and all their kin, and they made merry, and it
+was well.  And never spake the Pagan princess of that soft velvet skin
+which Harold had hid away,&mdash;never spake she of it to him or to any
+other one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is to tell that to Harold and to Persis were born these children,
+and in this order: Egbert and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) and
+Harold and Joan and Tam and Annie and Rupert the Fair and Flocken and
+Elsa and Albert and Theodoric,&mdash;these eleven children were born unto
+them in good time; and right fair children were they to see, comely and
+stout, yet sweetly minded withal.  And prosperous times continually
+befell Harold; his herds multiplied, and the fish came into his nets,
+so that presently there was none other richer than he in all that
+country, and he did great good with his riches, for he had compassion
+to the poor.  So Harold was beloved of all, and all spake full fairly
+of his wife,&mdash;how that she cared for his little ones, and kept the
+house, and did deeds of sweet charity among the needy and
+distressed,&mdash;ay, so was Persis, the wife of Harold, beloved of all, and
+by none other more than by Harold, who was wont to say that Persis had
+brought him all he loved best: his children, his fortune, his
+happiness, and, best of all, herself.  So now they were wed twice seven
+years, and in that time was Persis still as young and fair to look upon
+as when she came to Harold's door for the first time and knocked.  This
+I account to be a marvel, but still more a marvel was it that in all
+these years spake she never a word of that soft velvet skin which
+Harold took and hid,&mdash;never a word to him nor to any one else.  But the
+soft velvet skin lay meanwhile in the hollow of the oak, and in the
+branches of that tree perched a raven that croaked and croaked and
+croaked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now it befell upon a time that a ship touched at that island, and there
+came therefrom men that knelt down upon the shore and made strange
+prayers to a strange God, and forthwith uplifted in that island a
+symbol of wood in the similitude of a cross.  Straightway went Harold
+with the rest to know the cause thereof, being fearful lest for this
+impiety their own gods, whom they served diligently, should send hail
+and fire upon them and their herds.  But those that had come in the
+ship spake gently with them and showed themselves to be peaceful folk
+whose God delighted not in wars, but rather in gentleness and love.
+How it was, I, knowing not, cannot say, but presently the cause of that
+new God, whose law was gentleness and love, waxed mightily, and the
+people came from all around to kiss that cross and worship it.  And
+among them came Harold, for in his heart had dawned the light of a new
+wisdom, and he knew the truth as we know it, you and I.  So Harold was
+baptized in the Christian faith, he and his children; but Persis, his
+wife, was not baptized, for she was the daughter of a Pagan king, and
+she feared to bring evil upon those she loved by doing any blasphemous
+thing.  Right sorely grieved was Harold because of this, and oftentimes
+he spake with her thereof, and oftentimes he prayed unto his God and
+ours to incline her mind toward the cross, which saveth all alike.  But
+Persis would say: "My best beloved, let me not do this thing in haste,
+for I fear to vex thy God since I am a Pagan and the daughter of a
+Pagan king, and therefore have not within me the light that there is in
+thee and thy kind.  Perchance (since thy God is good and gracious) the
+light will come to me anon, and shine before mine eyes as it shineth
+before thine.  I pray thee, let me bide my time."  So spake Persis, and
+her life ever thereafter was kind and charitable, as, soothly, it had
+ever before been, and she served Harold, her husband, well, and she was
+beloved of all, and a great sweetness came to all out of her daily life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It fortuned, upon a day whilst Harold was from home, there was knocking
+at the door of their house, and forthwith the door opened and there
+stood in the midst of them one clad all in black and of rueful
+countenance.  Then, as if she foresaw evil, Persis called unto her
+little ones and stood between them and that one all in black, and she
+demanded of him his name and will.  "I am the Death-Angel," quoth he,
+"and I come for the best-beloved of thy lambs!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now Theodoric was that best-beloved; for he was her very little one,
+and had always slept upon her bosom.  So when she heard those words she
+made a great outcry, and wrestled with the Death-Angel, and sought to
+stay him in his purpose.  But the Death-Angel chilled her with his
+breath, and overcame her, and prevailed against her; and he reached
+into the midst of them and took Theodoric in his arms and folded him
+upon his breast, and Theodoric fell asleep there, and his head dropped
+upon the Death-Angel's shoulder.  But in her battle for the child,
+Persis catched at the chain about the child's neck, and the chain brake
+and remained in her hand, and upon the chain was the little cross of
+fair alabaster which an holy man had put there when Theodoric was
+baptized.  So the Death-Angel went his way with that best-beloved lamb,
+and Persis fell upon her face and wailed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The years went on and all was well upon these islands.  Egbert became a
+mighty fisherman, and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) wrought
+wondrous things in Norroway, as all men know; Joan was wed to Cuthbert
+the Dane, and Flocken was wooed of a rich man's son of Scotland.  So
+were all things for good and for the best, and it was a marvel to all
+that Persis, the wife of Harold, looked still to be as young and
+beautiful as when she came from the sea to be her husband's bride.  Her
+life was full of gentleness and charity, and all folk blessed her.  But
+never in all these years spake she aught to any one of the fair velvet
+skin; and through all the years that skin lay hid in the hollow of the
+oak-tree, where the raven croaked and croaked and croaked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last upon a time a malady fell upon Persis, and a strange light came
+into her eyes, and naught they did was of avail to her.  One day she
+called Harold to her, and said: "My beloved, the time draweth near when
+we twain must part.  I pray thee, send for the holy man, for I would
+fain be baptized in thy faith and in the faith of our children."  So
+Harold fetched the holy man, and Persis, the daughter of the Pagan
+king, was baptized, and she spake freely and full sweetly of her love
+to Jesus Christ, her Saviour, and she prayed to be taken into his rest.
+And when she was baptized, there was given to her the name of Ruth,
+which was most fairly done, I trow, for soothly she had been the friend
+of all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, when the holy man was gone, she said to her husband: "Beloved, I
+beseech thee go to yonder oak-tree, and bring me from the hollow
+thereof the fair velvet skin that hath lain therein so many years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Harold marvelled, and he cried: "Who told thee that the fair
+velvet skin was hidden there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The raven told me all," she answered; "and had I been so minded I
+might have left thee long ago,&mdash;thee and our little ones.  But I loved
+thee and them, and the fair velvet skin hath been unseen of me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And wouldst thou leave us now?" he cried.  "Nay, it shall not be!
+Thou shalt not see that fair velvet skin, for this very day will I cast
+it into the sea!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she put an arm about his neck and said: "This night, dear one, we
+part; but whether we shall presently be joined together in another life
+I know not, neither canst thou say; for I, having been a Pagan and the
+daughter of a Pagan king, may by my birth and custom have so grievously
+offended our true God that even in his compassion and mercy he shall
+not find pardon for me.  Therefore I would have thee fetch&mdash;since I
+shall die this night and do require of thee this last act of
+kindness&mdash;I would have thee fetch that same fair velvet skin from
+yonder oak-tree, and wrap me therein, and bear me hence, and lay me
+upon the green holm by the farther haven, for this is dancing night,
+and the seal-folk shall come from the sea as is their wont.  Thou shalt
+lay me, so wrapped within that fair velvet skin, upon that holm, and
+thou shalt go a space aside and watch throughout the night, coming not
+anear me (as thou lovest me!) until the dawn breaks, nor shalt thou
+make any outcry, but thou shalt wait until the night is sped.  Then,
+when thou comest at daybreak to the holm, if thou findest me in the
+fair velvet skin thou shalt know that my sin hath been pardoned; but if
+I be not there thou may'st know that, being a Pagan, the seal-folk have
+borne me back into the sea unto my kind.  Thus do I require of thee;
+swear so to do, and let thy beloved bless thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Harold swore to do, and so he did.  Straightway he went to the
+oak-tree and took from the hollow thereof the fair velvet skin; seeing
+which deed, the raven flew away and was never thereafter seen in these
+islands.  And with a heavy heart, and with full many a caress and word
+of love, did Harold bind his fair wife in that same velvet skin, and he
+bore her to his boat, and they went together upon the waters; for he
+had sworn so to do.  His course unto the haven lay as before over the
+waters that stole in between the two islands from the great troubled
+sea beyond.  Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the
+shadows lay asleep, like little weary children, in the valleys, and the
+waters moaned, and the winds rebuked the white fingers that stretched
+up from the waves to clutch them.  And when they were come to the inner
+shore of the haven, Harold took his wife and bore her up the bank and
+laid her where the light came down from the moon and slept full sweetly
+upon the fragrant sward.  Then, kissing her, he went his way and sat
+behind the Stennis stones a goodly space beyond, and there he kept his
+watch, as he had sworn to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now wit ye well a grievous heavy watch it was that night, for his heart
+yearned for that beloved wife that lay that while upon the fair green
+holm,&mdash;ay, never before had night seemed so long to Harold as did that
+dancing night when he waited for the seal-folk to come where the
+some-time Pagan princess lay wrapped in the fair velvet skin.  But
+while he watched and waited, Membril, the fairy queen, came and brought
+others of her kind with her, and they made a circle about Harold, and
+threw around him such a charm that no evil could befall him from the
+ghosts and ghouls that in their shrouds walked among those bloody
+stones and wailed wofully and waved their white arms.  For Membril,
+coming to Harold in the similitude of a glow-worm, made herself known
+to him, and she said and she sung:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Loving heart, be calm a space<BR>
+In this gloomy vigil place;<BR>
+Though these confines haunted be<BR>
+Naught of harm can come to thee&mdash;<BR>
+Nothing canst thou see or hear<BR>
+Of the ghosts that stalk anear,<BR>
+For around thee Membril flings<BR>
+Charms of Fay and fairy rings.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Nothing daunted was Harold by thoughts of evil monsters, and naught
+recked he of the uncanny dangers of that haunted place; but he
+addressed these words to Membril and her host, and he said and he sung:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Tell me if thy piercing eyes<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">See the inner haven shore.</SPAN><BR>
+There my Own Beloved lies,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">With the cowslips bending o'er:</SPAN><BR>
+Speed, O gentle folk of Fay!<BR>
+And in guise of cowslips say<BR>
+I shall love my love for aye!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Even so did Membril and the rest; and presently they returned, and they
+brought these words unto Harold, saying and singing them:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+We as cowslips in that place<BR>
+Clustered round thy dear one's face,<BR>
+And we whispered to her there<BR>
+Those same words we went to bear;<BR>
+And she smiled and bade us then<BR>
+Bear these words to thee again:<BR>
+"Die we shall, and part we may,&mdash;<BR>
+Love is love and lives for aye!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Then of a sudden there was a tumult upon the waters, as if the waters
+were troubled, and there came up out of the waters a host of seals that
+made their way to the shore and cast aside their skins and came forth
+in the forms of men and of women, for they were the drowned folk that
+were come, as was their wont, to dance in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  At that moment the waters stretched out their white
+fingers and struck the kale and the pebbles and the soft moss upon the
+beach, for they sought to make music for the seal-folk to dance
+thereby; but the music that was made was not merry nor gleeful, but was
+passing gruesome and mournful.  And presently the seal-folk came where
+lay the wife of Harold wrapped in the fair velvet skin, and they knew
+her of old, and they called her by what name she was known to them,
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and there was great wailing
+among the seal-folk for a mighty space; and the seal-folk danced never
+at all that night, but wailed about the wife of Harold, and called
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and made great moan.  And at
+last all was still once more, for the seal-folk, weeping and clamoring
+grievously, went back into the sea, and the sea sobbed itself to sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mindful of the oath he swore, Harold dared not go down to that shore,
+but he besought Membril, the queen of Fay, to fetch him tidings from
+his beloved, whether she still lay upon the holm, or whether the
+seal-folk had borne her away with them into the waters of the deep.
+But Membril might not go, nor any of her host, for already the dawn was
+in the east and the kine were lowing on yonder slope.  So Harold was
+left alone a tedious time, until the sun looked upon the earth, and
+then, with clamoring heart, Harold came from the Stennis stones and
+leapt downward to the holm where his beloved had lain that weary while.
+Then he saw that the fair velvet skin was still there, and presently he
+saw that within the skin his beloved still reposed.  He called to her,
+but she made no answer; with exceeding haste he kneeled down and did
+off the fair velvet skin, and folded his beloved to his breast.  The
+sun shone full upon her glorious face and kissed away the dew that
+clung to her white cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou art redeemed, O my beloved!" cried Harold; but her lips spake
+not, and her eyes opened not upon him.  Yet on the dead wife's face was
+such a smile as angels wear, and it told him that they should meet
+again in a love that knoweth no fear of parting.  And as Harold held
+her to his bosom and wailed, there fell down from her hand what she had
+kept with her to the last, and it lay upon the fair green holm,&mdash;the
+little alabaster cross which she had snatched from Theodoric's neck
+that day the Death-Angel bore the child away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib, and of
+Persis, his wife, daughter of the Pagan king; and it hath been told.
+And there is no more to tell, for the tale is ended.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="footnote">
+[1] Orkney Folk-Lore.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+My quondam friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, are no more; they are
+dead, and with them has gone out of existence as gross an imposition as
+the moral cowardice of man were capable of inventing, constructing, and
+practising.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Alice became my wife she knew that I was a lover and collector of
+books, but, being a young thing, she had no idea of the monstrous
+proportions which bibliomania, unchecked, is almost certain to acquire.
+Indeed, the dear girl innocently and rapturously encouraged this
+insidious vice.  "Some time," she used to say, "we shall have a house
+of our own, and then your library shall cover the whole top-floor, and
+the book-cases shall be built in the walls, and there shall be a lovely
+blue-glass sky-light," etc.  Moreover, although she could not tell the
+difference between an Elzevir and a Pickering, or between a folio and
+an octavo, Alice was very proud of our little library, and I recall now
+with real delight the times I used to hear her showing off those
+precious books to her lady callers.  Alice made up for certain
+inaccuracies of information with a distinct enthusiasm and garrulity
+that never failed to impress her callers deeply.  I was mighty proud of
+Alice; I was prepared to say, paraphrasing Sam Johnson's remark about
+the Scotchman, "A wife can be made much of, if caught young."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not until after little Grolier and little Richard de Bury were
+born to us that Alice's regard for my pretty library seemed to abate.
+I then began to realize the truth of what my bachelor friend Kinzie had
+often declared,&mdash;namely, that the chief objection to children was that
+they weaned the collector from his love of books.  Grolier was a
+mischievous boy, and I had hard work trying to convince his mother that
+he should by no means be allowed to have his sweet but destructive will
+with my Bewicks and Bedfords.  Thumb and finger marks look well enough
+in certain places, but I protested that they did not enhance the quaint
+beauty of an old wood-cut, a delicate binding, or a wide margin.  And
+Richard de Bury&mdash;a lovely little 16mo of a child&mdash;was almost as
+destructive as his older brother.  The most painful feature of it all
+to me then was that their mother actually protected the toddling knaves
+in their vandalism.  I never saw another woman change so as Alice did
+after those two boys came to us.  Why, she even suggested to me one day
+that when we did build our new house we should devote the upper story
+thereof not to library but to nursery purposes!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Things gradually got to the pass that I began to be afraid to bring
+books into the house.  At first Alice used to reproach me indirectly by
+eying the new book jealously, and hinting in a subtle, womanly way that
+Grolier needed new shoes, or that Richard was sadly in need of a new
+cap.  Presently, encouraged by my lamb-like reticence, Alice began to
+complain gently of what she termed my extravagance, and finally she
+fell into the pernicious practice of berating me roundly for neglecting
+my family for the selfish&mdash;yes, the cruel&mdash;gratification of a foolish
+fad, and then she would weep and gather up the two boys and wonder how
+soon we should all be in the poorhouse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have spoken of my bachelor friend, Kinzie; there was a philosopher
+for you, and his philosophy was all the sweeter because it had never
+been embittered by marital experience.  I had confidence in Kinzie, and
+I told him all about the dilemma I was in.  He pitied me and condoled
+with me, for he was a sympathetic man, and he was, too, as consistent a
+bibliomaniac as I ever met with.  "Be of good cheer," said he, "we
+shall find a way out of all this trouble."  And he suggested a way.  I
+seized upon it as the proverbial drowning man is supposed to clutch at
+the proverbial straw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next time I took a bundle of books home I marched into the house
+boldly with them.  Alice fetched a deep sigh.  "Ah, been buying more
+books, have you?" she asked in a despairing tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, indeed," I answered triumphantly, "they were given to me,&mdash;a
+present from judge Trask.  I'm in great luck, ain't I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alice was almost as pleased as I was.  The interest with which she
+inspected the lovely volumes was not feigned.  "But who is Judge
+Trask?" she asked, as she read the autographic lines upon a flyleaf in
+each book.  I explained glibly that the judge was a wealthy and
+cultured citizen who felt somewhat under obligation to me for certain
+little services I had rendered him one time and another.  I was not to
+be trapped or cornered.  I had learned my sinful lesson perfectly.
+Alice never so much as suspected me of evil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scheme worked so well that I pursued it with more or less
+diligence.  I should say that about twice a week on an average a bundle
+of books came to the house "with the compliments" of either Judge Trask
+or Colonel Flail or Mr. Bisland.  You can understand that I could not
+hope to play the Trask deception exclusively and successfully.  I
+invented Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland, and I contrived to render them
+quite as liberal in their patronage as the mythical Judge Trask
+himself.  Occasionally a donation came in, by way of variety, from
+Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell and other solitary creations of my
+mendacious imagination, when I used to blind poor dear Alice to the
+hideous truth.  Touching myself, I gave it out that I had abandoned
+book-buying, was convinced of the folly of the mania, had reformed, and
+was repentant.  Alice loved me all the better for that, and she became
+once more the sweetest, most amiable little woman in all the world.
+She was inexpressibly happy in the fond delusion that I had become
+prudent and thrifty, and was putting money in bank for that home we
+were going to buy&mdash;sometime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the names of Flail, Trask, and Bisland became household words
+with us.  Occasionally Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell were mentioned
+gratefully as some fair volume bearing their autograph was inspected;
+but, after all, Flail, Trask, and Bisland were the favorites, for it
+was from them that most of my beloved books came.  Yes, Alice gradually
+grew to love those three myths; she loved them because they were good
+to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alice had, like most others of her sex, a strong sense of duty.  She
+determined to do something for my noble friends, and finally she
+planned a lovely little dinner whereat Judge Trask and Colonel Flail
+and Mr. Bisland were to be regaled with choicest viands of Alice's
+choice larder and with the sweetest speeches of Alice's graceful heart.
+I was authorized only to convey the invitations to this delectable
+banquet, and here was a pretty plight for a man to be in, surely
+enough!  But my bachelor friend Kinzie (ough, the Mephisto!) helped me
+out.  I reported back to Alice that Judge Trask was out of town, that
+Colonel Flail was sick abed with grip, and that Mr. Bisland was
+altogether too shy a man to think of venturing out to a dinner alone.
+Alice was dreadfully disappointed.  Still there was consolation in
+feeling that she had done her duty in trying to do it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, this system of deception and perjury went on a long time, Alice
+never suspecting any evil, but perfectly happy in my supposed reform
+and economy, and in the gracious liberality of those three
+Maecenas-like friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, who kept pouring in
+rare and beauteous old tomes upon me.  She was joyous, too, in the
+prospect of that new house which we would soon be able to build, now
+that I had so long quit the old ruinous mania for book-buying!  And
+I&mdash;wretch that I was&mdash;I humored her in this conceit; I heaped perjury
+upon perjury; lying and deception had become my second nature.  Yet I
+loathed myself and I hated those books; they reproached me every time I
+came into their presence.  So I was miserable and helpless; how hard it
+is to turn about when one once gets into the downward path!  The shifts
+I was put to, and the desperate devices which I was forced to
+employ,&mdash;I shudder to recall them!  Life became a constant, terrifying
+lie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thank Heaven, it is over now, and my face is turned the right way.  A
+third little son was born to us.  Alice was, oh! so very ill.  When she
+was convalescing she said to me one day: "Hiram, I have been thinking
+it all over, and I've made up my mind that we must name the baby Trask
+Flail Bisland, after our three good friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I did n't make any answer, went out into the hall, and communed awhile
+with my own hideous, tormented self.  How my soul revolted against the
+prospect of giving to that innocent babe a name that would serve simply
+to scourge me through the rest of my wicked life!  No, I could not
+consent to that.  I would be a coward no longer!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I went back into Alice's room, and sat upon the bed beside her, and
+took one of Alice's dear little white hands in mine, and told her
+everything, told Alice the whole truth,&mdash;all about my wickedness and
+perjuries and deceptions; told her what a selfish, cruel monster I had
+been; dispelled all the sinful delusion about Flail, Trask, and
+Bisland; threw myself, penitent and hopeless, upon my deceived,
+outraged little wife's mercy.  Was it a mean advantage to take of a
+sick woman?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I fancied she would reproach me, for I knew that her heart was set upon
+that new house she had talked of so often; I told her that the savings
+she had supposed were in bank, were in reality represented only by and
+in those stately folios and sumptuous quartos which the mythical Flail,
+Trask, and Bisland had presumably donated.  "But," I added, "I shall
+sell them now, and with the money I shall build the home in which we
+may be happy again,&mdash;a lovely home, sweetheart, with no library at all,
+but all nursery if you wish it so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Alice, when I had ended my blubbering confession, "we shall
+not part with the books; they have caused you more suffering than they
+have me, and, moreover, their presence will have a beneficial effect
+upon you.  Furthermore, I myself have become attached to them,&mdash;you
+know I thought they were given to you, and so I have learned to care
+for them.  Poor Judge Trask and Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland,&mdash;so they
+are only myths?  Dear Hiram," she added with a sigh, "I can forgive you
+for everything except for taking those three good men out of our lives!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all this I have indeed reformed.  I have actually become prudent,
+and I have a bank-account that is constantly increasing.  I do not hate
+books; I simply do not buy them.  And I eschew that old sinner, Kinzie,
+and all the sinister influences he represents.  As for our third little
+boy, we have named him Reform Meigs, after Alice's mother's
+grandfather, who built the first saw-mill in what is now the State of
+Ohio, and was killed by the Indians in 1796.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE TOUCH IN THE HEART
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and so was old Abel's wife, when little
+Abel came.  For this coming they had waited many years.  God had
+prospered them elsewise; this one supreme blessing only had been
+withheld.  Yet Abel had never despaired.  "I shall some time have a
+son," said he.  "I shall call him Abel.  He shall be rich; he shall
+succeed to my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my
+fortune,&mdash;all shall be his!"  Abel Dunklee felt this to be a certainty,
+and with this prospect constantly in mind he slaved and pinched and
+bargained.  So when at last the little one did come it was as heir to a
+considerable property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The joy in the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at
+large.  Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man.  Folk had the
+well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard.  If he had
+not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good
+man.  His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order.  He had
+always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in
+keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: Abel's
+idea of goodness was to owe no man any money.  He never gave a penny to
+charities, and he never spent any time sympathizing with the
+misfortunes or distresses of other people.  He was narrow, close,
+selfish, and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large said,
+and I shall not deny that the verdict was a just one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When a little one comes into this world of ours, it is the impulse of
+the people here to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant.  When
+little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained outside the austere
+Dunklee household.  Popular sentiment found vent in an expression of
+the hope that the son and heir would grow up to scatter the dollars
+which old man Dunklee had accumulated by years of relentless avarice
+and unflagging toil.  But Dr. Hardy&mdash;he who had officiated in an
+all-important capacity upon that momentous occasion in the Dunklee
+household&mdash;Dr. Hardy shook his head wisely, and perhaps sadly, as if he
+were saying to himself: "No, the child will never do either what the
+old folk or what the other folk would have him do; he is not long for
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had you questioned him closely, Dr. Hardy would have told you that
+little Abel was as frail a babe as ever did battle for life.  Dr. Hardy
+would surely never have dared say that to old Dunklee; for in his
+rapture in the coming of that little boy old Dunklee would have smote
+the offender who presumed even to intimate that the babe was not the
+most vigorous as well as the most beautiful creature upon earth.  The
+old man was simply assotted upon the child,&mdash;in a selfish way,
+undoubtedly, but even this selfish love of that puny little child
+showed that the old man was capable of somewhat better than his past
+life had been.  To hear him talk you might have fancied that Mrs.
+Dunklee had no part or parcel or interest in their offspring.  It was
+always "my little boy,"&mdash;yes, old Abel Dunklee's money had a rival in
+the old man's heart at last, and that rival was a helpless, shrunken,
+sickly little babe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Among his business associates Abel Dunklee was familiarly known as Old
+Growly, for the reason that his voice was harsh and discordant, and
+sounded for all the world like the hoarse growling of an ill-natured
+bear.  Abel was not a particularly irritable person, but his slavish
+devotion to money-getting, his indifference to the amenities of life,
+his entire neglect of the tender practices of humanity, his rough,
+unkempt personality, and his deep, hoarse voice,&mdash;these things combined
+to make that sobriquet of "Old Growly" an exceedingly appropriate one.
+And presumably Abel never thought of resenting the slur implied therein
+and thereby; he was too shrewd not to see that, however disrespectful
+and evil-intentioned the phrase might be, it served him to good
+purpose; for it conduced to that very general awe, not to say terror,
+which kept people from bothering him with their charitable and
+sentimental schemes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, I think we can accept it as a fact that Abel liked that sobriquet;
+it meant more money in his pocket, and fewer demands upon his time and
+patience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Old Growly abroad and Old Growly at home were two very different
+people.  Only the voice was the same.  The homely, furrowed, wizened
+face lighted up, and the keen, restless eyes lost their expression of
+shrewdness, and the thin, bony hands that elsewhere clutched and
+clutched and pinched and pinched for possession unlimbered themselves
+in the presence of little Abel, and reached out their long fingers
+yearningly and caressingly toward the little child.  Then the hoarse
+voice would growl a salutation that was full of tenderness, for it came
+straight from the old man's heart; only, had you not known how much he
+loved the child, you might have thought otherwise, for the old man's
+voice was always hoarse and discordant, and that was why they called
+him Old Growly.  But what proved his love for that puny babe was the
+fact that every afternoon, when he came home from the factory, Old
+Growly brought his little boy a dime; and once, when the little fellow
+had a fever on him from teething, Old Growly brought him a dollar!
+Next day the tooth came through and the fever left him, but you could
+not make the old man believe but what it was the dollar that did it
+all.  That was natural, perhaps; for his life had been spent in
+grubbing for money, and he had not the soul to see that the best and
+sweetest things in human life are not to be had by riches alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the doctor had in one way and another intimated would be the case,
+the child did not wax fat and vigorous.  Although Old Growly did not
+seem to see the truth, little Abel grew older only to become what the
+doctor had foretold,&mdash;a cripple.  A weakness of the spine was
+developed, a malady that dwarfed the child's physical growth, giving to
+his wee face a pinched, starved look, warping his emaciated body, and
+enfeebling his puny limbs, while at the same time it quickened the
+intellectual faculties to the degree of precocity.  And so two and
+three and four years went by, little Abel clinging to life with
+pathetic heroism, and Old Growly loving that little cripple with all
+the violence of his selfish nature.  Never once did it occur to the
+father that his child might die, that death's seal was already set upon
+the misshapen little body; on the contrary, Old Growly's thoughts were
+constantly of little Abel's famous future, of the great fortune he was
+to fall heir to, of the prosperous business career he was to pursue, of
+the influence he was to wield in the world,&mdash;of dollars, dollars,
+dollars, millions of them which little Abel was some time to possess;
+these were Old Growly's dreams, and he loved to dream them!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the world did well by the old man; despising him,
+undoubtedly, for his avarice and selfishness, but constantly pouring
+wealth, and more wealth, and even more wealth into his coffers.  As for
+the old man, he cared not for what the world thought or said, so long
+as it paid tribute to him; he wrought on as of old, industriously,
+shrewdly, hardly, but with this new purpose: to make his little boy
+happy and great with riches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Toys and picture-books were vanities in which Old Growly never
+indulged; to have expended a farthing for chattels of that character
+would have seemed to Old Growly like sinful extravagance.  The few
+playthings which little Abel had were such as his mother
+surreptitiously bought; the old man believed that a child should be
+imbued with a proper regard for the value of money from the very start,
+so his presents were always cash in hand, and he bought a large tin
+bank for little Abel, and taught the child how to put the copper and
+silver pieces into it, and he labored diligently to impress upon the
+child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by.
+Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man
+seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little
+cripple!  But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a
+pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands
+gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,&mdash;this boy of
+mine,&mdash;great genius for finance!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But on a day, coming from his factory, Old Growly was stricken with
+horror to find that during his absence from home a great change had
+come upon his child.  The doctor said it was simply the progress of the
+disease; that it was a marvel that little Abel had already held out so
+long; that from the moment of his birth the seal of death had been set
+upon him in that cruel malady which had drawn his face and warped his
+body and limbs.  Then all at once Old Growly's eyes seemed to be opened
+to the truth, and like a lightning flash it came to him that perhaps
+his pleasant dreams which he had dreamed of his child's future could
+never be realized.  It was a bitter awakening, yet amid it all the old
+man was full of hope, determination, and battle.  He had little faith
+in drugs and nursing and professional skill; he remembered that upon
+previous occasions cures had been wrought by means of money; teeth had
+been brought through, the pangs of colic beguiled, and numerous other
+ailments to which infancy is heir had by the same specific been
+baffled.  So now Old Growly set about wooing his little boy from the
+embrace of death,&mdash;sought to coax him back to health with money, and
+the dimes became dollars, and the tin bank was like to burst of
+fulness.  But little Abel drooped and drooped, and he lost all interest
+in other things, and he was content to lie, drooping-eyed and listless,
+in his mother's arms all day.  At last the little flame went out with
+hardly so much as a flutter, and the hope of the house of Dunklee was
+dissipated forever.  But even in those last moments of the little
+cripple's suffering the father struggled to call back the old look into
+the fading eyes, and the old smile into the dear, white face.  He
+brought treasure from his vaults and held it up before those fading
+eyes, and promised it all, all, all&mdash;everything he possessed, gold,
+houses, lands&mdash;all he had he would give to that little child if that
+little child would only live.  But the fading eyes saw other things,
+and the ears that were deaf to the old man's lamentations heard voices
+that soothed the anguish of that last solemn hour.  And so little Abel
+knew the Mystery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the old man crept away from that vestige of his love, and stood
+alone in the night, and lifted up his face, and beat his bosom, and
+moaned at the stars, asking over and over again why he had been so
+bereaved.  And while he agonized in this wise and cried there came to
+him a voice,&mdash;a voice so small that none else could hear, a voice
+seemingly from God; for from infinite space beyond those stars it sped
+its instantaneous way to the old man's soul and lodged there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Abel, I have touched thy heart!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, having come into the darkness of night, old Dunklee went back
+into the light of day and found life beautiful; for the touch was in
+his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that, Old Growly's way of dealing with the world changed.  He had
+always been an honest man, honest as the world goes.  But now he was
+somewhat better than honest; he was kind, considerate, merciful.
+People saw and felt the change, and they knew why it was so.  But the
+pathetic part of it all was that Old Growly would never admit&mdash;no, not
+even to himself&mdash;that he was the least changed from his old grinding,
+hard self.  The good deeds he did were not his own; they were his
+little boy's,&mdash;at least so he said.  And it was his whim when doing
+some kind and tender thing to lay it to little Abel, of whom he always
+spoke as if he were still living.  His workmen, his neighbors, his
+townsmen,&mdash;all alike felt the graciousness of the wondrous change, and
+many, ah! many a lowly sufferer blessed that broken old man for succor
+in little Abel's name.  And the old man was indeed much broken: not
+that he had parted with his shrewdness and acumen, for, as of old, his
+every venture prospered; but in this particular his mind seemed
+weakened; that, as I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was
+given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of which the burden
+seemed to be that child of his, and that his greatest pleasure appeared
+now to be watching other little ones at their play.  In fact, so
+changed was he from the Old Growly of former years, that, whereas he
+had then been wholly indifferent to the presence of those little ones
+upon earth, he now sought their company, and delighted to view their
+innocent and mirthful play.  And so, presently, the children, from
+regarding him at first with distrust, came to confide in and love him,
+and in due time the old man was known far and wide as Old Grampa
+Growly, and he was pleased thereat.  It was his wont to go every fair
+day, of an afternoon, into a park hard by his dwelling, and mingle with
+the crowd of little folk there; and when they were weary of their
+sports they used to gather about him,&mdash;some even clambering upon his
+knees,&mdash;and hear him tell his story, for he had only one story to tell,
+and that was the story that lay next his heart,&mdash;the story ever and
+forever beginning with, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy."  A very tender
+little story it was, too, told very much more sweetly than I could ever
+tell it; for it was of Old Grampa Growly's own little boy, and it came
+from that heart in which the touch&mdash;the touch of God Himself&mdash;lay like
+a priceless pearl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So you must know that the last years of the old man's life made full
+atonement for those that had gone before.  People forgot that the old
+man had ever been other than he was now, and of course the children
+never knew otherwise.  But as for himself, Old Grampa Growly grew
+tenderer and tenderer, and his goodness became a household word, and he
+was beloved of all.  And to the very last he loved the little ones, and
+shared their pleasures, and sympathized with them in their griefs, but
+always repeating that same old story, beginning with "Once ther' wuz a
+littl' boy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The curious part of it was this: that while he implied by his
+confidences to the children that his own little boy was dead, he never
+made that admission to others.  On the contrary, it was his wont, as I
+have said, to speak of little Abel as if that child still lived, and,
+humoring him in this conceit, it was the custom of the older ones to
+speak always of that child as if he lived and were known and beloved of
+all.  In this custom the old man had great content and solace.  For it
+was his wish that all he gave to and did for charity's sake should be
+known to come, not from him, but from Abel, his son, and this was his
+express stipulation at all such times.  I know whereof I speak, for I
+was one of those to whom the old man came upon a time and said: "My
+little boy&mdash;Abel, you know&mdash;will give me no peace till I do what he
+requires.  He has this sum of money which he has saved in his bank,
+count it yourselves, it is $50,000, and he bids me give it to the
+townsfolk for a hospital, one for little lame boys and girls.  And I
+have promised him&mdash;my little boy, Abel, you know&mdash;that I will give
+$50,000 more.  You shall have it when that hospital is built."  Surely
+enough, in eighteen months' time the old man handed us the rest of the
+money, and when we told him that the place was to be called the Abel
+Dunklee hospital he was sorely distressed, and shook his head, and
+said: "No, no,&mdash;not <I>my</I> name!  Call it the <I>Little</I> Abel hospital, for
+little Abel&mdash;my boy, you know&mdash;has done it all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man lived many years,&mdash;lived to hear tender voices bless him,
+and to see pale faces brighten at the sound of his footfall.  Yes, for
+many years the quaint, shuffling figure moved about our streets, and
+his hoarse but kindly voice&mdash;oh, very kindly now!&mdash;was heard repeating
+to the children that pathetic old story of "Once ther' wuz a littl'
+boy."  And where the dear old feet trod the grass grew greenest, and
+the sunbeams nestled.  But at last there came a summons for the old
+man,&mdash;a summons from away off yonder,&mdash;and the old man heard it and
+went thither.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The doctor&mdash;himself hoary and stooping now&mdash;told me that toward the
+last Old Grampa Growly sunk into a sort of sleep, or stupor, from which
+they could not rouse him.  For many hours he lay like one dead, but his
+thin, creased face was very peaceful, and there was no pain.  Children
+tiptoed in with flowers, and some cried bitterly, while others&mdash;those
+who were younger&mdash;whispered to one another: "Hush, let us make no
+noise; Old Grampa Growly is sleeping."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last the old man roused up.  He had lain like one dead for many
+hours, but now at last he seemed to wake of a sudden, and, seeing
+children about him, perhaps he fancied himself in that pleasant park,
+under the trees, where so very often he had told his one pathetic story
+to those little ones.  Leastwise he made a feeble motion as if he would
+have them gather nearer, and, seeming to know his wish, the children
+came closer to him.  Those who were nearest heard him say with the
+ineffable tenderness of old, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with those last sweet words upon his lips, and with the touch in
+his heart, the old man went down into the Valley.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DANIEL AND THE DEVIL
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Daniel was a very wretched man.  As he sat with his head bowed upon his
+desk that evening he made up his mind that his life had been a failure.
+"I have labored long and diligently," said he to himself, "and although I
+am known throughout the city as an industrious and shrewd business man, I
+am still a poor man, and shall probably continue so to the end of my days
+unless&mdash;unless&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Daniel stopped and shivered.  For a week or more he had been
+brooding over his unhappy lot.  There seemed to be but one way out of his
+trouble, yet his soul revolted from taking that step.  That was why he
+stopped and shivered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," he argued, "I <I>must</I> do something!  My nine children are growing
+up into big boys and girls.  They must have those advantages which my
+limited means will not admit of!  All my life so far has been pure,
+circumspect, and rigid; poverty has at last broken my spirit.  I give up
+the fight,&mdash;I am ready to sell my soul to the Devil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The determination is a wise one," said a voice at Daniel's elbow.
+Daniel looked up and beheld a grim-visaged stranger in the chair beside
+him.  The stranger was arrayed all in black, and he exhaled a distinct
+odor of sulphur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I to understand," asked the stranger, "that you are prepared to enter
+into a league with the Devil?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Daniel, firmly; and he set his teeth together after the
+fashion of a man who is not to be moved from his purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I am ready to treat with you," said the stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you the Devil?" asked Daniel, eying the stranger critically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but I am authorized to enter into contracts for him," explained the
+stranger.  "My name is Beelzebub, and I am my master's most trusted
+agent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir," said Daniel, "you must pardon me (for I am loath to wound your
+feelings), but one of the rules governing my career as a business man has
+been to deal directly with principals, and never to trust to the offices
+of middle-men.  The affair now in hand is one concerning the Devil and
+myself, and between us two and by us two only can the preliminaries be
+adjusted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As it so happens," explained Beelzebub, "this is Friday,&mdash;commonly
+called hangman's day,&mdash;and that is as busy a time in our particular
+locality as a Monday is in a laundry, or as the first of every month is
+at a book-keeper's desk.  You can understand, perhaps, that this is the
+Devil's busy day; therefore be content to make this deal with me, and you
+will find that my master will cheerfully accept any contract I may enter
+into as his agent and in his behalf."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But no,&mdash;Daniel would not agree to this; with the Devil himself, and only
+the Devil himself, would he treat.  So he bade Beelzebub go to the Devil
+and make known his wishes.  Beelzebub departed, much chagrined.
+Presently back came the Devil, and surely it <I>was</I> the Devil this
+time,&mdash;there could be no mistake about it; for he wore a scarlet cloak,
+and had cloven feet, and carried about with him as many suffocating
+smells as there are kinds of brimstone, sulphur, and assafoetida.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two talked over all Daniel's miseries; the Devil sympathized with
+Daniel, and ever and anon a malodorous, gummy tear would trickle down the
+Devil's sinister nose and drop off on the carpet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What you want is money," said the Devil.  "That will give you the
+comfort and the contentment you crave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Daniel; "it will give me every opportunity to do good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To do good!" repeated the Devil.  "To do good, indeed!  Yes, it's many a
+good time we shall have together, friend Daniel!  Ha, ha, ha!"  And the
+Devil laughed uproariously.  Nothing seemed more humorous than the
+prospect of "doing good" with the Devil's money!  But Daniel failed to
+see what the Devil was so jolly about.  Daniel was not a humorist; he
+was, as we have indicated, a plain business man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was finally agreed that Daniel should sell his soul to the Devil upon
+condition that for the space of twenty-four years the Devil should serve
+Daniel faithfully, should provide him with riches, and should do
+whatsoever he was commanded to do; then, at the end of the twenty-fourth
+year, Daniel's soul was to pass into the possession of the Devil, and was
+to remain there forever, without recourse or benefit of clergy.  Surely a
+more horrible contract was never entered into!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will have to sign your name to this contract," said the Devil,
+producing a sheet of asbestos paper upon which all the terms of the
+diabolical treaty were set forth exactly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," replied Daniel.  "I have been a business man long enough to
+know the propriety and necessity of written contracts.  And as for you,
+you must of course give a bond for the faithful execution of your part of
+this business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is something I have never done before," suggested the Devil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall insist upon it," said Daniel, firmly.  "This is no affair of
+sentiment; it is strictly and coldly business: you are to do certain
+service, and are to receive certain rewards therefor&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, your soul!" cried the Devil, gleefully rubbing his callous hands
+together.  "Your soul in twenty-four years!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Daniel.  "Now, no contract is good unless there is a quid pro
+quo."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so," said the Devil, "so let's get a lawyer to draw up the paper
+for me to sign."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why a lawyer?" queried Daniel.  "A contract is a simple instrument; I,
+as a business man, can frame one sufficiently binding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I prefer to have a lawyer do it," urged the Devil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And <I>I</I> prefer to do it myself," said Daniel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When a business man once gets his mind set, not even an Archimedean lever
+could stir it.  So Daniel drew up the bond for the Devil to sign, and
+this bond specified that in case the Devil failed at any time during the
+next twenty-four years to do whatso Daniel commanded him, then should the
+bond which the Devil held against Daniel become null and void, and upon
+that same day should a thousand and one souls be released forever from
+the Devil's dominion.  The Devil winced; he hated to sign this agreement,
+but he had to.  An awful clap of thunder ratified the abominable treaty,
+and every black cat within a radius of a hundred leagues straightway fell
+to frothing and to yowling grotesquely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Daniel began to prosper; the Devil was a faithful slave, and he
+served Daniel so artfully that no person on earth suspected that Daniel
+had leagued with the evil one.  Daniel had the finest house in the city,
+his wife dressed magnificently, and his children enjoyed every luxury
+wealth could provide.  Still, Daniel was content to be known as a
+business man; he deported himself modestly and kindly; he pursued with
+all his old-time diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found
+so unproductive of riches.  His indifference to the pleasures which money
+put within his reach was passing strange, and it caused the Devil vast
+uneasiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Daniel," said the Devil, one day, "you're not getting out of this thing
+all the fun there is in it.  You go poking along in the same old rut with
+never a suspicion that you have it in your power to enjoy every pleasure
+of human life.  Why don't you break away from the old restraints?  Why
+don't you avail yourself of the advantages at your command?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know what you 're driving at," said Daniel, shrewdly, "Politics!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not at all," remonstrated the Devil.  "What I mean is fun,&mdash;gayety.
+Why not have a good time, Daniel?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I am having a good time," said Daniel.  "My business is going along
+all right, I am rich.  I 've got a lovely home; my wife is happy; my
+children are healthy and contented; I am respected,&mdash;what more could I
+ask?  What better time could I demand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't understand me," explained the Devil.  "What I mean by a good
+time is that which makes the heart merry and keeps the soul youthful and
+buoyant,&mdash;wine, Daniel!  Wine and the theatre and pretty girls and fast
+horses and all that sort of happy, joyful life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tut, tut, tut!" cried Daniel; "no more of that, sir!  I sowed my wild
+oats in college.  What right have I to think of such silly follies,&mdash;I,
+at forty years of age, and a business man too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So not even the Devil himself could persuade Daniel into a life of
+dissipation.  All you who have made a study of the business man will
+agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to swerve from
+conservative methods.  The Devil groaned and began to wonder why he had
+ever tied up to a man like Daniel,&mdash;a business man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pretty soon Daniel developed an ambition.  He wanted reputation, and he
+told the Devil so.  The Devil's eyes sparkled.  "At last," murmured the
+Devil, with a sigh of relief,&mdash;"at last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Daniel, "I want to be known far and wide.  You must build a
+church for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" shrieked the Devil.  And the Devil's tail stiffened up like a
+sore thumb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Daniel, calmly; "you must build a church for me, and it must
+be the largest and the handsomest church in the city.  The sittings shall
+be free, and you shall provide the funds for its support forever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Devil frothed at his mouth, and blue fire issued from his ears and
+nostrils.  He was the maddest devil ever seen on earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't do it!" roared the Devil.  "Do you suppose I'm going to spend my
+time building churches and stultifying myself just for the sake of
+gratifying your idle whims?  I won't do it,&mdash;never!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the bond I gave is null and void," said Daniel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take your old bond," said the Devil, petulantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the bond you gave is operative," continued Daniel.  "So release the
+thousand and one souls you owe me when you refuse to obey me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Daniel!" whimpered the Devil, "how can you treat me so?  Have n't I
+always been good to you?  Have n't I given you riches and prosperity?
+Does no sentiment of friendship&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush," said Daniel, interrupting him.  "I have already told you a
+thousand times that our relations were simply those of one business man
+with another.  It now behooves you to fulfil your part of our compact;
+eventually I shall fulfil mine.  Come, now, to business!  Will you or
+will you not keep your word and save your bond?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Devil was sorely put to his trumps.  But when it came to releasing a
+thousand and one souls from hell,&mdash;ah, that staggered him!  He had to
+build the church, and a noble one it was too.  Then he endowed the
+church, and finally he built a parsonage; altogether it was a stupendous
+work, and Daniel got all the credit for it.  The preacher whom Daniel
+installed in this magnificent temple was severely orthodox, and one of
+the first things he did was to preach a series of sermons upon the
+personality of the Devil, wherein he inveighed most bitterly against that
+person and his work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By and by Daniel made the Devil endow and build a number of hospitals,
+charity schools, free baths, libraries, and other institutions of similar
+character.  Then he made him secure the election of honest men to office
+and of upright judges to the bench.  It almost broke the Devil's heart to
+do it, but the Devil was prepared to do almost anything else than forfeit
+his bond and give up those one thousand and one souls.  By this time
+Daniel came to be known far and wide for his philanthropy and his piety.
+This gratified him of course; but most of all he gloried in the
+circumstance that he was a business man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you anything for me to do today?" asked the Devil, one morning.  He
+had grown to be a very meek and courteous devil; steady employment in
+righteous causes had chastened him to a degree and purged away somewhat
+of the violence of his nature.  On this particular morning he looked
+haggard and ill,&mdash;yes, and he looked, too, as blue as a whetstone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not feeling robust," explained the Devil.  "To tell the truth, I am
+somewhat ill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Daniel; "but as I am not conducting a
+sanitarium, I can do nothing further than express my regret that you are
+ailing.  Of course our business relations do not contemplate any
+interchange of sympathies; still I'll go easy with you to-day.  You may
+go up to the house and look after the children; see that they don't smoke
+cigarettes, or quarrel, or tease the cat, or do anything out of the way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now that was fine business for the Devil to be in; but how could the
+Devil help himself?  He was wholly at Daniel's mercy.  He went groaning
+about the humiliating task.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The crash came at last.  It was when the Devil informed Daniel one day
+that he was n't going to work for him any more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have ruined my business," said the Devil, wearily.  "A committee of
+imps waited upon me last night and told me that unless I severed my
+connection with you a permanent suspension of my interests down yonder
+would be necessitated.  While I have been running around doing your
+insane errands my personal business has gone to the dogs&mdash;I would n't be
+at all surprised if I were to have to get a new plant altogether.
+Meanwhile my reputation has suffered; I am no longer respected, and the
+number of my recruits is daily becoming smaller.  I give up,&mdash;I can make
+no further sacrifice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you are prepared to forfeit your bond?" asked Daniel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not by any means," replied the Devil.  "I propose to throw the matter
+into the courts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That will hardly be to your interest," said Daniel, "since, as you well
+know, we have recently elected honest men to the bench, and, as I
+recollect, most of our judges are members in good standing of the church
+we built some years ago!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Devil howled with rage.  Then, presently, he began to whimper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For the last time," expostulated Daniel, "let me remind you that
+sentiment does not enter into this affair at all.  We are simply two
+business parties coöperating in a business scheme.  Our respective duties
+are exactly defined in the bonds we hold.  You keep your contract and
+I'll keep mine.  Let me see, I still have a margin of thirteen years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Devil groaned and writhed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They call me a dude," whimpered the Devil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who do?" asked Daniel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beelzebub and the rest," said the Devil.  "I have been trotting around
+doing pious errands so long that I 've lost all my sulphur-and-brimstone
+flavor, and now I smell like spikenard and myrrh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pooh!" said Daniel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I do," insisted the Devil.  "You've humiliated me so that I hain't
+got any more ambition.  Yes, Daniel, you've worked me shamefully hard!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Daniel, "I have a very distinct suspicion that when,
+thirteen years hence, I fall into your hands I shall not enjoy what might
+be called a sedentary life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Devil plucked up at this suggestion.  "Indeed you shall not," he
+muttered.  "I'll make it hot for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But come, we waste time," said Daniel.  "I am a man of business, and I
+cannot fritter away the precious moments parleying with you.  I have
+important work for you.  Tomorrow is Sunday; you are to see that all the
+saloons are kept closed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sha'n't&mdash;I won't!" yelled the Devil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you must," said Daniel, firmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really expect me to do <I>that</I>?" roared the Devil.  "Do you fancy
+that I am so arrant a fool as to shut off the very feeders whereby my
+hungry hell is supplied?  That would be suicidal!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know anything about that," said Daniel; "I am a business man,
+and by this business arrangement of ours it is explicitly stipulated&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care what the stipulations are!" shrieked the Devil.  "I'm
+through with you, and may I be consumed by my own fires if ever again I
+have anything to do with a business man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The upshot of it all was that the Devil forfeited his bond, and by this
+act Daniel was released from every obligation unto the Devil, and one
+thousand and one souls were ransomed from the torture of the infernal
+fires.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+METHUSELAH
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The discussion now going on between our clergymen and certain
+unbelievers touching the question of Cain and his wife will surely
+result beneficially, for it will set everybody to reading his Bible
+more diligently.  Still, the biography of Cain is one that we could
+never become particularly interested in; in short, of all the Old
+Testament characters none other interests us so much as does
+Methuselah, the man who lived 969 years.  Would it be possible to find
+in all history another life at once so grand and so pathetic?  One can
+get a faint idea of the awful magnitude of Methuselah's career by
+pausing to recollect that 969 years represent 9.69 centuries, 96
+decades, 11,628 months, 50,388 weeks, 353,928 days, 8,494,272 hours,
+521,656,320 minutes, and 36,299,879,200 seconds!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How came he to live so long?  Ah, that is easily enough explained.  He
+loved life and the world,&mdash;both were beautiful to him.  And one day he
+spoke his wish in words.  "Oh, that I might live a thousand years!" he
+cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then looking up straightway he beheld an angel, and the angel said:
+"Wouldst thou live a thousand years?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Methuselah answered him, saying: "As the Lord is my God, I would
+live a thousand years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shall be even so," said the angel; and then the angel departed out
+of his sight.  So Methuselah lived on and on, as the angel had promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How sweet a treasure the young Methuselah must have been to his parents
+and to his doting ancestors; with what tender solicitude must the old
+folks have watched the child's progress from the innocence of his first
+to the virility of his later centuries.  We can picture the happy
+reunions of the old Adam family under the domestic vines and fig-trees
+that bloomed near the Euphrates.  When Methuselah was a mere toddler of
+nineteen years, Adam was still living, and so was his estimable wife;
+the possibility is that the venerable couple gave young Methuselah a
+birthday party at which (we can easily imagine) there were present
+these following, to-wit: Adam, aged 687; Seth, aged 557; Enos, aged
+452; Cainan, aged 362; Mahalaleel, aged 292; Jared, aged 227; Enoch,
+aged 65, and his infant boy Methuselah, aged 19.  Here were represented
+eight direct generations, and there were present, of course, the wives
+and daughters; so that, on the whole, the gathering must have been as
+numerous as it was otherwise remarkable.  Nowhere in any of the vistas
+of history, of romance, or of mythology were it possible to find a
+spectacle more imposing than that of the child Methuselah surrounded by
+his father Enoch, his grandfather Jared, his great-grandfather
+Mahalaleel, his great-great-grandfather Cainan, his
+great-great-great-grandfather Enos, his
+great-great-great-great-grandfather Seth, and his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam, as well as by his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve, and her feminine
+posterity for (say) four centuries!  How pretty and how kindly dear old
+grandma Eve must have looked on that gala occasion, attired, as she
+must have been, in all the quaint simplicity of that primeval period;
+and how must the dear old soul have fretted through fear that little
+Methuselah would eat too many papaws, or drink too much goat's milk.
+It is a marvel, we think, that in spite of the indulgence and the
+petting in which he was reared, Methuselah grew to be a good, kind man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Profane historians agree that just about the time he reached the age of
+ninety-four Methuselah became deeply enamoured of a comely and
+sprightly damsel named Mizpah,&mdash;a young thing scarce turned
+seventy-six.  Up to this period of adolescence his cautious father
+Enoch had kept Methuselah out of all love entanglements, and it is
+probable that he would not have approved of this affair with Mizpah had
+not Jared, the boy's grandfather, counselled Enoch to give the boy a
+chance.  But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful
+affection!  It befell in an evil time that there came over from the
+land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with
+finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that
+incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing
+young stranger of 102 as his bride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This shocking blow so grievously affected Methuselah that for some time
+(that is to say, for a period of ninety-one years) he shunned female
+society.  But having recovered somewhat from the bitterness of that
+great disappointment received in the callowness of his ninth decade, he
+finally met and fell in love with Adah, a young woman of 148, and her
+he married.  The issue of this union was a boy whom they named Lamech,
+and this child from the very hour of his birth gave his father vast
+worriment, which, considering the disparity in their ages, is indeed
+most shocking of contemplation.  The tableau of a father (aged 187)
+vainly coddling a colicky babe certainly does not call for our
+enthusiasm.  Yet we presume to say that Methuselah bore his trials
+meekly, that he cherished and adored the baby, and that he spent weeks
+and months playing peek-a-boo and ride-a-cock-horse.  In all our
+consideration of Methuselah we must remember that the mere matter of
+time was of no consequence to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lamech grew to boyhood, involving his father in all those ridiculous
+complications which parents nowadays do not heed so much, but which
+must have been of vast annoyance to a man of Methuselah's advanced age
+and proper notions.  Whittling with the old gentleman's razor, hooking
+off from school, trampling down the neighbors' rowen, tracking mud into
+the front parlor&mdash;these were some of Lamech's idiosyncrasies, and of
+course they tormented Methuselah, who recalled sadly that boys were no
+longer what they used to be when he was a boy some centuries previous.
+But when he got to be 182 years old Lamech had sowed all his wild oats,
+and it was then he married a clever young girl of 98, who bore him a
+son whom they called Noah.  Now if Methuselah had been worried and
+plagued by Lamech, he was more than compensated therefor by this baby
+grandson, whom he found to be, aside from all prejudices, the prettiest
+and the smartest child he had ever seen.  Old father Adam, who was now
+turned of his ninth century, tottered over to see the baby, and he,
+too, allowed that it was an uncommonly bright child.  And dear old
+grandma Eve declared that there was an expression about the upper part
+of the little Noah's face that reminded her very much of the soft-eyed
+boy she lost 800 years ago.  And dear old grandma Eve used to rock
+little Noah and sing to him, and cry softly to herself all the while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, in good time, Noah grew to lusty youth, and although he was, on
+the whole, a joy to his grandsire Methuselah, he developed certain
+traits and predilections that occasioned the old gentleman much
+uneasiness.  At the tender age of 265 Noah exhibited a strange passion
+for aquatics, and while it was common for other boys of that time to
+divert themselves with the flocks and herds, with slingshots and
+spears, with music and dancing, Noah preferred to spend his hours
+floating toy-ships in the bayous of the Euphrates.  Every day he took
+his little shittim-wood boats down to the water, tied strings to them,
+and let them float hither and thither on the crystal bosom of the tide.
+Naturally enough these practices worried the grandfather mightily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May not the crocodiles compass him round about?" groaned Methuselah.
+"May not behemoth prevail against him?  Or, verily, it may befall that
+the waves shall devour him.  Woe is me and lamentation unto this
+household if destruction come to him through the folly of his fathers!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Methuselah's age began to be full of care and trouble, and many a
+time he felt weary of living, and sometimes&mdash;yes, sometimes&mdash;he wished
+he were dead.  People in those times were not afraid to die; they
+believed in the second and better life, because God spoke with them and
+told them it should be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last century of this good man's sojourn upon earth was particularly
+pathetic.  His ancestors were all dead; he alone remained the last
+living reminiscence of a time that but for him would have been
+forgotten.  Deprived of the wise counsels of his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam and of the gentle
+admonitions of his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve,
+Methuselah felt not only lonesome but even in danger of wrong-doing, so
+precious to him had been the teachings of these worthy progenitors.
+And what particularly disturbed Methuselah were the dreadful changes
+that had taken place in society since he was a boy.  Dress, speech,
+customs, and morals were all different now from what they used to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Methuselah was a boy,&mdash;ah, he remembered it well,&mdash;people went
+hither and thither clad only in simple fig-leaf garb; and they were
+content therewith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Methuselah was a boy, people spoke a plain, direct language,
+strong in its truth, its simplicity, and its honest vigor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Methuselah was a boy, manners were open and unaffected, and morals
+were pure and healthy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now all these things were changed.  An evil called fashion had
+filled the minds of men and women with vanity.  From the sinful land of
+Nod and from other pagan countries came divers tradesmen with purples
+and linens and fine feathers, whereby a wicked pride was engendered,
+and from these sinful countries, too, came frivolous manners that
+supplanted the guileless etiquette of the past.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Moreover, traffic and intercourse with the subtle heathen had corrupted
+and perverted the speech of Adam's time: crafty phrases and false
+rhetorics had crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were
+fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete.  Such new-fangled
+words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas,"
+and "sithence" had stolen into common usage, making more direct and
+simpler speech a jest and a byword.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Likewise had prudence given way to extravagance, abstemiousness to
+intemperance, dignity to frivolity, and continence to lust; so that by
+these evils was Methuselah grievously tormented, and it repented him
+full sore that he had lived to see such exceeding wickedness upon
+earth.  But in the midst of all these follies did Methuselah maintain
+an upright and godly life, and continually did he bless God for that he
+had held him in the path of rectitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now when Methuselah was in the 964th summer of his sojourn he was
+called upon to mourn the death of his son Lamech, whom an inscrutable
+Providence had cut off in what in those days was considered the flower
+of a man's life,&mdash;namely, the eighth century thereof.  Lamech's
+untimely decease was a severe blow to his doting father, who,
+forgetting all his son's boyish indiscretions, remembered now only
+Lamech's good and lovable traits and deeds.  It is reasonable to
+suppose, however, that the old gentleman was somewhat beguiled from his
+grief by the lively dispositions and playful antics of Lamech's
+grandsons, Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,&mdash;Shem, Ham, and
+Japheth,&mdash;who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of
+ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively.  These boys
+inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and
+scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and
+sloughs of the Euphrates in their gopher-wood canoes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gran'pa," Noah used to say, "the conduct of those boys causes me
+constant vexation.  I have no time to follow them around, and I am
+haunted continually by the fear that they will be drowned, or that the
+crocodiles will get them if they don't watch out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Methuselah would smiling answer: "Possess thy soul in patience and
+thy bowels in peace; for verily is it not written 'boys will be boys!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now Shem, Ham, and Japheth were very fond of their great-grandpa, and
+to their credit be it said that next to paddling over the water
+privileges of the Euphrates they liked nothing better than to sit in
+the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times.
+Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half
+centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally
+suppose.  Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for
+Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on
+earth.  On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in
+very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually
+referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a
+"mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they
+took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him
+with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say
+shocking, to a gentleman of his years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was perhaps, however, at the old settlers' picnics, which even then
+were of annual occurrence, that Methuselah most enjoyed himself; for on
+these occasions he was given the place of prominence and he was
+deferred to in everything, since he antedated all the others by at
+least three centuries.  The historians and the antiquarians of the time
+found him of much assistance to them in their labors, since he was
+always ready to provide them with dates touching incidents of the
+remote period from which he had come down unscathed.  He remembered
+vividly how, when he was 186 years of age, the Euphrates had frozen
+over to a depth of seven feet; the 209th winter of his existence he
+referred to as "the winter of the deep snow;" he remembered that when
+he was a boy the women had more character than the women of these later
+years; he had a vivid recollection of the great plague that prevailed
+in the city of Enoch during his fourth century; he could repeat, word
+for word, the address of welcome his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam delivered to an
+excursion party that came over from the land of Nod one time when
+Methuselah was a mere child of eighty-seven,&mdash;oh, yes, poor old
+Methuselah was full of reminiscence, and having crowded an active
+career into the brief period of 969 years, it can be imagined that
+ponderous tomes would not hold the tales he told whenever he was
+encouraged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day, however, Methuselah's grandson Noah took the old gentleman
+aside and confided into his ear-trumpet a very solemn secret which must
+have grieved the old gentleman immensely, for he gnashed his gums and
+wrung his thin, bony hands and groaned dolorously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The end of all flesh is at hand," said Noah.  "The earth is filled
+with violence through them, and God will destroy them with the earth.
+I will make an ark of gopher-wood, the length thereof 300 cubits, the
+breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits, and I will
+pitch it within and without with pitch.  Into the ark will I come, and
+my sons and my wife, and my sons' wives, and certain living beasts
+shall come, and birds of the air, and we and they shall be saved.  Come
+thou also, for thou art an austere man and a just."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as Methuselah sate alone upon his couch that night he thought of
+his life: how sweet it had been,&mdash;how that, despite the evil now and
+then, there had been more of happiness than of sorrow in it.  He even
+forgot the wickedness of the world and remembered only its good and its
+sunshine, its kindness and its love.  He blessed God for it all, and he
+prayed for the death-angel to come to him ere he beheld the destruction
+of all he so much loved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the angel came and spread his shadow about the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the angel said: "Thy prayer is heard, and God doth forgive thee the
+score-and-ten years of the promised span of thy life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Methuselah gathered up his feet into the bed, and prattling of the
+brooks, he fell asleep; and so he slept with his fathers.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FÉLICE AND PETIT-POULAIN
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The name was singularly appropriate, for assuredly Félice was the
+happiest of all four-footed creatures.  Her nature was gentle; she was
+obedient, long-suffering, kind.  She had known what it was to toil and
+to bear burdens; sometimes she had suffered from hunger and from
+thirst; and before she came into the possession of Jacques she had been
+beaten, for Pierre, her former owner, was a hard master.  But Félice
+was always a kind, faithful, and gentle creature; presumably that was
+why they named her that pretty name, Félice.  She may not have been
+happy when Pierre owned and overworked and starved and beat her; that
+does not concern us now, for herein it is to tell of that time when she
+belonged to Jacques, and Jacques was a merciful man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jacques was a farmer; he lived a short distance from Cinqville, which,
+as you are probably aware, is a town of considerable importance upon
+what used to be the boundary line between France and Germany.  The
+country round about is devoted to agriculture.  You can fancy that,
+with its even roads, leafy woods, quiet lanes, velvety paddocks, tall
+hedges, and bountiful fields, this country was indeed as pleasant a
+home as Félice&mdash;or, for that matter, any other properly minded
+horse&mdash;could hope for.  Toward the southern horizon there were hills
+that looked a grayish blue from a distance; upon these hills were
+vineyards, and the wine that came therefrom is very famous wine, as
+your uncle, if he be a club man, will very truly assure you.  There was
+a pretty little river that curled like a silver snake through the
+fertile meadows, and lost its way among the hills, and there were many
+tiny brooks that scampered across lots and got tangled up with that
+pretty little river in most bewildering fashion.  So, as you can
+imagine, this was a fair country, and you do not wonder that, with so
+merciful a master as Jacques, our friend Félice was happy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But what perfected her happiness was the coming of her little colt, as
+cunning and as blithe a creature as ever whisked a tail or galloped on
+four legs.  I do not know why they called him by that name, but
+Petit-Poulain was what they called him, and that name seemed to please
+Félice, for when farmer Jacques came thrice a day to the stile and
+cried, "Petit-Poulain, petit, petit, Petit-Poulain!" the kind old
+mother would look up fondly, and, with doting eyes, watch her dainty
+little colt go bounding toward his calling master.  And he was indeed a
+lovely little fellow.  The curé, the holy père François, predicted that
+in due time that colt would make a great name for himself and a great
+fortune for his owner.  The holy père knew whereof he spake, for in his
+youth he had tasted of the sweets of Parisian life, and upon one
+memorable occasion had successfully placed ten francs upon the winner
+of le grand prix.  We can suppose that Félice thought well of the holy
+père.  He never came down the road that she did not thrust her nose
+through the hedge and give a mild whinny of recognition, as if she fain
+would say: "Pray stop a moment and see Petit-Poulain and his old
+mother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What happy days those were for Félice and her darling colt.  With what
+tenderness they played together in the paddock; or, when the sky was
+overcast and a storm came on, with what solicitude would the old mother
+lead the way into the thatched stable, where there was snug protection
+against the threatening element.  There are those who say that none but
+humankind is immortal,&mdash;that none but man has a soul.  I do not make or
+believe that claim.  There is that within me which tells me that no
+thing in this world and life of ours which has felt the grace of
+maternity shall utterly perish.  And this I say in all reverence, and
+with the hope that I offend neither God nor man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You are to know that old Félice's devotion to Petit-Poulain was human
+in its tenderness.  As readily, as gladly, and as surely as your dear
+mother would lay down her life for you would old Félice have yielded up
+her life for her innocent, blithe darling.  So old Félice was happy
+that pleasant time in that fair country, and Petit-Poulain waxed hale
+and evermore blithe and beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Happy days, too, were those for that peaceful country and the other
+dwellers therein.  There was no thought of evil there; the seasons were
+propitious, the vineyards thrived, the crops were bountiful; as far as
+eye could see all was prosperity and contentment.  But one day the holy
+Father François came hurrying down the road, and it was too evident
+that he brought evil tidings.  Félice thought it very strange that he
+paid no heed to her when, as was her wont, she thrust her nose through
+the hedge and gave a mild whinny of welcome.  Anon she saw that he
+talked long and earnestly with her master Jacques, and presently she
+saw that Jacques went into the cottage and came again therefrom with
+his wife Justine and kissed her, and then went away with Père François
+toward the town off yonder.  Félice saw that Justine was weeping, and
+with never a suspicion of impending evil, she wondered why Justine
+should weep when all was so prosperous and bright and fair and happy
+about her.  Félice saw and wondered, and meanwhile Petit-Poulain
+scampered gayly about that velvety paddock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night the vineyard hills, bathed in the mellow grace of moonlight,
+saw a sight they had never seen before.  From the east an army came
+riding and marching on,&mdash;an army of strange, determined men, speaking a
+language before unheard in that fair country and threatening things of
+which that peaceful valley had never dreamed.  You and I, of course,
+know that these were the Germans advancing upon France,&mdash;a nation of
+immortals eager to destroy the possessions and the human lives of
+fellow-immortals!  But old Félice, hearing the din away off
+yonder,&mdash;the unwonted noise of cavalry and infantry advancing with
+murderous intent,&mdash;she did not understand it all, she did not even
+suspect the truth.  You cannot wonder, for what should a soulless beast
+know of the noble, the human privilege of human slaughter?  Old Félice
+heard that strange din, and instinct led her to coax her little colt
+from the pleasant paddock into that snug and secure retreat, the
+thatched stable, and there, in the early morning, they found her,
+Petit-Poulain pulling eagerly at her generous dugs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those who came riding up were strangers in those parts; they were
+ominously accoutred and they spoke words that old Félice had never
+heard before.  Yes, as you have already guessed, they were German
+cavalry-men.  A battle was impending, and they needed more horses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old enough; but in lieu of a better, she will do."  That was what they
+said.  They approached her carefully, for they suspected that she might
+be vicious.  Poor old Félice, she had never harmed even the flies that
+pestered her.  "They are going to put me at the plough," she thought.
+"It is a long time since I did work of any kind,&mdash;nothing, in fact,
+since Petit-Poulain was born.  Poor Petit-Poulain will miss me; but I
+will soon return."  With these thoughts she turned her head fondly and
+caressed her pretty colt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The colt must be tied in the stall or he will follow her."  So said
+the cavalrymen.  They threw a rope about his neck and made him fast in
+the stable.  Petit-Poulain was very much surprised, and he remonstrated
+vainly with his fierce little heels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They put a halter upon old Félice.  Justine, the farmer's wife, met
+them in the yard, and reproached them wildly in French.  They laughed
+boisterously, and answered her in German.  Then they rode away, leading
+old Félice, who kept turning her head and whinnying pathetically, for
+she was thinking of Petit-Poulain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of peace I know and can speak,&mdash;of peace, with its solace of love,
+plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty,
+heartache, disappointment, tears, bereavement.  Of war I know nothing,
+and never shall know; it is not in my heart of for my hand to break
+that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee.
+I do not know of war, nor can I tell you of that battle which men with
+immortal souls fought one glorious day in a fertile country with
+vineyard hills all round about.  But when night fell there was
+desolation everywhere and death.  The Eden was a wilderness; the
+winding river was choked with mangled corpses; shell and shot had mowed
+down the acres of waving grain, the exuberant orchards, the gardens and
+the hedgerows; black, charred ruins, gaunt and ghostlike, marked the
+spots where homes had stood.  The vines had been cut and torn away, and
+the despoiled hills seemed to crouch down like bereaved mothers under
+the pitiless gaze of the myriad eyes of heaven.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The victors went their way; a greater triumph was in store for them; a
+mighty capital was to be besieged; more homes were to be
+desolated,&mdash;more blood shed, more hearts broken.  So the victors went
+their way, their hands red and their immortal souls elated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the early dawn a horse came galloping homeward.  It is Félice, old
+Félice, riderless, splashed with mud, wild-eyed, sore with fatigue!
+Félice, Félice, what horrors hast thou not seen!  If thou couldst
+speak, if that tongue of thine could be loosed, what would it say of
+those who, forgetful of their souls, sink lower than the soulless
+brutes!  Better it is thou canst not speak; the anguish in thine eyes,
+the despair in thy honest heart, the fear, the awful fear in thy mother
+breast,&mdash;what tongue could utter them?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Adown the road she galloped,&mdash;the same road she had traversed, perhaps,
+a thousand times before, yet it was so changed now she hardly knew it.
+Twenty-four hours had ruthlessly levelled the noble trees, the
+hedgerows, and the fields of grain.  Twenty-four hours of battle had
+done all this and more.  In all those ghastly hours, one thought had
+haunted Félice; one thought alone,&mdash;the thought of Petit-Poulain!  She
+pictured him tied in that far-away stall, wondering why she did not
+come.  He was hungry, she knew; her dugs were full of milk and they
+pained her; how sweet would be her relief when her Petit-Poulain broke
+his long fast.  Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain,&mdash;this one
+thought and this alone had old Félice throughout those hours of battle
+and of horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Could this have been the farm-house?  It was a ruin now.  Shells had
+torn it apart.  Where was the good master Jacques; had he gone with the
+curé to the defence of the town?  And Justine,&mdash;where was she?  Bullets
+had cut away the rose-trees and the smoke-bush; the garden was no more.
+The havoc, the desolation, was complete.  The cote, which had
+surmounted the pole around which an ivy twined, had been swept away.
+The pigeons now circled here and there bewildered; wondering, perhaps,
+why Justine did not come and call to them and feed them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To this seared, scarred spot came old Félice.  He that had ridden her
+into battle lay with his face downward near those distant vineyard
+hills.  His blood had stained Félice's neck; a bullet had grazed her
+flank, but that was a slight wound,&mdash;riderless, she turned and came
+from the battle-field and sought her Petit-Poulain once again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hard by the ruins of cottage, of garden, and of cote, she came up
+standing; she was steaming and breathless.  She rolled her eyes wildly
+around,&mdash;she looked for the stable where she had left Petit-Poulain.
+She trembled as if an overwhelming apprehension of disaster suddenly
+possessed her.  She gave a whinny, pathetic in its tenderness.  She was
+calling Petit-Poulain.  But there was no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Petit-Poulain lay dead in the ruins of the stable.  His shelter had not
+escaped the fury of the battle.  He could not run away, for they had
+tied him fast when they carried his old mother off.  So now he lay amid
+that debris, his eyes half open in death and his legs stretched out
+stark and stiff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And old Félice,&mdash;her udder bursting with the maternal grace he never
+again should know, and her heart breaking with the agony of sudden and
+awful bereavement,&mdash;she staggered, as if blinded by despair, toward
+that vestige of her love, and bent over him and caressed her
+Petit-Poulain.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE RIVER
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Once upon a time a little boy came, during his play, to the bank of a
+river.  The waters of the river were very dark and wild, and there was
+so black a cloud over the river that the little boy could not see the
+further shore.  An icy wind came up from the cloud and chilled the
+little boy, and he trembled with cold and fear as the wind smote his
+cheeks and ran its slender icicle fingers through his yellow curls.  An
+old man sat on the bank of the river; he was very, very old; his head
+and shoulders were covered with a black mantle; and his beard was white
+as snow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you come with me, little boy?" asked the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where?" inquired the little boy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To yonder shore," replied the old man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no; not to that dark shore," said the little boy.  "I should be
+afraid to go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But think of the sunlight always there," said the old man, "the birds
+and flowers; and remember there is no pain, nor anything of that kind
+to vex you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little boy looked and saw the dark cloud hanging over the waters,
+and he felt the cold wind come up from the river; moreover, the sight
+of the strange man terrified him.  So, hearing his mother calling him,
+the little boy ran back to his home, leaving the old man by the river
+alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Many years after that time the little boy came again to the river; but
+he was not a little boy now,&mdash;he was a big, strong man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The river is the same," said he; "the wind is the same cold, cutting
+wind of ice, and the same black cloud obscures yonder shore.  I wonder
+where the strange old man can be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am he," said a solemn voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man turned and looked on him who spoke, and he saw a warrior clad
+in black armor and wielding an iron sword.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you are not he!" cried the man.  "You are a warrior come to do me
+harm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am indeed a warrior," said the other.  "Come with me across the
+river."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied the man, "I will not go with you.  Hark, I hear the
+voices of my wife and children calling to me,&mdash;I will return to them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The warrior strove to hold him fast and bear him across the river to
+the yonder shore, but the man prevailed against him and returned to his
+wife and little ones, and the warrior was left upon the river-bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then many years went by and the strong man became old and feeble.  He
+found no pleasure in the world, for he was weary of living.  His wife
+and children were dead, and the old man was alone.  So one day in those
+years he came to the bank of the river for the third time, and he saw
+that the waters had become quiet and that the wind which came up from
+the river was warm and gentle and smelled of flowers; there was no dark
+cloud overhanging the yonder shore, but in its place was a golden mist
+through which the old man could see people walking on the yonder shore
+and stretching out their hands to him, and he could hear them calling
+him by name.  Then he knew they were the voices of his dear ones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am weary and lonesome," cried the old man.  "All have gone before
+me: father, mother, wife, children,&mdash;all whom I have loved.  I see them
+and hear them on yonder shore, but who will bear me to them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then a spirit came in answer to this cry.  But the spirit was not a
+strange old man nor yet an armored warrior; but as he came to the
+river's bank that day he was a gentle angel, clad in white; his face
+was very beautiful, and there was divine tenderness in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rest thy head upon my bosom," said the angel, "and I will bear thee
+across the river to those who call thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, with the sweet peace of a little child sinking to his slumbers, the
+old man drooped in the arms of the angel and was borne across the river
+to those who stood upon the yonder shore and called.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FRANZ ABT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Many years ago a young composer was sitting in a garden.  All around
+bloomed beautiful roses, and through the gentle evening air the
+swallows flitted, twittering cheerily.  The young composer neither saw
+the roses nor heard the evening music of the swallows; his heart was
+full of sadness and his eyes were bent wearily upon the earth before
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," said the young composer, with a sigh, "should I be doomed to all
+this bitter disappointment?  Learning seems vain, patience is
+mocked,&mdash;fame is as far from me as ever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The roses heard his complaint.  They bent closer to him and whispered,
+"Listen to us,&mdash;listen to us."  And the swallows heard him, too, and
+they flitted nearer him; and they, too, twittered, "Listen to
+us,&mdash;listen to us."  But the young composer was in no mood to be
+beguiled by the whisperings of the roses and the twitterings of the
+birds; with a heavy heart and sighing bitterly he arose and went his
+way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came to pass that many times after that the young composer came at
+evening and sat in the garden where the roses bloomed and the swallows
+twittered; his heart was always full of disappointment, and often he
+cried out in anguish against the cruelty of fame that it came not to
+him.  And each time the roses bent closer to him, and the swallows flew
+lower, and there in the garden the sweet flowers and little birds
+cried, "Listen to us,&mdash;listen to us, and we will help you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And one evening the young composer, hearing their gentle pleadings,
+smiled sadly, and said: "Yes, I will listen to you.  What have you to
+say, pretty roses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Make your songs of us," whispered the roses,&mdash;"make your songs of us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the composer.  "A song of the roses would be very
+strange, indeed!  No, sweet flowers,&mdash;it is fame I seek, and fame would
+scorn even the beauty of your blushes and the subtlety of your
+perfumes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are wrong," twittered the swallows, flying lower.  "You are wrong,
+foolish man.  Make a song for the heart,&mdash;make a song of the swallows
+and the roses, and it will be sung forever, and your fame shall never
+die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the composer laughed louder than before; surely there never had
+been a stranger suggestion than that of the roses and the swallows!
+Still, in his chamber that night the composer thought of what the
+swallows had said, and in his dreams he seemed to hear the soft tones
+of the roses pleading with him.  Yes, many times thereafter the
+composer recalled what the birds and flowers had said, but he never
+would ask them as he sat in the garden at evening how he could make the
+heart-song of which they chattered.  And the summer sped swiftly by,
+and one evening when the composer came into the garden the roses were
+dead, and their leaves lay scattered on the ground.  There were no
+swallows fluttering in the sky, and the nests under the eaves were
+deserted.  Then the composer knew his little friends were beyond
+recall, and he was oppressed by a feeling of loneliness.  The roses and
+the swallows had grown to be a solace to the composer, had stolen into
+his heart all unawares,&mdash;now that they were gone, he was filled with
+sadness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will do as they counselled," said he; "I will make a song of
+them,&mdash;a song of the swallows and the roses.  I will forget my greed
+for fame while I write in memory of my little friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the composer made a song of the swallows and the roses, and, while
+he wrote, it seemed to him that he could hear the twittering of the
+little birds all around him, and scent the fragrance of the flowers,
+and his soul was warmed with a warmth he had never felt before, and his
+tears fell upon his manuscript.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the world heard the song which the composer had made of the
+swallows and the roses, it did homage to his genius.  Such sentiment,
+such delicacy, such simplicity, such melody, such heart, such
+soul,&mdash;ah, there was no word of rapturous praise too good for the
+composer now: fame, the sweetest and most enduring kind of fame, had
+come to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the swallows and the roses had done it all.  Their subtle
+influences had filled the composer's soul with a great inspiration,&mdash;by
+means like this God loves to speak to the human heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We told you so," whispered the roses when they came again in the
+spring.  "We told you that if you sang of us the world would love your
+song."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the swallows, flying back from the south, twittered: "We told you
+so; sing the songs the heart loves, and you shall live forever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, dear ones," said the composer, softly; "you spoke the truth.  He
+who seeks a fame that is immortal has only to reach and abide in the
+human heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lesson he learned of the swallows and the roses he never forgot.
+It was the inspiration and motive of a long and beautiful life.  He
+left for others that which some called a loftier ambition.  He was
+content to sit among the flowers and hear the twitter of birds and make
+songs that found an echo in all breasts.  Ah, there was such a
+beautiful simplicity,&mdash;such a sweet wisdom in his life!  And where'er
+the swallows flew, and where'er the roses bloomed, he was famed and
+revered and beloved, and his songs were sung.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then his hair grew white at last, and his eyes were dim and his steps
+were slow.  A mortal illness came upon him, and he knew that death was
+nigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The winter has been long," said he, wearily.  "Open the window and
+raise me up that I may see the garden, for it must be that spring is
+come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was indeed spring, but the roses had not yet bloomed.  The swallows
+were chattering in their nests under the eaves or flitting in the mild,
+warm sky.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear them," he said faintly.  "How sweetly they sing.  But alas! where
+are the roses?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Where are the roses?  Heaped over thee, dear singing heart; blooming on
+thy quiet grave in the Fatherland, and clustered and entwined all in
+and about thy memory, which with thy songs shall go down from heart to
+heart to immortality.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+MISTRESS MERCILESS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+This is to tell of our little Mistress Merciless, who for a season
+abided with us, but is now and forever gone from us unto the far-off
+land of Ever-Plaisance.  The tale is soon told; for it were not seemly
+to speak all the things that are in one's heart when one hath to say of
+a much-beloved child, whose life here hath been shortened so that, in
+God's wisdom and kindness, her life shall be longer in that garden that
+bloometh far away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You shall know that all did call her Mistress Merciless; but her
+mercilessness was of a sweet, persuasive kind: for with the beauty of
+her face and the music of her voice and the exceeding sweetness of her
+virtues was she wont to slay all hearts; and this she did unwittingly,
+for she was a little child.  And so it was in love that we did call her
+Mistress Merciless, just as it was in love that she did lord it over
+all our hearts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon a time walked she in a full fair garden, and there went with her
+an handmaiden that we did call in merry wise the Queen of Sheba; for
+this handmaiden was in sooth no queen at all, but a sorry and
+ill-favored wench; but she was assotted upon our little Mistress
+Merciless and served her diligently, and for that good reason was
+vastly beholden of us all.  Yet, in a jest, we called her the Queen of
+Sheba; and I make a venture that she looked exceeding fair in the eyes
+of our little Mistress Merciless: for the eyes of children look not
+upon the faces but into the hearts and souls of others.  Whilst these
+two walked in the full fair garden at that time they came presently
+unto an arbor wherein there was a rustic seat, which was called the
+Siege of Restfulness; and hereupon sate a little sick boy that, from
+his birth, had been lame, so that he could not play and make merry with
+other children, but was wont to come every day into this full fair
+garden and content himself with the companionship of the flowers.  And,
+though he was a little lame boy, he never trod upon those flowers; and
+even had he done so, methinks the pressure of those crippled feet had
+been a caress, for the little lame boy was filled with the spirit of
+love and tenderness.  As the tiniest, whitest, shrinking flower
+exhaleth the most precious perfume, so in and from this little lame
+boy's life there came a grace that was hallowing in its beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since they never before had seen him, they asked him his name; and he
+answered them that of those at home he was called Master Sweetheart, a
+name he could not understand: for surely, being a cripple, he must be a
+very sorry sweetheart; yet, that he was a sweetheart unto his mother at
+least he had no doubt, for she did love to hold him in her lap and call
+him by that name; and many times when she did so he saw that tears were
+in her eyes,&mdash;a proof, she told him when he asked, that Master
+Sweetheart was her sweetheart before all others upon earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It befell that our little Mistress Merciless and Master Sweetheart
+became fast friends, and the Queen of Sheba was handmaiden to them
+both; for the simple, loyal creature had not a mind above the artless
+prattle of childhood, and the strange allegory of the lame boy's speech
+filled her with awe, even as the innocent lisping of our little
+Mistress Merciless delighted her heart and came within the
+comprehension of her limited understanding.  So each day, when it was
+fair, these three came into the full fair garden, and rambled there
+together; and when they were weary they entered into the arbor and sate
+together upon the Siege of Restfulness.  Wit ye well there was not a
+flower or a tree or a shrub or a bird in all that full fair garden
+which they did not know and love, and in very sooth every flower and
+tree and shrub and bird therein did know and love them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they entered into the arbor, and sate together upon the Siege of
+Restfulness, it was Master Sweetheart's wont to tell them of the land
+of Ever-Plaisance, for it was a conceit of his that he journeyed each
+day nearer and nearer to that land, and that his journey thitherward
+was nearly done.  How came he to know of that land I cannot say, for I
+do not know; but I am fain to believe that, as he said, the exceeding
+fair angels told him thereof when by night, as he lay sleeping, they
+came singing and with caresses to his bedside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I speak now of a holy thing, therefore I speak truth when I say that
+while little children lie sleeping in their beds at night it pleaseth
+God to send His exceeding fair angels with singing and caresses to bear
+messages of His love unto those little sleeping children.  And I have
+seen those exceeding fair angels bend with folded wings over the little
+cradles and the little beds, and kiss those little sleeping children
+and whisper God's messages of love to them, and I knew that those
+messages were full of sweet tidings; for, even though they slept, the
+little children smiled.  This have I seen, and there is none who loveth
+little children that will deny the truth of this thing which I have now
+solemnly declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of that land of Ever-Plaisance was our little Mistress Merciless ever
+fain to hear tell.  But when she beset the rest of us to speak thereof
+we knew not what to say other than to confirm such reports as Master
+Sweetheart had already made.  For when it cometh to knowing of that
+far-off land,&mdash;ah me, who knoweth more than the veriest little child?
+And oftentimes within the bosom of a little, helpless, fading one there
+bloometh a wisdom which sages cannot comprehend.  So when she asked us
+we were wont to bid her go to Master Sweetheart, for he knew the truth
+and spake it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is now to tell of an adventure which on a time befell in that full
+fair garden of which you have heard me speak.  In this garden lived
+many birds of surpassing beauty and most rapturous song, and among them
+was one that they called Joyous, for that he did ever carol forth so
+joyously, it mattered not what the day soever might be.  This bird
+Joyous had his home in the top of an exceeding high tree, hard by the
+pleasant arbor, and here did he use to sit at such times as the little
+people came into that arbor, and then would he sing to them such songs
+as befitted that quiet spot, and them that came thereto.  But there was
+a full evil cat that dwelt near by, and this cruel beast found no
+pleasure in the music that Joyous did make continually; nay, that music
+filled this full evil cat with a wicked thirst for the blood of that
+singing innocent, and she had no peace for the malice that was within
+her seeking to devise a means whereby she might comprehend the bird
+Joyous to her murderous intent.  Now you must know that it was the wont
+of our little Mistress Merciless and of Master Sweetheart to feed the
+birds in that fair garden with such crumbs as they were suffered to
+bring with them into the arbor, and at such times would those birds fly
+down with grateful twitterings and eat of those crumbs upon the
+greensward round about the arbor.  Wit ye well, it was a merry sight to
+see those twittering birds making feast upon the good things which
+those children brought, and our little Mistress Merciless and little
+Master Sweetheart had sweet satisfaction therein.  But, on a day,
+whilst thus those twittering birds made great feasting, lo! on a sudden
+did that full evil cat whereof I have spoken steal softly from a
+thicket, and with one hideous bound make her way into the very midst of
+those birds and seize upon that bird Joyous, that was wont to sing so
+merrily from the tree hard by the arbor.  Oh, there was a mighty din
+and a fearful fluttering, and the rest flew swiftly away, but Joyous
+could not do so, because the full evil cat held him in her cruel fangs
+and claws.  And I make no doubt that Joyous would speedily have met his
+death, but that with a wrathful cry did our little Mistress Merciless
+hasten to his rescue.  And our little Mistress belabored that full evil
+cat with Master Sweetheart's crutch, until that cruel beast let loose
+her hold upon the fluttering bird and was full glad to escape with her
+aching bones into the thicket again.  So it was that Joyous was
+recovered from death; but even then might it have fared ill with him,
+had they not taken him up and dressed his wounds and cared for him
+until duly he was well again.  And then they released him to do his
+plaisance, and he returned to his home in the tree hard by the arbor
+and there he sung unto those children more sweetly than ever before;
+for his heart was full of gratitude to our little Mistress Merciless
+and Master Sweetheart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, of the dolls that she had in goodly number, that one which was
+named Beautiful did our little Mistress Merciless love best.  Know well
+that the doll Beautiful had come not from oversea, and was neither of
+wax nor of china; but she was right ingeniously constructed of a
+bed-key that was made of wood, and unto the top of this bed-key had the
+Queen of Sheba superadded a head with a fair face, and upon the body
+and the arms of the key had she hung passing noble raiment.  Unto this
+doll Beautiful was our little Mistress Merciless vastly beholden, and
+she did use to have the doll Beautiful lie by her side at night whilst
+she slept, and whithersoever during the day she went, there also would
+she take the doll Beautiful, too.  Much sorrow and lamentation,
+therefore, made our little Mistress Merciless when on an evil day the
+doll Beautiful by chance fell into the fish-pond, and was not rescued
+therefrom until one of her beauteous eyes had been devoured of the
+envious water; so that ever thereafter the doll Beautiful had but one
+eye, and that, forsooth, was grievously faded.  And on another evil day
+came a monster ribald dog pup and seized upon the doll Beautiful whilst
+she reposed in the arbor, and bore her away, and romped boisterously
+with her upon the sward, and tore off her black-thread hair, and sought
+to destroy her wholly, which surely he would have done but for the
+Queen of Sheba, who made haste to rescue the doll Beautiful, and
+chastise that monster ribald dog pup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Therefore, as you can understand, the time was right busily spent.  The
+full fair garden, with its flowers and the singing birds and the
+gracious arbor and the Siege of Restfulness, found favor with those
+children, and amid these joyous scenes did Master Sweetheart have to
+tell each day of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance, whither he said
+he was going.  And one day, when the sun shone very bright, and the
+full fair garden joyed in the music of those birds, Master Sweetheart
+did not come, and they missed the little lame boy and wondered where he
+was.  And as he never came again they thought at last that of a surety
+he had departed into that country whereof he loved to tell.  Which
+thing filled our little Mistress Merciless with wonder and inquiry; and
+I think she was lonely ever after that,&mdash;lonely for Master Sweetheart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I am thinking now of her and of him; for this is the Christmas
+season,&mdash;the time when it is most meet to think of the children and
+other sweet and holy things.  There is snow everywhere, snow and cold.
+The garden is desolate and voiceless: the flowers are gone, the trees
+are ghosts, the birds have departed.  It is winter out there, and it is
+winter, too, in this heart of mine.  Yet in this Christmas season I
+think of them, and it pleaseth me&mdash;God forbid that I offend with much
+speaking&mdash;it pleaseth me to tell of the little things they did and
+loved.  And you shall understand it all if, perchance, this sacred
+Christmas time a little Mistress Merciless of your own, or a little
+Master Sweetheart, clingeth to your knee and sanctifieth your
+hearthstone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When of an evening all the joy of day was done, would our little
+Mistress Merciless fall aweary; and then her eyelids would grow
+exceeding heavy and her little tired hands were fain to fold.  At such
+a time it was my wont to beguile her weariness with little tales of
+faery, or with the gentle play that sleepy children like.  Much was her
+fancy taken with what I told her of the train that every night whirleth
+away to Shut-Eye Town, bearing unto that beauteous country sleepy
+little girls and boys.  Nor would she be content until I told her
+thereof,&mdash;yes, every night whilst I robed her in her cap and gown would
+she demand of me that tale of Shut-Eye Town, and the wonderful train
+that was to bear her thither.  Then would I say in this wise:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+At Bedtime-ville there is a train of cars that waiteth for you, my
+sweet,&mdash;for you and for other little ones that would go to quiet,
+slumbrous Shut-Eye Town.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+But make no haste; there is room for all.  Each hath a tiny car that is
+snug and warm, and when the train starteth each car swingeth soothingly
+this way and that way, this way and that way, through all the journey
+of the night.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+Your little gown is white and soft; your little cap will hold those
+pretty curls so fast that they cannot get away.  Here is a curl that
+peepeth out to see what is going to happen.  Hush, little curl! make no
+noise; we will let you peep out at the wonderful sights, but you must
+not tell the others about it; let them sleep, snuggled close together.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+The locomotive is ready to start.  Can you not hear it?
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"  That is what the locomotive is
+saying, all to itself.  It knoweth how pleasant a journey it is about
+to make.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+Oh, many a time hath it proudly swept over prairie and hill, over river
+and plain, through sleeping gardens and drowsy cities, swiftly and
+quietly, bearing the little ones to the far, pleasant valley where
+lieth Shut-Eye Town.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+So sayeth the locomotive to itself at the station in Bedtime-ville; for
+it knoweth how fair and far a journey is before it.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+Then a bell soundeth.  Surely my little one heareth the bell!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+So soundeth the bell, and it seemeth to invite you to sleep and dreams.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+How sweetly ringeth and calleth that bell.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"To sleep&mdash;to dreams, O little lambs!" it seemeth to call.  "Nestle
+down close, fold your hands, and shut your dear eyes!  We are off and
+away to Shut-Eye Town!  Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!  To
+sleep&mdash;to dreams, O little cosset lambs!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+And now the conductor calleth out in turn.  "All aboard!" he calleth,
+"All aboard for Shut-Eye Town!" he calleth in a kindly tone.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+But, hark ye, dear-my-soul, make thou no haste; there is room for all.
+Here is a cosey little car for you.  How like your cradle it is, for it
+is snug and warm, and it rocketh this way and that way, this way and
+that way, all night long, and its pillows caress you tenderly.  So step
+into the pretty nest, and in it speed to Shut-Eye Town.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+That is the whistle.  It soundeth twice, but it must sound again before
+the train can start.  Now you have nestled down, and your dear hands
+are folded; let your two eyes be folded, too, my sweet; for in a moment
+you shall be rocked away, and away, away into the golden mists of Balow!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"All aboard!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+And so my little golden apple is off and away for Shut-Eye Town!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+Slowly moveth the train, yet faster by degrees.  Your hands are folded,
+my beloved, and your dear eyes they are closed; and yet you see the
+beauteous sights that skirt the journey through the mists of Balow.
+And it is rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, that your speeding cradle
+goes,&mdash;rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, through the golden glories that
+lie in the path that leadeth to Shut-Eye Town.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+So crieth the whistle, and it is "down-brakes," for here we are at
+Ginkville, and every little one knoweth that pleasant waking-place,
+where mother with her gentle hands holdeth the gracious cup to her
+sleepy darling's lips.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!" and off is the train again.  And
+swifter and swifter it speedeth,&mdash;oh, I am sure no other train speedeth
+half so swiftly!  The sights my dear one sees!  I cannot tell of
+them&mdash;one must see those beauteous sights to know how wonderful they
+are!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+On and on and on the locomotive proudly whirleth the train.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="story">
+The bell calleth anon, but fainter and evermore fainter; and fainter
+and fainter groweth that other calling&mdash;"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"&mdash;till
+finally I know that in that Shut-Eye Town afar my dear one dreameth the
+dreams of Balow.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+This was the bedtime tale which I was wont to tell our little Mistress
+Merciless, and at its end I looked upon her face to see it calm and
+beautiful in sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then was I wont to kneel beside her little bed and fold my two
+hands,&mdash;thus,&mdash;and let my heart call to the host invisible: "O guardian
+angels of this little child, hold her in thy keeping from all the
+perils of darkness and the night!  O sovereign Shepherd, cherish Thy
+little lamb and mine, and, Holy Mother, fold her to thy bosom and thy
+love!  But give her back to me,&mdash;when morning cometh, restore ye unto
+me my little one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But once she came not back.  She had spoken much of Master Sweetheart
+and of that land of Ever-Plaisance whither he had gone.  And she was
+not afeared to make the journey alone; so once upon a time when our
+little Mistress Merciless bade us good-by, and went away forever, we
+knew that it were better so; for she was lonely here, and without her
+that far-distant country whither she journeyed were not content.
+Though our hearts were like to break for love of her, we knew that it
+were better so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tale is told, for it were not seemly to speak all the things that
+are in one's heart when one hath to say of a much-beloved child whose
+life here hath been shortened so that, in God's wisdom and kindness,
+her life shall be longer in that garden that bloometh far away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About me are scattered the toys she loved, and the doll Beautiful hath
+come down all battered and grim,&mdash;yet, oh! so very precious to me, from
+those distant years; yonder fareth the Queen of Sheba in her service as
+handmaiden unto me and mine,&mdash;gaunt and doleful-eyed, yet stanch and
+sturdy as of old.  The garden lieth under the Christmas snow,&mdash;the
+garden where ghosts of trees wave their arms and moan over the graves
+of flowers; the once gracious arbor is crippled now with the
+infirmities of age, the Siege of Restfulness fast sinketh into decay,
+and long, oh! long ago did that bird Joyous carol forth his last sweet
+song in the garden that was once so passing fair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And amid it all,&mdash;this heartache and the loneliness which the years
+have brought,&mdash;cometh my Christmas gift to-day: the solace of a vision
+of that country whither she&mdash;our little Mistress Merciless&mdash;hath gone;
+a glimpse of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE PLATONIC BASSOON
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+All who knew the beautiful and accomplished Aurora wondered why she did
+not marry.  She had now reached the mature age of twenty-five years,
+and was in full possession of those charms which are estimated by all
+men as the choicest gifts a woman can possess.  You must know that
+Aurora had a queenly person, delightful manners, an extensive
+education, and an amiable disposition; and, being the only child of
+wealthy parents, she should not have lacked the one thing that seemed
+necessary to perfect and round out her usefulness as a member of
+society.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The truth was, Aurora did not fancy the male sex.  She regarded men as
+conveniences that might come handy at times when an escort to the
+theatre was required, or when a partner in a dance was demanded, when a
+fan was to be picked up, or when an errand was to be run; but the idea
+of marrying any man was as distasteful to Aurora as the proposition to
+marry a hat-rack or any other piece of household furniture would have
+been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The secret of this strange aversion might have been traced to Aurora's
+maiden aunt Eliza, who had directed Aurora's education, and had from
+her niece's early youth instilled into Aurora's mind very distinct
+notions touching the masculine sex.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aurora had numerous admirers among the young gentlemen who moved in the
+same elevated social circle as herself and frequently called at her
+father's house.  Any one of them would gladly have made her his wife,
+and many of them had expressed a tender yearning for her life
+companionship.  But Aurora was quick to recognize in each suitor some
+objectionable trait or habit or feature which her aunt Eliza had told
+about, and which imperatively prohibited a continuance of the young
+gentleman's attentions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aurora's father could not understand why his daughter was so
+hypercritical and fastidious in a matter which others of her sex were
+so apt to accept with charitable eyes.  "They are bright, honest
+fellows," he urged, "worthy of any girl's love.  Receive their advances
+kindly, my child, and having chosen one among them, you will be the
+happier for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind, Aurora," said Aunt Eliza.  "Men are all alike.  They show
+their meanness in different ways, but the same spirit of evil is in 'em
+all.  I have lived in this world forty-six years, and during that time
+I have found men to be the most unfeeling and most untrustworthy of
+brutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was that at the age of twenty-five Aurora was found beautiful,
+amiable, and accomplished, but thoroughly and hopelessly a man-hater.
+And it was about this time that she became involved in that unhappy
+affair which even to this day is talked of by those who knew her then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the evening of a certain day Aurora attended the opera with her
+father and mother and Morgan Magnus, the young banker.  Their box at
+the opera was so close to the orchestra that by reaching out her hand
+Aurora could have touched several of the instruments.  Now it happened
+that a bassoon was the instrument nearest the box in which Aurora sat,
+and it was natural therefore that the bassoon attracted more of
+Aurora's attention than any other instrument in the orchestra.  If you
+have never beheld or heard a bassoon you are to understand that it is
+an instrument of wood, of considerable more length than breadth,
+provided with numerous stops and keys, and capable of producing an
+infinite variety of tones, ranging from the depth of lugubriousness to
+the highest pitch of vivacity.  This particular bassoon was of an
+appearance that bordered upon the somber, the polished white of his
+keys emphasizing the solemn black of his long, willowy body.  And, as
+he loomed up above the serene bald head of the musician that played
+him, Aurora thought she had never seen a more distingué object.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The opera was "Il Trovatore," a work well calculated to call in play
+all that peculiar pathos of which the bassoon is capable.  When Aurora
+saw the player raise the bassoon and apply the tiny tube thereunto
+appertaining to his lips, and heard him evoke from the innermost
+recesses of the bassoon tones that were fairly reeking with tears and
+redolent of melancholy, she felt a curious sentiment of pity awakened
+in her bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aurora had seen many an agonized swain at her feet, and had heard his
+impassioned pleadings for mercy; she had perused many a love missive
+wherein her pity was eloquently implored, but never had she experienced
+the tender, melting sentiment that percolated through her breast when
+she heard the bassoon mingling his melancholy tones with Manrico's
+plaints.  The tears welled up into Aurora's eyes, her bosom heaved
+convulsively, and the most subtile emotions thrilled her soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In vain did young Magnus, the banker, seek to learn the cause of her
+agitation, and it seemed like a cruel mockery when Aurora's mother
+said: "You must remember, dear, that it is not real; it is only a
+play."  After this memorable evening, wherein an unexpected and
+indescribable sweetness had crept into the young woman's life, Aurora
+more frequently insisted upon going to the opera.  A strange
+fascination attracted her thither, and on each succeeding evening she
+found some new beauty in the bassoon, some new phase in his
+kaleidoscopic character to wonder at, some new accomplishment to
+admire.  On one occasion&mdash;it was at the opera bouffe&mdash;this musical
+prodigy exhibited a playfulness and an exuberance of wit and humor that
+Aurora had never dreamed of.  He ran the gamut of vocal conceit, and
+the polyglot fertility of his fancy simply astounded his rapt auditor.
+She was dazed, enchanted, spellbound.  So here we find the fair Aurora
+passing from the condition of pity into the estate of admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, having first conceived a wondrous pity for the bassoon, and
+then having become imbued with an admiration of his wit, sarcasm,
+badinage, repartee, and humor, it followed naturally and logically that
+Aurora should fall desperately in love with him; for pity and
+admiration are but the forerunners of the grand passion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aunt Eliza," said Aurora one day, "you have instilled into my
+sensitive nature an indelible aversion to men, compared with which all
+such deleble passions as affection and love are as inconsequential as
+summer zephyrs.  I believe men to be by nature and practice gross,
+vulgar, sensual, and unworthy; and from this opinion I feel that I
+shall never recede.  Yet such a clinging and fragile thing is woman's
+heart that it must needs have some object about which it may twine,
+even as the gentle ivy twines about the oak.  Now, as you know, some
+women there are who, convinced of the utter worthlessness of the
+opposite sex, dedicate their lives to the adoration of some art or
+science, lavishing thereupon that love which women less prudent
+squander upon base men and ungrateful children; in the painting of
+pictures, devotion to the drama, the cultivation of music, pursuit of
+trade, or the exclusive attention to a profession, some women find the
+highest pleasure.  But you and I, dear aunt, who are directed by even
+higher and purer motives than these women, scorn the pursuits of the
+arts and sciences, the professions and trades, and lay our hearts as
+willing sacrifices upon the altars of a tabby cat and a bassoon.  What
+could be purer or more exalted than a love of that kind?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having uttered this eloquent preface, which was, indeed, characteristic
+of the fair creature, Aurora told Aunt Eliza of the bassoon, and as she
+spoke of his versatile accomplishments and admirable qualities her eyes
+glowed with an unwonted animation, and a carmine hue suffused her
+beautiful cheeks.  It was plain that Aurora was deeply in love, and
+Aunt Eliza was overjoyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is gratifying," said Aunt Eliza, "to find that my teachings promise
+such happy results, that the seeds I have so carefully sown already
+show signs of a glorious fruition.  Now, while it is true that I cannot
+conceive of a happier love than that which exists between my own dear
+tabby cat and myself, it is also true that I recognize your bassoon as
+an object so much worthier of adoration than mankind in general, and
+your male acquaintances in particular, that I most heartily felicitate
+you upon the idol you have chosen for your worship.  Bassoons do not
+smoke, nor chew tobacco, nor swear, nor bet on horse-races, nor play
+billiards, nor do any of those horrid things which constitute the
+larger part of a man's ambitions and pursuits.  You have acted wisely,
+my dear, and heaven grant you may be as happy in his love as I am in
+tabby's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I feel that I shall be," murmured Aurora; "already my bassoon is very
+precious to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the dawn of this first passion a new motive seemed to come into
+Aurora's life&mdash;a gentle melancholy, a subdued sentiment whose
+accompaniments were sighings and day-dreamings and solitary tears and
+swoonings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite naturally Aurora sought Aunt Eliza's society more than ever now,
+and her conversation and thoughts were always on the bassoon.  It was
+very beautiful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But late one night Aurora burst into Aunt Eliza's room and threw
+herself upon Aunt Eliza's bed, sobbing bitterly.  Aunt Eliza was
+inexpressibly shocked, and under a sudden impulse of horror the tabby
+sprang to her feet, arched her back, bristled her tail, and uttered
+monosyllables of astonishment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Aurora, what ails you?" inquired Aunt Eliza, kindly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, auntie, my heart is broken, I know it is," wailed Aurora.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, come, my child," said Aunt Eliza, soothingly, "don't take on so.
+Tell auntie what ails you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was harsh and cruel to me to-night, and oh!  I loved him so!"
+moaned Aurora.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lovers' quarrel, eh?" thought Aunt Eliza; and she got up, slipped
+her wrapper on, and brewed Aurora a big bowl of boneset tea.  Oh, how
+nice and bitter and fragrant it was, and how Aunt Eliza's nostrils
+sniffed, and how her eyes sparkled as she sipped the grateful beverage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, drink that, my dear," said Aunt Eliza, "and then tell me all
+about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aurora quaffed the bowl of boneset tea, and the wholesome draught
+seemed to give her fortitude, for now she told Aunt Eliza the whole
+story.  It seems that Aurora had been to the opera as usual, not for
+the purpose of hearing and seeing the performance, but simply for the
+sake of being where the beloved bassoon was.  The opera was Wagner's
+"Die Walküre," and the part played by the bassoon in the orchestration
+was one of conspicuous importance.  Fully appreciating his importance,
+the bassoon conducted himself with brutal arrogance and
+superciliousness on this occasion.  His whole nature seemed changed;
+his tones were harsh and discordant, and with malevolent obstinacy he
+led all the other instruments in the orchestra through a seemingly
+endless series of musical pyrotechnics.  There never was a more
+remarkable exhibition of stubbornness.  When the violins and the
+'cellos, the hautboys and the flutes, the cornets and the trombones,
+said "Come, let us work together in G minor," or "Let us do this
+passage in B flat," the bassoon would lead off with a wild shriek in D
+sharp or some other foreign key, and maintain it so lustily that the
+other instruments&mdash;e. g., the violins, the 'cellos, the hautboys, and
+all&mdash;were compelled to back, switch, and wheel into the bassoon's lead
+as best they could.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But no sooner had they come into harmony than the bassoon&mdash;oh,
+melancholy perversity of that instrument&mdash;would strike off into another
+key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and
+another stampede.  And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept
+up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in
+his riotous, brutal conduct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first Aurora was mortified; then her mortification deepened into
+chagrin.  In the hope of touching his heart she bestowed upon him a
+look of such tender supplication that, had he not been the most callous
+creature in the world, he must have melted under it.  To his eternal
+shame, let it be said, the bassoon remained as impervious to her
+beseeching glances as if he had been a sphinx or a rhinoceros.  In
+fact, Aurora's supplicating eyes seemed to instigate him to further and
+greater madness, for after that he became still more riotous, and at
+many times during the evening the crisis in the orchestra threatened
+anarchy and general disintegration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aurora's humiliation can be imagined by those only who have experienced
+a like bitterness&mdash;the bitterness of awakening to a realization of the
+cruelty of love.  Aurora loved the bassoon tenderly, deeply,
+absorbingly.  The sprightliness of his lighter moods, no less than the
+throbbing pathos of his sadder moments, had won her heart.  She had
+given him her love unreservedly, she fairly worshipped him, and now she
+awakened, as it were, from a golden dream, to find her idol clay!  It
+was very sad.  Yet who that has loved either man or bassoon does not
+know this bitterness?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will be gentler hereafter," said Aunt Eliza, encouragingly.  "You
+must always remember that we should be charitable and indulgent with
+those we love.  Who knows why the bassoon was harsh and wayward and
+imperious to-night?  Let us not judge him till we have heard the whys
+and wherefores.  He may have been ill; depend upon it, my dear, he had
+cause for his conduct."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aunt Eliza's prudent words were a great solace to Aurora.  And she
+forgave the bassoon all the pain he had inflicted when she went to the
+opera the next night and heard him in "I Puritani," a work in which the
+grand virility of his nature, its vigor and force, came out with
+telling effect.  There was not a trace of the insolence he had
+manifested in "Die Walküre," nor of the humorous antics he had
+displayed in "La Grande Duchesse"; divested of all charlatanism, he was
+now a magnificent, sonorous, manly bassoon, and you may depend upon it
+Aurora was more in love with him than ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was about this time that, perceiving a marked change in his
+daughter's appearance and demeanor, Aurora's father began to question
+her mother about it all, and that good lady at last made bold to tell
+the old gentleman the whole truth of the matter, which was simply that
+Aurora cherished a passion for the bassoon.  Now the father was an
+exceedingly matter-of-fact, old-fashioned man, who possessed not the
+least bit of sentiment, and when he heard that his only child had
+fallen in love with a bassoon, his anger was very great.  He summoned
+Aurora into his presence, and regarded her with an austere countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Girl," he said, in icy tones, "is it true that you have been flirting
+with a bassoon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," replied Aurora, with dignity, "I have never flirted with
+anybody, and you grievously wrong the bassoon when you intimated that
+he, too, is capable of such frivolity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is nevertheless true," roared the old gentleman, "that you have
+conceived a passion for this bassoon, and have cherished it
+clandestinely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It <I>is</I> true, father, that I love the bassoon," said Aurora; "it is
+true that I admire his wit, vivacity, sentiment, soul, force, power,
+and manliness, but I have loved in secret.  We have never met; he may
+know I love him, and he may reciprocate my love, but he has never
+spoken to me nor I to him, so there is nothing clandestine in the
+affair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my child! my child!" sobbed the old man, breaking down; "how could
+you love a bassoon, when so many eligible young men are suitors for
+your hand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't mention him in the same breath with those horrid creatures!"
+cried Aurora, indignantly.  "What scent of tobacco or odor of wines has
+ever profaned the purity of his balmy breath?  What does he know of
+billiards, of horse-racing, of actresses, and those other features of
+brutal men's lives?  Father, he is pure and good and exalted; seek not
+to debase him by naming him in the category of man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These are Eliza's teachings!" shrieked the old gentleman; and off he
+bundled to vent his wrath on the maiden aunt.  But it was little
+satisfaction he got from Aunt Eliza.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that the old gentleman kept a strict eye on Aurora, and very soon
+he became satisfied of two things: First, that Aurora was sincerely in
+love with the bassoon; and, second, that the bassoon cared nothing for
+Aurora.  That Aurora loved the bassoon was evidenced by her demeanor
+when in his presence&mdash;her steadfast eyes, her parted lips, her heaving
+bosom, her piteous sighs, her flushed cheeks, and her varying emotions
+as his tones changed, bore unimpeachable testimony to the sincerity of
+her passion.  That the bassoon did not care for Aurora was proved by
+his utter disregard of her feelings, for though he might be tender this
+moment he was harsh the next&mdash;though pleading now he spurned her anon;
+and so, variable and fickle and false as the winds, he kept Aurora in
+misery and hysterics about half the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One morning the old gentleman entered the theatre while the orchestra
+was rehearsing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who plays the bassoon?" he asked, in an imperative tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ich!" said a man with a bald head and gold spectacles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your name?" demanded the old gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Otto Baumgarten," replied he of the bald head and gold spectacles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, Otto Baumgarten," said the father, "I will give you one hundred
+dollars for your bassoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mein Gott!" said Herr Baumgarten, "dat bassoon gost me not half so
+much fon dot!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind!" replied the old gentleman.  "Take the money and give me
+the bassoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Herr Baumgarten did not hesitate a moment.  He clutched at the gold
+pieces, and while he counted them Aurora's father was hastening up the
+street with the bassoon under his arm.  Aurora saw him coming, and she
+recognized the idol of her soul; his silver-plated keys were not to be
+mistaken.  With a cry of joy she met her father in the hallway,
+snatched the bassoon to her heart, and covered him with kisses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He makes no answer to your protestations!" said her father.  "Come,
+give over a love that is hopeless; cast aside this bassoon, who is
+hollow at heart, and whose affection at best is only platonic!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You speak blasphemies, father," cried Aurora, "and you yourself shall
+hear how he loves me, for when I but put my lips to this slender
+mouthpiece there shall issue from my worshipped bassoon tones of such
+ineffable tenderness that even you shall be convinced that my passion
+is reciprocated."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With these words Aurora glued her beauteous lips to the slender
+blowpipe of the bassoon, and, having inflated her lungs to their
+capacity, breathed into it a respiration that seemed to come from her
+very soul.  But no sound issued from the cold, hollow, unresponsive
+bassoon.  Aurora repeated the effort with increased vigor.  There came
+no answer at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aha!" laughed her father.  "I told you so; he loves you not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But then, with a last superhuman effort, Aurora made her third attempt;
+her eyeballs started from their sockets, big, blue veins and cords
+stood out on her lovely neck, and all the force and vigor of her young
+life seemed to go out through her pursed lips into the bassoon's
+system.  And then, oh then! as if to mock her idolatry and sound the
+death knell of her unhappy love, the bassoon recoiled and emitted a
+tone so harsh, so discordant, so supernatural, that even Aurora's
+father drew back in horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And lo! hearing that supernatural sound that told her of the
+hopelessness of love, Aurora dropped the hollow, mocking scoffer,
+clutched spasmodically at her heart, and, with an agonizing shriek,
+fell lifeless to the floor.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES
+</H3>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE EEL-KING
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was a maiden named Liliokani whose father was a fisherman.  But
+the maiden liked not her father's employment, for she believed it to be
+an offence against Atua, the all-god, to deprive any animal of that
+life which Atua had breathed into it.  And this was pleasing unto Atua,
+and he blessed Liliokani with exceeding beauty; no other eyes were so
+large, dark, and tender as hers; the braids of her long, soft hair fell
+like silken seagrass upon her shoulders; she was tall and graceful as
+the palm, and her voice was the voice of the sea when the sea cradles
+the moonlight and sings it to sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Full many kings' sons came wooing Liliokani, and chiefs renowned in
+war; and with others came Tatatao, that was a mighty hunter of hares
+and had compassed famous hardships.  For those men that delight in
+adventure and battle are most pleasantly minded to gentle women, for
+thus capriciously hath Atua, the all-god, ordained.  But Liliokani had
+no ear to the wooing of these men, and the fisherman's daughter was a
+virgin when Mimi came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mimi was king of the eels, and Atua had given him eternal life and the
+power to change his shape when it pleased him to issue from the water
+and walk the earth.  It befell that this eel-king, Mimi, beheld
+Liliokani upon a time as he swam the little river near her father's
+abode, and he saw that she was exceeding fair and he heard the soft,
+sad sea-tone in her voice.  So for many days Mimi frequented those
+parts and grew more and more in love with the maiden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon a certain day, while she helped her father to mend his nets,
+Liliokani saw a young man of goodly stature and handsome face
+approaching, and to herself she said: "Surely if ever I be tempted to
+wed it shall be with this young man, whose like I have never before
+known."  But she had no thought that it was Mimi, the eel-king, who in
+this changed shape now walked the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sweetly he made obeisance and pleasant was his discourse with the
+fisherman and his daughter, and he told them many things of his home,
+which he said was many kumes distant from that spot.  Though he spake
+mostly to the old man, his eyes were fixed upon Liliokani, and, after
+the fashion of her sex, that maiden presently knew that he had great
+love unto her.  Many days after that came Mimi to hold discourse with
+them, and they had joy of his coming, for in sooth he was of fair
+countenance and sweet address, and the fisherman, being a single-minded
+and a simple man, had no suspicion of the love between Mimi and
+Liliokani.  But once Mimi said to Liliokani in such a voice as the
+sea-wind hath to the maiden palm-trees: "Brown maiden mine, let thy
+door be unlatched this night, and I will come to thee."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the door was not latched that night and Mimi went in unto her, and
+they two were together and alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What meaneth that moaning of the sea?" asked Liliokani.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sea chanteth our bridal anthem," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what sad music cometh from the palms to-night?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They sing soft and low of our wedded love," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Liliokani apprehended evil, and, although she spake no more of it
+at that time, a fear of trouble was in her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now Atua, the all-god, was exceeding wroth at this thing, and in
+grievous anger he beheld how that every night the door was unlatched
+and Mimi went in unto Liliokani.  And Atua set about to do vengeance,
+and Atua's wrath is sure and very dreadful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a night when Mimi did not come; the door was unlatched and
+the breath of Liliokani was as the perfume of flowers and of spices
+commingled; yet he came not.  Then Liliokani wept and unbraided her
+hair and cried as a widow crieth, and she thought that Mimi had found
+another pleasanter than she unto him.  So, upon the next night, she
+latched the door.  But in the middle of the night, when the fire was
+kindled in the island moon, there was a gentle tapping at the door, and
+Mimi called to her.  And when she had unlatched the door she began to
+chide him, but he stopped her chiding, and with great groaning he took
+her to his breast, and she knew by the beating of his heart that evil
+had come upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Mimi told her who he was and how wroth the all-god was because the
+eel-king, forgetful of his immortality and neglectful of his domain,
+loved the daughter of a mortal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forswear me, then," quoth Liliokani, "forswear me, and come not hither
+again, and the anger of the all-god shall be appeased."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not to lie to Atua," answered Mimi.  "The all-god readeth every
+heart and knoweth every thought.  How can I, that love thee only,
+forswear thee?  More just and terrible would be Atua's wrath for that
+lie to him and that wrong to thee and to myself.  Brown maiden, I go
+back into the sea and from thee forever, bearing with me a love for
+thee which even the all-god's anger cannot chill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he kissed her for the last time and bade her a last farewell, and
+then he went from that door down to the water's edge and into his
+domain.  And Liliokani made great moan and her heart was like to break.
+But the sea was placid as a hearthstone and the palms lay asleep in the
+sky that night, for it was Atua's will that the woman should suffer
+alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the middle of the next night a mighty tempest arose.  The clouds
+reached down and buffeted the earth and sea, and the winds and the
+waters cried out in anger against each other and smote each other.
+Above the tumult Atua's voice was heard.  "Arise, Liliokani," quoth
+that voice, "and with thy father's stone hatchet smite off the head of
+the fish that lieth upon the threshold of the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Liliokani arose with fear and trembling and went to the door, and
+there, on the threshold, lay a monster eel whose body had been floated
+thither by the flood and the tempest.  With her father's stone hatchet
+she smote off the eel's head, and the head fell into the hut, but the
+long, dead body floated back with the flood into the sea and was seen
+no more.  Then the tempest abated, and with the morning came the sun's
+light and its tender warmth.  And at the earliest moment Liliokani took
+the eel's head secretly and buried it with much sorrow and weeping, for
+the eyes within that lifeless head were Mimi's eyes, and Liliokani knew
+that this thing was come of the all-god's wrath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was her wont to go each day and make moan over the spot where she
+had hid this vestige of her love, and presently Atua pitied her, for
+Atua loveth his children upon this earth, even though they sin most
+grievously.  So, by and by, Liliokani saw that two green leaves were
+sprouting from the earth, and in a season these two leaves became twin
+stalks and grew into trees, the like of which had never before been
+seen upon earth.  And Liliokani lived to see and to taste the fruit of
+these twin trees that sprung from Mimi's brain&mdash;the red cocoanut and
+the white cocoanut, whereof all men have eaten since that time.  And
+all folk hold that fruit in sweet estimation, for it cometh from the
+love that a god had unto a mortal woman, and mortality is love and love
+is immortality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Atua forgot not Liliokani when the skies opened to her; she liveth
+forever in the star that looketh only upon this island, and it is her
+tender grace that nourishes the infant cocoas and maketh the elder ones
+fruitful.  Meanwhile no woman that dwelleth upon earth hath
+satisfaction in tasting the flesh of eels, for a knowledge of Mimi's
+love and sacrifice hath been subtly implanted by Atua, the all-god, in
+every woman's breast.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MOON LADY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Once there were four maidens who were the daughters of Talakoa, and
+they were so very beautiful that their fame spread through the
+universe.  The oldest of these maidens was named Kaulualua, and it is
+of her that it is to tell this tale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day while Kaulualua was combing her hair she saw a tall, fair man
+fishing in the rivulet, and he was a stranger to her.  Never before had
+she seen so fair a man, though in very sooth she had been wooed of many
+king's sons and of chiefs from every part of the earth.  Then she
+called to her three sisters and asked them his name, but they could not
+answer; this, however, they knew&mdash;he was of no country whereof they had
+heard tell, for he was strangely clad and he was of exceeding fair
+complexion and his stature surpassed that of other men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next day these maidens saw this same tall, fair man, but he no
+longer fished in the rivulet; he hunted the hares and was passing
+skilful thereat, so that the maidens admired him not only for his
+exceeding comeliness but also for his skill as a huntsman, for surely
+there was no hare that could escape his vigilance and the point of his
+arrow.  So when Talakoa, their father, came that evening the maidens
+told him of this stranger, and he wondered who he was and whence he
+fared.  Awaking from sleep in the middle of that night, Kaulualua saw
+that the stars shone with rare brilliancy, and that by their light a
+man was gazing upon her through the window.  And she saw that the man
+was the tall, fair man of whom it has been spoken.  So she uttered no
+cry, but feigned that she slept, for she saw that there was love in the
+tall, fair man's eyes, and it pleaseth a maiden to be looked upon in
+that wise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When it was morning this tall, fair man came and entered that house and
+laid a fish and a hare upon the hearthstone and called for Talakoa.
+And he quoth to Talakoa:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old man, I would have your daughter to wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Being a full crafty man, as beseemeth one of years, Talakoa replied:
+"Four daughters have I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tall, fair man announced: "You speak sooth, as well becometh a full
+crafty man.  Four daughters have you, and it is Kaulualua that I would
+have to wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saith that full crafty man, the father: "How many palm trees grow in
+thy possession, and how many rivers flow through thy chiefdom?  Whence
+comest thou, gentle sir, for assuredly neither I nor mine have seen the
+like of thee before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good sooth," answered the tall, fair man, "I will tell you no lie, for
+I would have that daughter to wife, and the things you require do well
+beseem a full crafty man that meaneth for his child's good.  I am the
+man of the moon, and my name is Marama."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Talakoa and his daughters looked at one another and were sore
+puzzled, for they knew not whereof Marama spake.  And they deemed him a
+madman; yet did they not laugh him to scorn, because that he had come
+a-wooing, and had laid the fish and the hare upon the hearthstone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kind sir, bringing gifts," quoth Talakoa, "I say no lie to you, but we
+know not that country whereof you speak.  Pray tell us of the moon and
+where is it situate, and how many kumes is it distant from here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Full crafty man, father of her whom I would have to wife, I will tell
+you truly," answered Marama.  "The moon wherefrom I come is a mighty
+island in the vast sea of night, and it is distant from here so great a
+space that it were not to count the kumes that lie between.  Exceeding
+fair is that island in that vast sea, and it hath mountains and valleys
+and plains and seas and rivers and lakes, and I am the chief overall.
+Atua made that island for me and put it in that mighty sea, for I am
+the son of Atua, and over that island in that sea I shall rule forever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Great wonder had they to hear tell of these things, and they knew now
+that Marama was the child of Atua, who made the universe and is the
+all-god.  Then Marama said on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Atua bade me search and find me a wife, and upon the stars have I
+walked two hundred years, fishing and hunting, and seeing maidens, but
+of all maidens seen there is none that I did love.  So now at last, in
+this island of this earth, I have found Kaulualua, and have seen the
+pearl of her beauty and smelled the cinnamon of her breath, and I would
+fain have her to wife that she may be ruler with me over the moon, my
+island in the vast, black sea of night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not for Talakoa, being of earth such as all human kind, to
+gainsay the words of Marama.  And there was a flame in Kaulualua's
+heart and incense in her breath and honey in her eyes toward this tall,
+fair man that was the son of Atua.  So the old father said to her:
+"Take up the fish and the hare and roast them, my daughter, and spread
+them before us, and we will eat them and so pledge our troth, one to
+another."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This thing did Kaulualua, and so the man from the moon had her to wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night they went from the home of Talakoa to the island in the sea
+of night, and Talakoa and the three maidens watched for a signal from
+that island, for Kaulualua told them she would build a fire thereon
+that they might know when she was come thither.  Many, many nights they
+watched, and their hair grew white, and Time marked their faces with
+his fingers, and the moss gathered on the palm trees.  At last, as if
+he would sleep forever, Talakoa laid himself upon his mat by the door
+and asked that the skies be opened to him, for he was enfeebled with
+age.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And while he asked this thing the three sisters saw a dim light afar
+off in the black sea of night, and it was such a light as had never
+before been seen.  And this light grew larger and brighter, so that in
+seven nights it was thrice the size of the largest palm leaf, and it
+lighted up all that far-off island in the sea of night, and they knew
+that Kaulualua and the moon-god were in their home at last.  So old
+Talakoa was soothed and the skies that opened unto him found him
+satisfied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The three sisters lived long, and yet two hundred ages are gone since
+the earth received them into its bosom.  Yet still upon that island in
+the dark sea of night abideth in love the moon-god with his bride.
+Atua hath been good to her, for he hath given her eternal youth, as he
+giveth to all wives that do truly love and serve their husbands.  It is
+for us to see that pleasant island wherein Kaulualua liveth; it is for
+us to see that when Marama goeth abroad to hunt or to fish his
+moon-lady sitteth alone and maketh moan, and heedeth not her fires; it
+is for us to see that when anon he cometh back she buildeth up those
+fires whereon to cook food for him, and presently the fires grow
+brighter and the whole round moon island is lighted and warmed thereby.
+In this wise an exceeding fair example is set unto all wives of their
+duty unto their mates.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the sea singeth to the sands, when the cane beckoneth to the
+stars, and when the palm-leaves whisper to sweet-breathed night, how
+pleasant it is, my brown maiden, to stand with thee and look upon that
+island in the azure sea that spreadeth like a veil above the cocoa
+trees.  For there we see the moon-lady, and she awaiteth her dear lord
+and she smileth in love; and that grace warmeth our hearts&mdash;your heart
+and mine, O little maiden! and we are glad with a joy that knoweth no
+speaking.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The Plainfield boys always had the name of being smart, and I guess
+Lute Baker was just about the smartest boy the old town ever turned
+out.  Well, he came by it naturally; Judge Baker was known all over
+western Massachusetts as the sage of Plainfield, and Lute's mother&mdash;she
+was a Kellogg before the judge married her&mdash;she had more faculty than a
+dozen of your girls nowadays, and her cooking was talked about
+everywhere&mdash;never was another woman, as folks said, could cook like
+Miss Baker.  The boys&mdash;Lute's friends&mdash;used to hang around the back
+porch of noonings just to get some of her doughnuts; she was always
+considerate and liberal to growing boys.  May be Lute would n't have
+been so popular if it had n't been for those doughnuts, and may be he
+would n't have been so smart if it had n't been for all the good things
+his mother fed into him.  Always did believe there was piety and wisdom
+in New England victuals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute went to Amherst College and did well; was valedictorian; then he
+taught school a winter, for Judge Baker said that nobody could amount
+to much in the world unless he taught school a spell.  Lute was set on
+being a lawyer, and so presently he went down to Springfield and read
+and studied in Judge Morris' office, and Judge Morris wrote a letter
+home to the Bakers once testifying to Lute's "probity" and
+"acumen"&mdash;things that are never heard tell of except high up in the
+legal profession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How Lute came to get the western fever I can't say, but get it he did,
+and one winter he up and piked off to Chicago, and there he hung out
+his shingle and joined a literary social and proceeded to get rich and
+famous.  The next spring Judge Baker fell off the woodshed while he was
+shingling it, and it jarred him so he kind of drooped and pined round a
+spell and then one day up and died.  Lute had to come back home and
+settle up the estate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he went west again he took a wife with him&mdash;Emma Cowles that was
+(everybody called her Em for short), pretty as a picture and as likely
+a girl as there was in the township.  Lute had always had a hankering
+for Em, and Em thought there never was another such a young fellow as
+Lute; she understood him perfectly, having sung in the choir with him
+two years.  The young couple went west well provided.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute and Em went to housekeeping in Chicago.  Em wanted to do her own
+work, but Lute would n't hear to it; so they hired a German girl that
+was just over from the vineyards of the Rhine country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lute," says Em, "Hulda does n't know much about cooking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I see," says Lute, feelingly.  "She's green as grass; you'll have
+to teach her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hulda could swing a hoe and wield a spade deftly, but of the cuisine
+she knew somewhat less than nothing.  Em had lots of patience and
+pluck, but she found teaching Hulda how to cook a precious hard job.
+Lute was amiable enough at first; used to laugh it off with a cordial
+bet that by and by Em would make a famous cook of the obtuse but
+willing immigrant.  This moral backing buoyed Em up considerable, until
+one evening in an unguarded moment Lute expressed a pining for some
+doughnuts "like those mother makes," and that casual remark made Em
+unhappy.  But next evening when Lute came home there were doughnuts on
+the table&mdash;beautiful, big, plethoric doughnuts that fairly reeked with
+the homely, delicious sentiment of New England.  Lute ate one.  Em felt
+hurt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess it's because I 've eaten so much else," explained Lute, "but
+somehow or other they don't taste like mother's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next day Em fed the rest of the doughnuts to a poor man who came and
+said he was starving.  "Thank you, marm," said he, with his heart full
+of gratitude and his mouth full of doughnuts; "I ha' n't had anything
+as good as this since I left Connecticut twenty years ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That little subtlety consoled Em, but still she found it hard to bear
+up under her apparent inability to do her duty by Lute's critical
+palate.  Once when Lute brought Col. Hi Thomas home to dinner they had
+chicken pie.  The colonel praised it and passed his plate a third time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but you ought to eat some of mother's chicken pie," said Lute.
+"Mother never puts an under crust in her chicken pies, and that makes
+'em juicier."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Same way when they had fried pork and potatoes; Lute could not
+understand why the flesh of the wallowing, carnivorous western hog
+should n't be as white and firm and sweet as the meat of the swill-fed
+Yankee pig.  And why were the Hubbard squashes so tasteless and why was
+maple syrup so very different?  Yes, amid all his professional duties
+Lute found time to note and remark upon this and other similar things,
+and of course Em was&mdash;by implication, at least&mdash;held responsible for
+them all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Em did try so hard, so very hard, to correct the evils and to
+answer the hypercritical demands of Lute's foolishly petted and spoiled
+appetite.  She warred valorously with butchers, grocers, and hucksters;
+she sent down east to Mother Baker for all the famous family recipes;
+she wrestled in speech and in practice with that awful Hulda; she
+experimented long and patiently; she blistered her pretty face and
+burned her little hands over that kitchen range&mdash;yes, a slow, constant
+martyrdom that conscientious wife willingly endured for years in her
+enthusiastic determination to do her duty by Lute.  Doughnuts,
+chicken-pies, boiled dinners, layer-cakes, soda biscuits, flapjacks,
+fish balls, baked beans, squash pies, corned-beef hash, dried-apple
+sauce, currant wine, succotash, brown bread&mdash;how valorously Em toiled
+over them, only to be rewarded with some cruel reminder of how "mother"
+used to do these things!  It was terrible; a tedious martyrdom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute&mdash;mind you&mdash;Lute was not wilfully cruel; no, he was simply and
+irremediably a heedless idiot of a man, just as every married man is,
+for a spell, at least.  But it broke Em's heart, all the same.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute's mother came to visit them when their first child was born, and
+she lifted a great deal of trouble off the patient wife.  Old Miss
+Baker always liked Em; had told the minister three years ago that she
+knew Em would make Lute a good Christian wife.  They named the boy
+Moses, after the old judge who was dead, and old Miss Baker said he
+should have his gran'pa's watch when he got to be twenty-one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old Miss Baker always stuck by Em; may be she remembered how the old
+judge had talked once on a time about his mother's cooking.  For all
+married men are, as I have said, idiotically cruel about that sort of
+thing.  Yes, old Miss Baker braced Em up wonderful; brought a lot of
+dried catnip out west with her for the baby; taught Em how to make
+salt-rising bread; told her all about stewing things and broiling
+things and roasting things; showed her how to tell the real Yankee
+codfish from the counterfeit&mdash;oh, she just did Em lots of good, did old
+Miss Baker!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rewards of virtue may be slow in coming, but they are sure to come.
+Em's three boys&mdash;the three bouncing boys that came to Em and
+Lute&mdash;those three boys waxed fat and grew up boisterous, blatant
+appreciators of their mother's cooking.  The way those boys did eat
+mother's doughnuts!  And mother's pies&mdash;wow!  Other boys&mdash;the
+neighbors' boys&mdash;came round regularly in troops, battalions, armies,
+and like a consuming fire licked up the wholesome viands which Em's
+skill and liberality provided for her own boys' enthusiastic playmates.
+And all those boys&mdash;there must have been millions of 'em&mdash;were living,
+breathing, vociferous testimonials to the unapproachable excellence of
+Em's cooking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute got into politics, and they elected him to the legislature.  After
+the campaign, needing rest, he took it into his head to run down east
+to see his mother; he had not been back home for eight years.  He took
+little Moses with him.  They were gone about three weeks.  Gran'ma
+Baker had made great preparations for them; had cooked up enough pies
+to last all winter, and four plump, beheaded, well-plucked,
+yellow-legged pullets hung stiff and solemn-like in the chill pantry
+off the kitchen, awaiting the last succulent scene of all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute and the little boy got there late of an evening.  The dear old
+lady was so glad to see them; the love that beamed from her kindly eyes
+well nigh melted the glass in her silver-bowed specks.  The table was
+spread in the dining-room; the sheet-iron stove sighed till it seemed
+like to crack with the heat of that hardwood fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Lute, you ain't eatin' enough to keep a fly alive," remonstrated
+old Miss Baker, when her son declined a second doughnut; "and what ails
+the child?" she continued; "ha' n't he got no appetite?  Why, when you
+wuz his age, Lute, seemed as if I could n't cook doughnuts fast enough
+for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lute explained that both he and his little boy had eaten pretty
+heartily on the train that day.  But all the time of their visit there
+poor old Gran'ma Baker wondered and worried because they did n't eat
+enough&mdash;seemed to her as if western folks had n't the right kind of
+appetite.  Even the plump pullets, served in a style that had made Miss
+Baker famed throughout those discriminating parts&mdash;even those pullets
+failed to awaken the expected and proper enthusiasm in the visitors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Home again in Chicago, Lute drew his chair up to the table with an
+eloquent sigh of relief.  As for little Moses, he clamored his delight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Chicken pie!" he cried, gleefully; and then he added a soulful "wow!"
+as his eager eyes fell upon a plateful of hot, exuberant, voluptuous
+doughnuts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, we are both glad to get back," said Lute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I am afraid," suggested Em, timidly, "that gran'ma's cooking has
+spoiled you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Little Moses (bless him) howled an indignant, a wrathful remonstrance.
+"Gran'ma can't cook worth a cent!" said he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Em expected Lute to be dreadfully shocked, but he was n't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would n't let her know it for all the world," remarked Lute,
+confidentially, "but mother has lost her grip on cooking.  At any rate,
+her cooking is n't what it used to be; it has changed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Em came bravely to the rescue.  "No, Lute," says she, and she
+meant it, "your mother's cooking has n't changed, but <I>you</I> have.  The
+man has grown away from the boy, and the tastes, the ways, and the
+delights of boyhood have no longer any fascination for the man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May be you 're right," said Lute.  "At any rate, I 'm free to say that
+<I>your</I> cooking beats the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Good for Lute!  Virtue triumphs and my true story ends.  But first an
+explanation to concinnate my narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I should never have known this true story if Lute himself had n't told
+it to me at the last dinner of the Sons of New England&mdash;told it to me
+right before Em, that dear, patient little martyred wife of his.  And I
+knew by the love light in Em's eyes that she was glad that she had
+endured that martyrdom for Lute's sake.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+One Christmas eve Joel Baker was in a most unhappy mood.  He was
+lonesome and miserable; the chimes making merry Christmas music outside
+disturbed rather than soothed him, the jingle of the sleigh-bells
+fretted him, and the shrill whistling of the wind around the corners of
+the house and up and down the chimney seemed to grate harshly on his
+ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Humph," said Joel, wearily, "Christmas is nothin' to me; there <I>was</I> a
+time when it meant a great deal, but that was long ago&mdash;fifty years is
+a long stretch to look back over.  There is nothin' in Christmas now,
+nothin' for <I>me</I> at least; it is so long since Santa Claus remembered
+me that I venture to say he has forgotten that there ever was such a
+person as Joel Baker in all the world.  It used to be different; Santa
+Claus <I>used</I> to think a great deal of me when I was a boy.  Ah!
+Christmas nowadays ain't what it was in the good old time&mdash;no, not what
+it used to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Joel was absorbed in his distressing thoughts he became aware very
+suddenly that somebody was entering or trying to enter the room.  First
+came a draft of cold air, then a scraping, grating sound, then a
+strange shuffling, and then,&mdash;yes, then, all at once, Joel saw a pair
+of fat legs and a still fatter body dangle down the chimney, followed
+presently by a long white beard, above which appeared a jolly red nose
+and two bright twinkling eyes, while over the head and forehead was
+drawn a fur cap, white with snowflakes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha, ha," chuckled the fat, jolly stranger, emerging from the chimney
+and standing well to one side of the hearthstone; "ha, ha, they don't
+have the big, wide chimneys they used to build, but they can't keep
+Santa Claus out&mdash;no, they can't keep Santa Claus out!  Ha, ha, ha.
+Though the chimney were no bigger than a gas pipe, Santa Claus would
+slide down it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It didn't require a second glance to assure Joel that the new-comer was
+indeed Santa Claus.  Joel knew the good old saint&mdash;oh, yes&mdash;and he had
+seen him once before, and, although that was when Joel was a little
+boy, he had never forgotten how Santa Claus looked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor had Santa Claus forgotten Joel, although Joel thought he had; for
+now Santa Claus looked kindly at Joel and smiled and said: "Merry
+Christmas to you, Joel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, old Santa Claus," replied Joel, "but I don't believe it's
+going to be a very merry Christmas.  It's been so long since I 've had
+a merry Christmas that I don't believe I 'd know how to act if I had
+one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's see," said Santa Claus, "it must be going on fifty years since I
+saw you last&mdash;yes, you were eight years old the last time I slipped
+down the chimney of the old homestead and filled your stocking.  Do you
+remember it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember it well," answered Joel.  "I had made up my mind to lie
+awake and see Santa Claus; I had heard tell of you, but I 'd never seen
+you, and Brother Otis and I concluded we 'd lie awake and watch for you
+to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Santa Claus shook his head reproachfully.  "That was very wrong," said
+he, "for I 'm so scarey that if I 'd known you boys were awake I 'd
+never have come down the chimney at all, and then you 'd have had no
+presents."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Otis could n't keep awake," explained Joel.  "We talked about
+everythin' we could think of, till father called out to us that if we
+did n't stop talking he 'd have to send one of us up into the attic to
+sleep with the hired man.  So in less than five minutes Otis was sound
+asleep and no pinching could wake him up.  But <I>I</I> was bound to see
+Santa Claus and I don't believe anything would 've put me to sleep.  I
+heard the big clock in the sitting-room strike eleven, and I had begun
+wonderin' if you never were going to come, when all of a sudden I heard
+the tinkle of the bells around your reindeers' necks.  Then I heard the
+reindeers prancin' on the roof and the sound of your sleigh-runners
+cuttin' through the crust and slippin' over the shingles.  I was kind
+o' scared and I covered my head up with the sheet and quilts&mdash;only I
+left a little hole so I could peek out and see what was goin' on.  As
+soon as I saw you I got over bein' scared&mdash;for you were jolly and
+smilin' like, and you chuckled as you went around to each stockin' and
+filled it up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I can remember the night," said Santa Claus.  "I brought you a
+sled, did n't I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and you brought Otis one, too," replied Joel.  "Mine was red and
+had 'Yankee Doodle' painted in black letters on the side; Otis' was
+black and had 'Snow Queen' in gilt letters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember those sleds distinctly," said Santa Claus, "for I made them
+specially for you boys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You set the sleds up against the wall," continued Joel, "and then you
+filled the stockin's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There were six of 'em, as I recollect?" said Santa Claus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me see," queried Joel.  "There was mine, and Otis', and Elvira's,
+and Thankful's, and Susan Prickett's&mdash;Susan was our help, you know.
+No, there were only five, and, as I remember, they were the biggest we
+could beg or borrer of Aunt Dorcas, who weighed nigh unto two hundred
+pounds.  Otis and I did n't like Susan Prickett, and we were hopin' you
+'d put a cold potato in her stockin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Susan was a good girl," remonstrated Santa Claus.  "You know I put
+cold potatoes only in the stockin's of boys and girls who are bad and
+don't believe in Santa Claus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At any rate," said Joel, "you filled all the stockin's with candy and
+pop-corn and nuts and raisins, and I can remember you said you were
+afraid you 'd run out of pop-corn balls before you got around.  Then
+you left each of us a book.  Elvira got the best one, which was 'The
+Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of
+hearts, and so forth.  Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left
+him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to wear to
+meetin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Santa Claus, "I never forgot father and mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it was as much as I could do to lay still," continued Joel, "for
+I 'd been longin' for a sled, an' the sight of that red sled with
+'Yankee Doodle' painted on it jest made me wild.  But, somehow or
+other, I began to get powerful sleepy all at once, and I could n't keep
+my eyes open.  The next thing I knew Otis was nudgin' me in the ribs.
+'Git up, Joel,' says he; 'it's Chris'mas an' Santa Claus has been
+here.'  'Merry Christ'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' we cried as we tumbled
+out o' bed.  Then Elvira an' Thankful came in, not more 'n half
+dressed, and Susan came in, too, an' we just made Rome howl with 'Merry
+Chris'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' to each other.  'Ef you children don't
+make less noise in there,' cried father, 'I'll hev to send you all back
+to bed.'  The idea of askin' boys an' girls to keep quiet on Chris'mas
+mornin' when they 've got new sleds an' 'Garlands of Frien'ship'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Santa Claus chuckled; his rosy cheeks fairly beamed joy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Otis an' I did n't want any breakfast," said Joel.  "We made up our
+minds that a stockin'ful of candy and pop-corn and raisins would stay
+us for a while.  I do believe there was n't buckwheat cakes enough in
+the township to keep us indoors that mornin'; buckwheat cakes don't
+size up much 'longside of a red sled with 'Yankee Doodle' painted onto
+it and a black sled named 'Snow Queen.'  <I>We</I> did n't care how cold it
+was&mdash;so much the better for slidin' down hill!  All the boys had new
+sleds&mdash;Lafe Dawson, Bill Holbrook, Gum Adams, Rube Playford, Leander
+Merrick, Ezra Purple&mdash;all on 'em had new sleds excep' Martin Peavey,
+and he said he calculated Santa Claus had skipped him this year 'cause
+his father had broke his leg haulin' logs from the Pelham woods and had
+been kep' indoors six weeks.  But Martin had his ol' sled, and he
+didn't hev to ask any odds of any of us, neither."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I brought Martin a sled the <I>next</I> Christmas," said Santa Claus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like as not&mdash;but did you ever slide down hill, Santa Claus?  I don't
+mean such hills as they hev out here in this <I>new</I> country, but one of
+them old-fashioned New England hills that was made 'specially for boys
+to slide down, full of bumpers an' thank-ye-marms, and about ten times
+longer comin' up than it is goin' down!  The wind blew in our faces and
+almos' took our breath away.  'Merry Chris'mas to ye, little boys!' it
+seemed to say, and it untied our mufflers an' whirled the snow in our
+faces, just as if it was a boy, too, an' wanted to play with us.  An
+ol' crow came flappin' over us from the corn field beyond the meadow.
+He said: 'Caw, caw,' when he saw my new sled&mdash;I s'pose he 'd never seen
+a red one before.  Otis had a hard time with <I>his</I> sled&mdash;the black
+one&mdash;an' he wondered why it would n't go as fast as mine would.  'Hev
+you scraped the paint off'n the runners?' asked Wralsey Goodnow.
+'Course I hev,' said Otis; 'broke my own knife an' Lute Ingraham's
+a-doin' it, but it don't seem to make no dif'rence&mdash;the darned ol'
+thing won't go!'  Then, what did Simon Buzzell say but that, like 's
+not, it was because Otis's sled's name was 'Snow Queen.'  'Never did
+see a girl sled that was worth a cent, anyway,' sez Simon.  Well, now,
+that jest about broke Otis up in business.  'It ain't a girl sled,' sez
+he, 'and its name ain't "Snow Queen"!  I'm a-goin' to call it "Dan'l
+Webster," or "Ol'ver Optic," or "Sheriff Robbins," or after some other
+big man!'  An' the boys plagued him so much about that pesky girl sled
+that he scratched off the name, an', as I remember, it <I>did</I> go better
+after that!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About the only thing," continued Joel, "that marred the harmony of the
+occasion, as the editor of the 'Hampshire County Phoenix' used to say,
+was the ashes that Deacon Morris Frisbie sprinkled out in front of his
+house.  He said he was n't going to have folks breakin' their necks
+jest on account of a lot of frivolous boys that was goin' to the
+gallows as fas' as they could!  Oh, how we hated him! and we 'd have
+snowballed him, too, if we had n't been afraid of the constable that
+lived next door.  But the ashes did n't bother us much, and every time
+we slid sidesaddle we 'd give the ashes a kick, and that sort of
+scattered 'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bare thought of this made Santa Claus laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goin' on about nine o'clock," said Joel, "the girls come along&mdash;Sister
+Elvira an' Thankful, Prudence Tucker, Belle Yocum, Sophrone Holbrook,
+Sis Hubbard, an' Marthy Sawyer.  Marthy's brother Increase wanted her
+to ride on <I>his</I> sled, but Marthy allowed that a red sled was her
+choice every time.  'I don't see how I 'm goin' to hold on,' said
+Marthy.  'Seems as if I would hev my hands full keepin' my things from
+blowin' away.'  'Don't worry about yourself, Marthy,' sez I, 'for if
+you'll look after your things, I kind o' calc'late I'll manage not to
+lose <I>you</I> on the way.'  Dear Marthy&mdash;seems as if I could see you now,
+with your tangled hair a-blowin' in the wind, your eyes all bright and
+sparklin', an' your cheeks as red as apples.  Seems, too, as if I could
+hear you laughin' an' callin', jist as you did as I toiled up the old
+New England hill that Chris'mas mornin'&mdash;a callin': 'Joel, Joel,
+Joel&mdash;ain't ye ever comin', Joel?'  But the hill is long and steep,
+Marthy, an' Joel ain't the boy he used to be; he 's old, an' gray, an'
+feeble, but there 's love an' faith in his heart, an' they kind o' keep
+him totterin' tow'rds the voice he hears a-callin': 'Joel, Joel, Joel!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know&mdash;I see it all," murmured Santa Claus, very softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that was so long ago," sighed Joel; "so very long ago!  And I've
+had no Chris'mas since&mdash;only once, when our little one&mdash;Marthy's an'
+mine&mdash;you remember him, Santa Claus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Santa Claus, "a toddling little boy with blue eyes&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like his mother," interrupted Joel; "an' he was like her, too&mdash;so
+gentle an' lovin', only we called him Joel, for that was my father's
+name and it kind o' run in the fam'ly.  He wa' n't more 'n three years
+old when you came with your Chris'mas presents for him, Santa Claus.
+We had told him about you, and he used to go to the chimney every night
+and make a little prayer about what he wanted you to bring him.  And
+you brought 'em, too&mdash;a stick-horse, an' a picture-book, an' some
+blocks, an' a drum&mdash;they 're on the shelf in the closet there, and his
+little Chris'mas stockin' with 'em&mdash;I 've saved 'em all, an' I 've
+taken 'em down an' held 'em in my hands, oh, so many times!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But when I came again," said Santa Claus&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His little bed was empty, an' I was alone.  It killed his
+mother&mdash;Marthy was so tender-hearted; she kind o' drooped an' pined
+after that.  So now they 've been asleep side by side in the
+buryin'-ground these thirty years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's why I 'm so sad-like whenever Chris'mas comes," said Joel,
+after a pause.  "The thinkin' of long ago makes me bitter almost.  It's
+so different now from what it used to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Joel, oh, no," said Santa Claus.  "'T is the same world, and human
+nature is the same and always will be.  But Christmas is for the little
+folks, and you, who are old and grizzled now, must know it and love it
+only through the gladness it brings the little ones."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True," groaned Joel; "but how may I know and feel this gladness when I
+have no little stocking hanging in my chimney corner&mdash;no child to
+please me with his prattle?  See, I am alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you 're not alone, Joel," said Santa Claus.  "There are children
+in this great city who would love and bless you for your goodness if
+you but touched their hearts.  Make them happy, Joel; send by me this
+night some gift to the little boy in the old house yonder&mdash;he is poor
+and sick; a simple toy will fill his Christmas with gladness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His little sister, too&mdash;take <I>her</I> some present," said Joel; "make
+them happy for me, Santa Claus&mdash;you are right&mdash;make them happy for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How sweetly Joel slept!  When he awoke, the sunlight streamed in
+through the window and seemed to bid him a merry Christmas.  How
+contented and happy Joel felt!  It must have been the talk with Santa
+Claus that did it all; he had never known a sweeter sense of peace.  A
+little girl came out of the house over the way.  She had a new doll in
+her arms, and she sang a merry little song and she laughed with joy as
+she skipped along the street.  Ay, and at the window sat the little
+sick boy, and the toy Santa Claus left him seemed to have brought him
+strength and health, for his eyes sparkled and his cheeks glowed, and
+it was plain to see his heart was full of happiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, oh! how the chimes did ring out, and how joyfully they sang their
+Christmas carol that morning!  They sang of Bethlehem and the manger
+and the Babe; they sang of love and charity, till all the Christmas air
+seemed full of angel voices.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Carol of the Christmas morn&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Carol of the Christ-child born&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Carol to the list'ning sky<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Till it echoes back again</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"Glory be to God on high,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Peace on earth, good will tow'rd men!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+So all this music&mdash;the carol of the chimes, the sound of children's
+voices, the smile of the poor little boy over the way&mdash;all this sweet
+music crept into Joel's heart that Christmas morning; yes, and with
+these sweet, holy influences came others so subtile and divine that, in
+its silent communion with them, Joel's heart cried out amen and amen to
+the glory of the Christmas time.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The clock was in ill humor; so was the vase.  It was all on account of
+the little shoe that had been placed on the mantel-piece that day, and
+had done nothing but sigh dolorously all the afternoon and evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look you here, neighbor," quoth the clock, in petulant tones, "you are
+sadly mistaken if you think you will be permitted to disturb our peace
+and harmony with your constant sighs and groans.  If you are ill, pray
+let us know; otherwise, have done with your manifestations of distress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly you do not know what befell the melancholy plaque that
+intruded his presence upon us last week," said the vase.  "We pitched
+him off the mantelpiece, and he was shattered into a thousand bits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little shoe gave a dreadful shudder.  It could not help thinking it
+had fallen among inhospitable neighbors.  It began to cry.  The brass
+candlestick took pity on the sobbing thing, and declared with some show
+of temper that the little shoe should not be imposed on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now tell us why you are so full of sadness," said the brass
+candlestick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know how to explain," whimpered the little shoe.  "You see I
+am quite a young thing, albeit I have a rusty appearance and there is a
+hole in my toes and my heel is badly run over.  I feel so lonesome and
+friendless and sort of neglected-like, that it seems as if there were
+nothing for me to do but sigh and grieve and weep all day long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sighing and weeping do no good," remarked the vase, philosophically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that very well," replied the little shoe; "but once I was so
+happy that my present lonesome lot oppresses me all the more
+grievously."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You say you once were happy&mdash;pray tell us all about it," demanded the
+brass candlestick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The vase was eager to hear the little shoe's story, and even the proud,
+haughty clock expressed a willingness to listen.  The matchbox came
+from the other end of the mantel-piece, and the pen-wiper, the
+paper-cutter, and the cigar-case gathered around the little shoe, and
+urged it to proceed with its narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first thing I can remember in my short life," said the little
+shoe, "was being taken from a large box in which there were many of my
+kind thrown together in great confusion.  I found myself tied with a
+slender cord to a little mate, a shoe so very like me that you could
+not have told us apart.  We two were taken and put in a large window in
+the midst of many grown-up shoes, and we had nothing to do but gaze out
+of the window all day long into the wide, busy street.  That was a very
+pleasant life.  Sometimes the sunbeams would dance through the
+window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate;
+they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very
+much&mdash;they were so warm and gentle and merrisome.  Sometimes the
+raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to
+us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness.
+When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at
+us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from behind a cloud to
+give us a kindly smile.  The wind used to sing us lullabies, and in one
+corner of our window there was a little open space where the mice gave
+a grand ball every night to the music of the crickets and a blind frog.
+Altogether we had a merry time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd have liked it all but the wind," said the brass candlestick.  "I
+don't know why it is, but I 'm dreadfully put out by the horrid old
+wind!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Many people," continued the little shoe, "used to stop and look in at
+the window, and I believe my little mate and I were admired more than
+any of our larger and more pretentious companions.  I can remember
+there was a pair of red-top boots that was exceedingly jealous of us.
+But that did not last long, for one day a very sweet lady came and
+peered in at the window and smiled very joyously when she saw me and my
+little mate.  Then I remember we were taken from the window, and the
+lady held us in her hands and examined us very closely, and measured
+our various dimensions with a string, and finally, I remember, she said
+she would carry us home.  We did not know what that meant, only we
+realized that we would never live in the shop window again, and we were
+loath to be separated from the sunbeams and the mice and the other
+friends that had been so kind to us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a droll little shoe!" exclaimed the vase.  Whereupon the clock
+frowned and ticked a warning to the vase not to interrupt the little
+shoe in the midst of its diverting narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not necessary for me to tell you how we were wrapped in paper
+and carried a weary distance," said the little shoe; "it is sufficient
+to my purpose to say that, after what seemed to us an interminable
+journey and a cruel banging around, we were taken from the paper and
+found ourselves in a quiet, cozy room&mdash;yes, in this very apartment
+where we all are now!  The sweet lady held us in her lap, and at the
+sweet lady's side stood a little child, gazing at us with an expression
+of commingled astonishment, admiration, and glee.  We knew the little
+child belonged to the sweet lady, and from the talk we heard we knew
+that henceforth the child was to be our little master."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if some sudden anguish came upon it, hushing its speech, the little
+shoe paused in its narrative.  The others said never a word.  Perhaps
+it was because they were beginning to understand.  The proud, haughty
+clock seemed to be less imperious for the moment, and its ticking was
+softer and more reverential.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From that time," resumed the little shoe, "our little master and we
+were inseparable during all the happy day.  We played and danced with
+him and wandered everywhere through the grass, over the carpets, down
+the yard, up the street&mdash;ay, everywhere our little master went, we went
+too, sharing his pretty antics and making music everywhere.  Then, when
+evening came and little master was put to sleep, in yonder crib, we
+were set on the warm carpet near his bed where we could watch him while
+he slept, and bid him good-morrow when the morning came.  Those were
+pleasant nights, too, for no sooner had little master fallen asleep
+than the fairies came trooping through the keyholes and fluttering down
+the chimney to dance over his eyes all night long, giving him happy
+dreams, and filling his baby ears with sweetest music."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a curious conceit!" said the pen-wiper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And is it true that fairies dance on children's eyelids at night?"
+asked the paper-cutter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," the clock chimed in, "and they sing very pretty lullabies
+and very cunning operettas, too.  I myself have seen and heard them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like to hear a fairy operetta," suggested the pen-wiper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember one the fairies sang my little master as they danced over
+his eyelids," said the little shoe, "and I will repeat it if you wish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing would please me more," said the pen-wiper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you must know," said the little shoe, "that, as soon as my master
+fell asleep, the fairies would make their appearance, led by their
+queen, a most beautiful and amiable little lady no bigger than a
+cambric needle.  Assembling on the pillow of the crib, they would order
+their minstrels and orchestra to seat themselves on little master's
+forehead.  The minstrels invariably were the cricket, the flea, the
+katydid, and the gnat, while the orchestra consisted of mosquitos,
+bumblebees, and wasps.  Once in a great while, on very important
+occasions, the fairies would bring the old blind hop-toad down the
+chimney and set him on the window-sill, where he would discourse droll
+ditties to the infinite delight of his hearers.  But on ordinary
+occasions, the fairy queen, whose name was Taffie, would lead the
+performance in these pleasing words, sung to a very dulcet air:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+AN INVITATION TO SLEEP<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Little eyelids, cease your winking;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Little orbs, forget to beam;</SPAN><BR>
+Little soul, to slumber sinking,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Let the fairies rule your dream.</SPAN><BR>
+Breezes, through the lattice sweeping,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Sing their lullabies the while&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+And a star-ray, softly creeping<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">To thy bedside, woos thy smile.</SPAN><BR>
+But no song nor ray entrancing<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Can allure thee from the spell</SPAN><BR>
+Of the tiny fairies dancing<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">O'er the eyes they love so well.</SPAN><BR>
+See, we come in countless number&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">I, their queen, and all my court&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Haste, my precious one, to slumber<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Which invites our fairy sport.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"At the conclusion of this song Prince Whimwham, a tidy little
+gentleman fairy in pink silk small-clothes, approaching Queen Taffie
+and bowing graciously, would say:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Pray, lady, may I have the pleasure<BR>
+Of leading you this stately measure?<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+To which her majesty would reply with equal graciousness in the
+affirmative.  Then Prince Whimwham and Queen Taffie would take their
+places on one of my master's eyelids, and the other gentleman fairies
+and lady fairies would follow their example, till at last my master's
+face would seem to be alive with these delightful little beings.  The
+mosquitos would blow a shrill blast on their trumpets, the orchestra
+would strike up, and then the festivities would begin in earnest.  How
+the bumblebees would drone, how the wasps would buzz, and how the
+mosquitos would blare!  It was a delightful harmony of weird sounds.
+The strange little dancers floated hither and thither over my master's
+baby face, as light as thistledowns, and as graceful as the slender
+plumes they wore in their hats and bonnets.  Presently they would weary
+of dancing, and then the minstrels would be commanded to entertain
+them.  Invariably the flea, who was a rattle-headed fellow, would
+discourse some such incoherent song as this:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+COQUETRY<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-dee&mdash;<BR>
+The spider courted the frisky flea;<BR>
+Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-doo&mdash;<BR>
+The flea ran off with the bugaboo!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">"Oh, tiddle-de-dee!"</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Said the frisky flea&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">For what cared she</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">For the miseree</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">The spider knew,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">When, tiddle-de-doo,</SPAN><BR>
+The flea ran off with the bugaboo!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Rumpty-tumpty, pimplety-pan&mdash;<BR>
+The flubdub courted a catamaran<BR>
+But timplety-topplety, timpity-tare&mdash;<BR>
+The flubdub wedded the big blue bear!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">The fun began</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">With a pimplety-pan</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">When the catamaran,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Tore up a man</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">And streaked the air</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">With his gore and hair</SPAN><BR>
+Because the flubdub wedded the bear!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"I remember with what dignity the fairy queen used to reprove the flea
+for his inane levity:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Nay, futile flea; these verses you are making<BR>
+Disturb the child&mdash;for, see, he is awaking!<BR>
+Come, little cricket, sing your quaintest numbers,<BR>
+And they, perchance, shall lull him back to slumbers.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Upon this invitation the cricket, who is justly one of the most famous
+songsters in the world, would get his pretty voice in tune and sing as
+follows:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+THE CRICKET'S SONG<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+When all around from out the ground<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The little flowers are peeping,</SPAN><BR>
+And from the hills the merry rills<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">With vernal songs are leaping,</SPAN><BR>
+I sing my song the whole day long<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">In woodland, hedge, and thicket&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+And sing it, too, the whole night through,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">For I 'm a merry cricket.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+The children hear my chirrup clear<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">As, in the woodland straying,</SPAN><BR>
+They gather flow'rs through summer hours&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And then I hear them saying:</SPAN><BR>
+"Sing, sing away the livelong day,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Glad songster of the thicket&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+With your shrill mirth you gladden earth,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">You merry little cricket!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+When summer goes, and Christmas snows<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Are from the north returning,</SPAN><BR>
+I quit my lair and hasten where<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The old yule-log is burning.</SPAN><BR>
+And where at night the ruddy light<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Of that old log is flinging</SPAN><BR>
+A genial joy o'er girl and boy,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">There I resume my singing.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+And, when they hear my chirrup clear,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The children stop their playing&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+With eager feet they haste to greet<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">My welcome music, saying:</SPAN><BR>
+"The little thing has come to sing<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Of woodland, hedge, and thicket&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Of summer day and lambs at play&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Oh, how we love the cricket!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"This merry little song always seemed to please everybody except the
+gnat.  The fairies appeared to regard the gnat as a pestiferous insect,
+but a contemptuous pity led them to call upon him for a recitation,
+which invariably was in the following strain:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+THE FATE OF THE FLIMFLAM<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+A flimflam flopped from a fillamaloo,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Where the pollywog pinkled so pale,</SPAN><BR>
+And the pipkin piped a petulant "pooh"<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">To the garrulous gawp of the gale.</SPAN><BR>
+"Oh, woe to the swap of the sweeping swipe<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That booms on the hobbling bay!"</SPAN><BR>
+Snickered the snark to the snoozing snipe<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">That lurked where the lamprey lay.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+The gluglug glinked in the glimmering gloam,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">From the sozzling and succulent sea.</SPAN><BR>
+"Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!"<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">She swore as she swayed in a swoon,</SPAN><BR>
+And a doleful dank dumped over the deep,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">To the lay of the limpid loon!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"This was simply horrid, as you all will allow.  The queen and her
+fairy followers were much relieved when the honest katydid narrated a
+pleasant moral in the form of a ballad to this effect:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+CONTENTMENT<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Once on a time an old red hen<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks,</SPAN><BR>
+For she had little babies ten,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">A part of which were tiny ducks.</SPAN><BR>
+"'T is very rare that hens," said she,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"Have baby ducks as well as chicks&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+But I possess, as you can see,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Of chickens four and ducklings six!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+A season later, this old hen<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Appeared, still cackling of her luck,</SPAN><BR>
+For, though she boasted babies ten,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Not one among them was a duck!</SPAN><BR>
+"'T is well," she murmured, brooding o'er<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The little chicks of fleecy down&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+"My babies now will stay ashore,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And, consequently, cannot drown!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+The following spring the old red hen<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Clucked just as proudly as of yore&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+But lo! her babes were ducklings ten,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Instead of chickens, as before!</SPAN><BR>
+"'T is better," said the old red hen,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">As she surveyed her waddling brood;</SPAN><BR>
+"A little water now and then<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Will surely do my darlings good!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+But oh! alas, how very sad!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">When gentle spring rolled round again</SPAN><BR>
+The eggs eventuated bad,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And childless was the old red hen!</SPAN><BR>
+Yet patiently she bore her woe,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And still she wore a cheerful air,</SPAN><BR>
+And said: "'T is best these things are so,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">For babies are a dreadful care!"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+I half suspect that many men,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And many, many women, too,</SPAN><BR>
+Could learn a lesson from the hen<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">With foliage of vermilion hue;</SPAN><BR>
+She ne'er presumed to take offence<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">At any fate that might befall,</SPAN><BR>
+But meekly bowed to Providence&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">She was contented&mdash;that was all!</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Then the fairies would resume their dancing.  Each little gentleman
+fairy would bow to his lady fairy and sing in the most musical of
+voices:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Sweet little fairy,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Tender and airy,</SPAN><BR>
+Come, let us dance on the good baby-eyes;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Merrily skipping,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Cheerily tripping,</SPAN><BR>
+Murmur we ever our soft lullabies.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"And then, as the rest danced, the fairy queen sang the following
+slumber-song, accompanied by the orchestra:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+A FAIRY LULLABY<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+There are two stars in yonder steeps<BR>
+That watch the baby while he sleeps.<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">But while the baby is awake</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">And singing gayly all day long,</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The little stars their slumbers take</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Lulled by the music of his song.</SPAN><BR>
+So sleep, dear tired baby, sleep<BR>
+While little stars their vigils keep.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Beside his loving mother-sheep<BR>
+A little lambkin is asleep;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">What does he know of midnight gloom&mdash;-</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">He sleeps, and in his quiet dreams</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">He thinks he plucks the clover bloom</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">And drinks at cooling, purling streams.</SPAN><BR>
+And those same stars the baby knows<BR>
+Sing softly to the lamb's repose.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Sleep, little lamb; sleep, little child&mdash;<BR>
+The stars are dim&mdash;the night is wild;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">But o'er the cot and o'er the lea</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">A sleepless eye forever beams&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">A shepherd watches over thee</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">In all thy little baby dreams;</SPAN><BR>
+The shepherd loves his tiny sheep&mdash;<BR>
+Sleep, precious little lambkin, sleep!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"That is very pretty, indeed!" exclaimed the brass candlestick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it is," replied the little shoe, "but you should hear it sung by
+the fairy queen!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did the operetta end with that lullaby?" inquired the cigar-case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," said the little shoe.  "No sooner had the queen finished her
+lullaby than an old gran'ma fairy, wearing a quaint mob-cap and large
+spectacles, limped forward with her crutch and droned out a curious
+ballad, which seemed to be for the special benefit of the boy and girl
+fairies, very many of whom were of the company.  This ballad was as
+follows:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+BALLAD OF THE JELLY-CAKE<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+A little boy whose name was Tim<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Once ate some jelly-cake for tea&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Which cake did not agree with him,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">As by the sequel you shall see.</SPAN><BR>
+"My darling child," his mother said,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"Pray do not eat that jelly-cake,</SPAN><BR>
+For, after you have gone to bed,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">I fear 't will make your stomach ache!"</SPAN><BR>
+But foolish little Tim demurred<BR>
+Unto his mother's warning word.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+That night, while all the household slept,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Tim felt an awful pain, and then</SPAN><BR>
+From out the dark a nightmare leapt<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And stood upon his abdomen!</SPAN><BR>
+"I cannot breathe!" the infant cried&mdash;<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"Oh, Mrs. Nightmare, pity take!"</SPAN><BR>
+"There is no mercy," she replied,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"For boys who feast on jelly-cake!"</SPAN><BR>
+And so, despite the moans of Tim,<BR>
+The cruel nightmare went for him.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+At first, she 'd tickle Timmy's toes<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Or roughly smite his baby cheek&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+And now she 'd rudely tweak his nose<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And other petty vengeance wreak;</SPAN><BR>
+And then, with hobnails in her shoes<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And her two horrid eyes aflame,</SPAN><BR>
+The mare proceeded to amuse<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Herself by prancing o'er his frame&mdash;-</SPAN><BR>
+First to his throbbing brow, and then<BR>
+Back to his little feet again.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+At last, fantastic, wild, and weird,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And clad in garments ghastly grim,</SPAN><BR>
+A scowling hoodoo band appeared<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And joined in worrying little Tim.</SPAN><BR>
+Each member of this hoodoo horde<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Surrounded Tim with fierce ado</SPAN><BR>
+And with long, cruel gimlets bored<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">His aching system through and through,</SPAN><BR>
+And while they labored all night long<BR>
+The nightmare neighed a dismal song.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Next morning, looking pale and wild,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Poor little Tim emerged from bed&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+"Good gracious! what can ail the child!"<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">His agitated mother said.</SPAN><BR>
+"We live to learn," responded he,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">"And I have lived to learn to take</SPAN><BR>
+Plain bread and butter for my tea,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And never, never, jelly-cake!</SPAN><BR>
+For when my hulk with pastry teems,<BR>
+I must <I>expect</I> unpleasant dreams!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Now you can imagine this ballad impressed the child fairies very
+deeply," continued the little shoe.  "Whenever the gran'ma fairy sang
+it, the little fairies expressed great surprise that boys and girls
+ever should think of eating things which occasioned so much trouble.
+So the night was spent in singing and dancing, and our master would
+sleep as sweetly as you please.  At last the lark&mdash;what a beautiful
+bird she is&mdash;would flutter against the window panes, and give the
+fairies warning in these words:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+MORNING SONG<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+The eastern sky is streaked with red,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The weary night is done,</SPAN><BR>
+And from his distant ocean bed<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Rolls up the morning sun.</SPAN><BR>
+The dew, like tiny silver beads<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Bespread o'er velvet green,</SPAN><BR>
+Is scattered on the wakeful meads<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">By angel hands unseen.</SPAN><BR>
+"Good-morrow, robin in the trees!"<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">The star-eyed daisy cries;</SPAN><BR>
+"Good-morrow," sings the morning breeze<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Unto the ruddy skies;</SPAN><BR>
+"Good-morrow, every living thing!"<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Kind Nature seems to say,</SPAN><BR>
+And all her works devoutly sing<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">A hymn to birth of day,</SPAN><BR>
+So, haste, without delay,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Haste, fairy friends, on silver wing,</SPAN><BR>
+And to your homes away!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"But the fairies could never leave little master so unceremoniously.
+Before betaking themselves to their pretty homes under the rocks near
+the brook, they would address a parting song to his eyes, and this song
+they called a matin invocation:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+TO A SLEEPING BABY'S EYES<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+And thou, twin orbs of love and joy!<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Unveil thy glories with the morn&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Dear eyes, another day is born&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+Awake, O little sleeping boy!<BR>
+Bright are the summer morning skies,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">But in this quiet little room</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">There broods a chill, oppressive gloom&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+All for the brightness of thine eyes.<BR>
+Without those radiant orbs of thine<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">How dark this little world would be&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">This sweet home-world that worships thee&mdash;</SPAN><BR>
+So let their wondrous glories shine<BR>
+On those who love their warmth and joy&mdash;<BR>
+Awake, O sleeping little boy.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"So that ended the fairy operetta, did it?" inquired the match-box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the little shoe, with a sigh of regret.  "The fairies were
+such bewitching creatures, and they sang so sweetly, I could have
+wished they would never stop their antics and singing.  But, alas!  I
+fear I shall never see them again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What makes you think so?" asked the brass candlestick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm sure I can't tell," replied the little shoe; "only everything is
+so strange-like and so changed from what it used to be that I hardly
+know whether indeed I am still the same little shoe I used to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what can you mean?" queried the old clock, with a puzzled look on
+her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will try to tell you," said the little shoe.  "You see, my mate and
+our master and I were great friends; as I have said, we roamed and
+frolicked around together all day, and at night my little mate and I
+watched at master's bedside while he slept.  One day we three took a
+long ramble, away up the street and beyond where the houses were built,
+until we came into a beautiful green field, where the grass was very
+tall and green, and where there were pretty flowers of every kind.  Our
+little master talked to the flowers and they answered him, and we all
+had a merry time in the meadow that afternoon, I can tell you.  'Don't
+go away, little child,' cried the daisies, 'but stay and be our
+playfellow always.'  A butterfly came and perched on our master's hand,
+and looked up and smiled, and said: 'I 'm not afraid of <I>you</I>; you
+would n't hurt me, would you?'  A little mouse told us there was a
+thrush's nest in the bush yonder, and we hurried to see it.  The lady
+thrush was singing her four babies to sleep.  They were strange-looking
+babies, with their gaping mouths, bulbing eyes, and scant feathers!
+'Do not wake them up,' protested the lady thrush.  'Go a little further
+on and you will come to the brook.  I will join you presently.'  So we
+went to the brook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but I would have been afraid," suggested the pen-wiper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Afraid of the brook!" cried the little shoe.  "Oh, no; what could be
+prettier than the brook!  We heard it singing in the distance.  We
+called to it and it bade us welcome.  How it smiled in the sunshine!
+How restless and furtive and nimble it was, yet full of merry prattling
+and noisy song.  Our master was overjoyed.  He had never seen the brook
+before; nor had we, for that matter.  'Let me cool your little feet,'
+said the brook, and, without replying, our master waded knee-deep into
+the brook.  In an instant we were wet through&mdash;my mate and I; but how
+deliciously cool it was here in the brook, and how smooth and bright
+the pebbles were!  One of the pebbles told me it had come many, many
+miles that day from its home in the hills where the brook was born."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pooh, I don't believe it," sneered the vase.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Presently our master toddled back from out the brook," continued the
+little shoe, heedless of the vase's interruption, "and sat among the
+cowslips and buttercups on the bank.  The brook sang on as merrily as
+before.  'Would you like to go sailing?' asked our master of my mate.
+'Indeed I would,' replied my mate, and so our master pulled my mate
+from his little foot and set it afloat upon the dancing waves of the
+brook.  My mate was not the least alarmed.  It spun around gayly
+several times at first and then glided rapidly away.  The butterfly
+hastened and alighted upon the merry little craft.  'Where are you
+going?' I cried.  'I am going down to the sea,' replied my little mate,
+with laughter.  'And I am going to marry the rose in the far-away
+south,' cried the butterfly.  'But will you not come back?' I cried.
+They answered me, but they were so far away I could not hear them.  It
+was very distressing, and I grieved exceedingly.  Then, all at once, I
+discovered my little master was asleep, fast asleep among the cowslips
+and buttercups.  I did not try to wake him&mdash;only I felt very miserable,
+for I was so cold and wet.  Presently the lady thrush came, as she had
+said she would.  The child is asleep&mdash;he will be ill&mdash;I must hasten to
+tell his mother,' she cried, and away she flew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And was he sick?" asked the vase.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know," said the little shoe.  "I can remember it was late
+that evening when the sweet lady and others came and took us up and
+carried us back home, to this very room.  Then I was pulled off very
+unceremoniously and thrown under my little master's bed, and I never
+saw my little master after that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How very strange!" exclaimed the match-safe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very, very strange," repeated the shoe.  "For many days and nights I
+lay under the crib all alone.  I could hear my little master sighing
+and talking as if in a dream.  Sometimes he spoke of me, and of the
+brook, and of my little mate dancing to the sea, and one night he
+breathed very loud and quick and he cried out and seemed to struggle,
+and then, all at once, he stopped, and I could hear the sweet lady
+weeping.  But I remember all this very faintly.  I was hoping the
+fairies would come back, but they never came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember," resumed the little shoe, after a solemn pause, "I
+remember how, after a long, long time, the sweet lady came and drew me
+from under the crib and held me in her lap and kissed me and wept over
+me.  Then she put me in a dark, lonesome drawer, where there were
+dresses and stockings and the little hat my master used to wear.  There
+I lived, oh! such a weary time, and we talked&mdash;the dresses, the
+stockings, the hat, and I did&mdash;about our little master, and we wondered
+that he never came.  And every little while the sweet lady would take
+us from the drawer and caress us, and we saw that she was pale and that
+her eyes were red with weeping."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But has your little master never come back!" asked the old clock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet," said the little shoe, "and that is why I am so very
+lonesome.  Sometimes I think he has gone down to the sea in search of
+my little mate and that the two will come back together.  But I do not
+understand it.  The sweet lady took me from the drawer to-day and
+kissed me and set me here on the mantelpiece."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't mean to say she kissed you?" cried the haughty vase, "you
+horrid little stumped-out shoe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed she did," insisted the lonesome little shoe, "and I know she
+loves me.  But why she loves me and kisses me and weeps over me I do
+not know.  It is all very strange.  I do not understand it at all."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Holy Cross and Other Tales, by Eugene
+Field, Illustrated by S. W. Van Schaik
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Holy Cross and Other Tales
+
+
+Author: Eugene Field
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 11, 2007  [eBook #21807]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 21807-h.htm or 21807-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/0/21807/21807-h/21807-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/0/21807/21807-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The Works of Eugene Field
+
+Vol. V
+
+The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field
+
+THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "Presently the whole company was moved by a gentle
+pity."  Drawn by S. W. Van Schaik.]
+
+
+
+
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+New York
+1911
+
+Copyright, 1893, by
+Eugene Field.
+
+Copyright, 1896, by
+Julia Sutherland Field.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATED WITH LOVE
+
+AND GRATITUDE TO
+
+ROSWELL MARTIN FIELD
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+To this volume as it was originally issued have been added five Tales,
+beginning with "The Platonic Bassoon," which are characteristic of the
+various moods, serious, gay, or pathetic, out of which grew the best
+work of the author's later years.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+ALAS, POOR YORICK!
+
+In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene
+Field--the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight
+with him"--one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a
+jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick.  He was
+not only,--so the writer implied,--the maker of jibes and fantastic
+devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical
+conceits; he was the laureate of children--dear for his "Wynken,
+Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover,
+withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight
+a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who collected rare
+books, and brought out his own "Little Books" of "Western Verse" and
+"Profitable Tales" in high-priced limited editions, with broad margins
+of paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which tempts
+bibliomaniacs to break through and steal.
+
+For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very forecast, in
+imaginative literature, of our various Eugene.  Surely Shakespeare
+conceived the "mad rogue" of Elsinore as made up of grave and gay, of
+wit and gentleness, and not as a mere clown or "jig maker."  It is true
+that when Field put on his cap and bells, he too was "wont to set the
+table on a roar," as the feasters at a hundred tables, from "Casey's
+Table d'Hote" to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise to testify.
+But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick, that mirth was not
+his sole attribute,--that his motley covered the sweetest nature and
+the tenderest heart.  It could be no otherwise with one who loved and
+comprehended childhood and whom the children loved.  And what does
+Hamlet say?--"He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times . . .
+Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft!"  Of what
+is he thinking but of his boyhood, before doubts and contemplation
+wrapped him in the shadow, and when in his young grief or frolic the
+gentle Yorick, with his jest, his "excellent fancy," and his songs and
+gambols, was his comrade?
+
+Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene Field seems to
+be most like the survival, or revival, of the ideal jester of knightly
+times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior bearer
+of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of France, or of English King
+Hal, had come to life again--as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at
+the Court of Arthur; but not out of place,--for he fitted himself as
+aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood
+near Athens.  In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see,
+was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those
+he made his butt--the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the
+swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty
+itself.  And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw
+him.  Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touchstone than Le
+Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one of his brutal mockers?  Was not
+the redoubtable Chicot, with his sword and brains, the true ruler of
+France?  To come to the jesters of history--which is so much less real
+than fiction--what laurels are greener than those of Triboulet, and
+Will Somers, and John Heywood--dramatist and master of the king's merry
+Interludes?  Their shafts were feathered with mirth and song, but
+pointed with wisdom, and well might old John Trussell say "That it
+often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is
+tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be
+delivered in jest."
+
+Yes, Field "caught on" to his time--a complex American, with the
+obstreperous _bizarrerie_ of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of
+our oldest culture always at odds within him--but he was, above all, a
+child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in
+any time or country.  Fortune had given him that unforgettable mummer's
+face,--that clean-cut, mobile visage,--that animated natural mask!  No
+one else had so deep and rich a voice for the rendering of the music
+and pathos of a poet's lines, and no actor ever managed both face and
+voice better than he in delivering his own verses merry or sad.  One
+night, he was seen among the audience at "Uncut Leaves," and was
+instantly requested to do something towards the evening's
+entertainment.  As he was not in evening dress, he refused to take the
+platform, but stood up in the lank length of an ulster, from his corner
+seat, and recited "Dibdin's Ghost" and "Two Opinions" in a manner which
+blighted the chances of the readers that came after him.  It is true
+that no clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness of his practical
+jokes.  Above all, every friend that he had--except the Dean of his
+profession, for whom he did exhibit unbounded and filial reverence--was
+soon or late a victim of his whimsicality, or else justly distrusted
+the measure of Field's regard for him.  Nor was the friendship
+perfected until one bestirred himself to pay Eugene back in kind.  As
+to this, I am only one of scores now speaking from personal experience.
+There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim of his fun,
+even when it outraged common sensibilities, _must_ enjoy it as much as
+he.  Who but Eugene, after being the welcome guest, at a European
+capital, of one of our most ambitious and refined ambassadors, would
+have written a lyric, sounding the praises of a German "onion pie,"
+ending each stanza with
+
+  Ach, Liebe!  Ach, mein Gott!
+
+and would have printed it in America, with his host's initials affixed?
+
+My own matriculation at Eugene's College of Unreason was in this wise.
+In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, the Boston publisher, was complaining that he
+needed some new and promising authors to enlarge his book-list.  The
+New York "Sun" and "Tribune" had been copying Field's rhymes and prose
+extravaganzas--the former often very charming, the latter the broadest
+satire of Chicago life and people.  I suggested to Mr. Ticknor that he
+should ask the poet-humorist to collect, for publication in book-form,
+the choicest of his writings thus far.  To make the story brief, Mr.
+Field did so, and the outcome--at which I was somewhat taken aback--was
+the remarkable book, "Culture's Garland," with its title imitated from
+the sentimental "Annuals" of long ago, and its cover ornamented with
+sausages linked together as a coronal wreath!  The symbol certainly
+fitted the greater part of the contents, which ludicrously scored the
+Chicago "culture" of that time, and made Pullman, Armour, and other
+commercial magnates of the Lakeside City special types in illustration.
+All this had its use, and many of the sufferers long since became the
+_farceur's_ devoted friends.  The Fair showed the country what Chicago
+really was and is.  Certainly there is no other American city where the
+richest class appear so enthusiastic with respect to art and
+literature.  "The practice of virtue makes men virtuous," and even if
+there was some pretence and affectation in the culture of ten years
+ago, it has resulted in as high standards of taste as can elsewhere be
+found.  Moreover, if our own "four hundred" had even affected, or made
+it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes for real culture,
+the intellectual life of this metropolis would not now be so far apart
+from the "social swim."  There were scattered through "Culture's
+Garland" not a few of Field's delicate bits of verse.  In some way he
+found that I had instigated Mr. Ticknor's request, and, although I was
+thinking solely of the publisher's interests, he expressed unstinted
+gratitude.  Soon afterwards I was delighted to receive from him a
+quarto parchment "breviary," containing a dozen ballads, long and
+short, engrossed in his exquisitely fine handwriting, and illuminated
+with colored borders and drawings by the poet himself.  It must have
+required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly I would not
+now exchange it for its weight in diamonds.  This was the way our
+friendship began.  It was soon strengthened by meetings and
+correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
+
+Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture, at the
+invitation of its famous social and literary "Twentieth Century Club."
+This was Eugene's opportunity, and I ought not to have been as
+dumfounded as I was, one day, when our evening papers copied from the
+"Chicago Record" a "very pleasant joke" at the expense of his town and
+myself!  It was headed: "Chicago Excited!  Tremendous Preparations for
+His Reception," and went on to give the order and route of a procession
+that was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort me to my
+quarters--stopping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries on
+the way.  It included the "Twentieth Century Club" in carriages, the
+"Browning Club" in busses, and the "Homer Club" in drays; ten
+millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn
+by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred Chicago poets
+afoot!  I have no doubt that Eugene thought I would enjoy this kind of
+advertisement as heartily as he did.  If so, he lacked the gift of
+putting himself in the other man's place.  But his sardonic face,
+a-grin like a school-boy's, was one with two others which shone upon me
+when I did reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to
+prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to which he bore me
+off in triumph.  I did promise to square accounts with him, in time,
+and this is how I fulfilled my word.  The next year, at a meeting of a
+suburban "Society of Authors," a certain lady-journalist was chaffed as
+to her acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of addressing him as
+"Gene."  At this she took umbrage, saying: "It's true we worked
+together on the same paper for five years, but he was always a perfect
+gentleman.  I _never_ called him 'Gene.'"  This was reported by the
+press, and gave me the refrain for a skit entitled "Katharine and
+Eugenio:"
+
+  Five years she sate a-near him
+    Within that type-strewn loft;
+  She handed him the paste-pot,
+    He passed the scissors oft;
+  They dipped in the same inkstand
+    That crowned their desk between,
+  Yet--he never called her Katie,
+    She never called him "Gene."
+
+  Though close--ah! close--the droplight
+    That classic head revealed,
+  She was to him Miss Katharine,
+    He--naught but Mister Field;
+  Decorum graced his upright brow
+    And thinned his lips serene,
+  And, though he wrote a poem each hour,
+    Why should she call him "Gene?"
+
+  She gazed at his sporadic hair--
+    She knew his hymns by rote;
+  They longed to dine together
+    At Casey's table d'hote;
+  Alas, that Fortune's "hostages"--
+    But let us draw a screen!
+  He dared not call her Katie;
+    How _could_ she call him "Gene?"
+
+I signed my verses "By one of Gene's Victims"; they appeared in _The
+Tribune_, and soon were copied by papers in every part of the country.
+Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by the funny men of
+the southern and western press, and it was months before 'Gene' saw the
+last of them.  The word "Eugenio," which was the name by which I always
+addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no doubt as to the
+initiator of the series, and so our "Merry War" ended, I think, with a
+fair quittance to either side.
+
+Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's premature death, it is a
+solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last interchange of
+written words.  Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, but
+recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me a sweetly serious
+letter--with here and there a sparkle in it--but in a tone sobered by
+illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship with his
+friends.  At the same time he sent me the first editions, long ago
+picked up, of all my earlier books, and begged me to write on their
+fly-leaves.  This I did; with pains to gratify him as much as possible,
+and in one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain:
+
+  TO EUGENE FIELD
+
+  Death thought to claim you in this year of years,
+    But Fancy cried--and raised her shield between--
+  "Still let men weep, and smile amid their tears;
+    Take any two beside, but spare Eugene!"
+
+In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such there was, might
+well be pardoned, and it touched Eugene so manifestly that--now that
+the eddy indeed has swept him away, and the Sabine Farm mourns for its
+new-world Horace--I cannot be too thankful that such was my last
+message to him.
+
+Eugene Field was so mixed a compound that it will always be impossible
+quite to decide whether he was wont to judge critically of either his
+own conduct or his literary creations.  As to the latter, he put the
+worst and the best side by side, and apparently cared alike for both.
+That he did much beneath his standard, fine and true at times,--is
+unquestionable, and many a set of verses went the rounds that harmed
+his reputation.  On the whole, I think this was due to the fact that he
+got his stated income as a newspaper poet and jester, and had to
+furnish his score of "Sharps and Flats" with more or less regularity.
+For all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact of the rarer
+elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him a unique place among
+America's most original characters, scholarly wits, and poets of
+brightest fancy.  Yorick is no more!  But his genius will need no
+chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance.  When all is
+sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than to decline.
+
+EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
+
+
+[Originally contributed to the "Souvenir Book" of the N.Y. Hebrew Fair,
+December, 1895.]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THE HOLY CROSS
+
+THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH
+
+THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE
+
+FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND
+
+THE TOUCH IN THE HEART
+
+DANIEL AND THE DEVIL
+
+METHUSELAH
+
+FELICE AND PETIT-POULAIN
+
+THE RIVER
+
+FRANZ ABT
+
+MISTRESS MERCILESS
+
+THE PLATONIC BASSOON
+
+HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES
+
+LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM
+
+JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS
+
+THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLY CROSS
+
+
+Whilst the noble Don Esclevador and his little band of venturesome
+followers explored the neighboring fastnesses in quest for gold, the
+Father Miguel tarried at the shrine which in sweet piety they had hewn
+out of the stubborn rock in that strangely desolate spot.  Here, upon
+that serene August morning, the holy Father held communion with the
+saints, beseeching them, in all humility, to intercede with our beloved
+Mother for the safe guidance of the fugitive Cortes to his native
+shores, and for the divine protection of the little host, which,
+separated from the Spanish army, had wandered leagues to the northward,
+and had sought refuge in the noble mountains of an unknown land.  The
+Father's devotions were, upon a sudden, interrupted by the approach of
+an aged man who toiled along the mountain-side path,--a man so aged and
+so bowed and so feeble that he seemed to have been brought down into
+that place, by means of some necromantic art, out of distant centuries.
+His face was yellow and wrinkled like ancient parchment, and a beard
+whiter than Samite streamed upon his breast, whilst about his withered
+body and shrunken legs hung faded raiment which the elements had
+corroded and the thorns had grievously rent.  And as he toiled along,
+the aged man continually groaned, and continually wrung his palsied
+hands, as if a sorrow, no lighter than his years, afflicted him.
+
+"In whose name comest thou?" demanded the Father Miguel, advancing a
+space toward the stranger, but not in threatening wise; whereat the
+aged man stopped in his course and lifted his eyebrows, and regarded
+the Father a goodly time, but he spake no word.
+
+"In whose name comest thou?" repeated the priestly man.  "Upon these
+mountains have we lifted up the cross of our blessed Lord in the name
+of our sovereign liege, and here have we set down a tabernacle to the
+glory of the Virgin and of her ever-blessed son, our Redeemer and
+thine,--whoso thou mayest be!"
+
+"Who is thy king I know not," quoth the aged man, feebly; "but the
+shrine in yonder wall of rock I know; and by that symbol which I see
+therein, and by thy faith for which it stands, I conjure thee, as thou
+lovest both, give me somewhat to eat and to drink, that betimes I may
+go upon my way again, for the journey before me is a long one."
+
+These words spake the old man in tones of such exceeding sadness that
+the Father Miguel, touched by compassion, hastened to meet the
+wayfarer, and, with his arms about him, and with whisperings of sweet
+comfort, to conduct him to a resting-place.  Coarse food in goodly
+plenty was at hand; and it happily fortuned, too, that there was a
+homely wine, made by Pietro del y Saguache himself, of the wild grapes
+in which a neighboring valley abounded.  Of these things anon the old
+man partook, greedily but silently, and all that while he rolled his
+eyes upon the shrine; and then at last, struggling to his feet, he made
+as if to go upon his way.
+
+"Nay," interposed the Father Miguel, kindly; "abide with us a season.
+Thou art an old man and sorely spent.  Such as we have thou shalt have,
+and if thy soul be distressed, we shall pour upon it the healing balm
+of our blessed faith."
+
+"Little knowest thou whereof thou speakest," quoth the old man, sadly.
+"There is no balm can avail me.  I prithee let me go hence, ere,
+knowing what manner of man I am, thou hatest me and doest evil unto
+me."  But as he said these words he fell back again even then into the
+seat where he had sat, and, as through fatigue, his hoary head dropped
+upon his bosom.
+
+"Thou art ill!" cried the Father Miguel, hastening to his side.  "Thou
+shalt go no farther this day!  Give me thy staff,"--and he plucked it
+from him.
+
+Then said the old man: "As I am now, so have I been these many hundred
+years.  Thou hast heard tell of me,--canst thou not guess my name;
+canst thou not read my sorrow in my face and in my bosom?  As thou art
+good and holy through thy faith in that symbol in yonder shrine,
+hearken to me, for I will tell thee of the wretch whom thou hast
+succored.  Then, if it be thy will, give me thy curse and send me on my
+way."
+
+Much marvelled the Father Miguel at these words, and he deemed the old
+man to be mad; but he made no answer.  And presently the old man,
+bowing his head upon his hands, had to say in this wise:--
+
+"Upon a time," he quoth, "I abided in the city of the Great
+King,--there was I born and there I abided.  I was of good stature, and
+I asked favor of none.  I was an artisan, and many came to my shop, and
+my cunning was sought of many,--for I was exceeding crafty in my trade;
+and so, therefore, speedily my pride begot an insolence that had
+respect to none at all.  And once I heard a tumult in the street, as of
+the cries of men and boys commingled, and the clashing of arms and
+staves.  Seeking to know the cause thereof, I saw that one was being
+driven to execution,--one that had said he was the Son of God and the
+King of the Jews, for which blasphemy and crime against our people he
+was to die upon the cross.  Overcome by the weight of this cross, which
+he bore upon his shoulders, the victim tottered in the street and
+swayed this way and that, as though each moment he were like to fall,
+and he groaned in sore agony.  Meanwhile about him pressed a multitude
+that with vast clamor railed at him and scoffed him and smote him, to
+whom he paid no heed; but in his agony his eyes were alway uplifted to
+heaven, and his lips moved in prayer for them that so shamefully
+entreated him.  And as he went his way to Calvary, it fortuned that he
+fell and lay beneath the cross right at my very door, whereupon,
+turning his eyes upon me as I stood over against him, he begged me that
+for a little moment I should bear up the weight of the cross whilst
+that he wiped the sweat from off his brow.  But I was filled with
+hatred, and I spurned him with my foot, and I said to him: 'Move on,
+thou wretched criminal, move on.  Pollute not my doorway with thy
+touch,--move on to death, I command thee!'  This was the answer I gave
+to him, but no succor at all.  Then he spake to me once again, and he
+said: 'Thou, too, shalt move on, O Jew!  Thou shalt move on forever,
+but not to death!'  And with these words he bore up the cross again and
+went upon his way to Calvary.
+
+"Then of a sudden," quoth the old man, "a horror filled my breast, and
+a resistless terror possessed me.  So was I accursed forevermore.  A
+voice kept saying always to me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on forever!'
+From home, from kin, from country, from all I knew and loved I fled;
+nowhere could I tarry,--the nameless horror burned in my bosom, and I
+heard continually a voice crying unto me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forever!'  So, with the years, the centuries, the ages, I have fled
+before that cry and in that nameless horror; empires have risen and
+crumbled, races have been born and are extinct, mountains have been
+cast up and time hath levelled them,--still I do live and still I
+wander hither and thither upon the face of the earth, and am an
+accursed thing.  The gift of tongues is mine,--all men I know, yet
+mankind knows me not.  Death meets me face to face, and passes me by;
+the sea devours all other prey, but will not hide me in its depths;
+wild beasts flee from me, and pestilences turn their consuming breaths
+elsewhere.  On and on and on I go,--not to a home, nor to my people,
+nor to my grave, but evermore into the tortures of an eternity of
+sorrow.  And evermore I feel the nameless horror burn within, whilst
+evermore I see the pleading eyes of him that bore the cross, and
+evermore I hear his voice crying: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
+forevermore!'"
+
+"Thou art the Wandering Jew!" cried the Father Miguel.
+
+"I am he," saith the aged man.  "I marvel not that thou dost revolt
+against me, for thou standest in the shadow of that same cross which I
+have spurned, and thou art illumined with the love of him that went his
+way to Calvary.  But I beseech thee bear with me until I have told thee
+all,--then drive me hence if thou art so minded."
+
+"Speak on," quoth the Father Miguel.
+
+Then said the Jew: "How came I here I scarcely know; the seasons are
+one to me, and one day but as another; for the span of my life, O
+priestly man! is eternity.  This much know you: from a far country I
+embarked upon a ship,--I knew not whence 't was bound, nor cared I.  I
+obeyed the voice that bade me go.  Anon a mighty tempest fell upon the
+ship and overwhelmed it.  The cruel sea brought peace to all but me; a
+many days it tossed and buffeted me, then with a cry of exultation cast
+me at last upon a shore I had not seen before, a coast far, far
+westward whereon abides no human thing.  But in that solitude still
+heard I from within the awful mandate that sent me journeying onward,
+'Move on, O Jew! move on;' and into vast forests I plunged, and mighty
+plains I traversed; onward, onward, onward I went, with the nameless
+horror in my bosom, and--that cry, that awful cry!  The rains beat upon
+me; the sun wrought pitilessly with me; the thickets tore my flesh; and
+the inhospitable shores bruised my weary feet,--yet onward I went,
+plucking what food I might from thorny bushes to stay my hunger, and
+allaying my feverish thirst at pools where reptiles crawled.  Sometimes
+a monster beast stood in my pathway and threatened to devour me; then
+would I spread my two arms thus, and welcome death, crying: 'Rend thou
+this Jew in twain, O beast! strike thy kindly fangs deep into this
+heart,--be not afeard, for I shall make no battle with thee, nor any
+outcry whatsoever!'  But, lo, the beast would cower before me and skulk
+away.  So there is no death for me; the judgment spoken is irrevocable;
+my sin is unpardonable, and the voice will not be hushed!"
+
+Thus and so much spake the Jew, bowing his hoary head upon his hands.
+Then was the Father Miguel vastly troubled; yet he recoiled not from
+the Jew,--nay, he took the old man by the hand and sought to soothe him.
+
+"Thy sin was most heinous, O Jew!" quoth the Father; "but it falleth in
+our blessed faith to know that whoso repenteth of his sin, what it
+soever may be, the same shall surely be forgiven.  Thy punishment hath
+already been severe, and God is merciful, for even as we are all his
+children, even so his tenderness to us is like unto the tenderness of a
+father unto his child--yea, and infinitely tenderer and sweeter, for
+who can estimate the love of our heavenly Father?  Thou didst deny thy
+succor to the Nazarene when he besought it, yet so great compassion
+hath he that if thou but callest upon him he will forget thy
+wrong,--leastwise will pardon it.  Therefore be thou persuaded by me,
+and tarry here this night, that in the presence of yonder symbol and
+the holy relics our prayers may go up with thine unto our blessed
+Mother and to the saints who haply shall intercede for thee in
+Paradise.  Rest here, O sufferer,--rest thou here, and we shall
+presently give thee great comfort."  The Jew, well-nigh fainting with
+fatigue, being persuaded by the holy Father's gentle words, gave
+finally his consent unto this thing, and went anon unto the cave beyond
+the shrine, and entered thereinto, and lay upon a bed of skins and
+furs, and made as if to sleep.  And when he slept his sleep was
+seemingly disturbed by visions, and he tossed as doth an one that sees
+full evil things, and in that sleep he muttered somewhat of a voice he
+seemed to hear, though round about there was no sound whatsoever, save
+only the soft music of the pine-trees on the mountain-side.  Meanwhile
+in the shrine, hewn out of those rocks, did the Father Miguel bow
+before the sacred symbol of his faith and plead for mercy for that same
+Jew that slumbered anear.  And when, as the deepening blue mantle of
+night fell upon the hilltops and obscured the valleys round about, Don
+Esclevador and his sturdy men came clamoring along the mountain-side,
+the holy Father met them a way off and bade them have regard to the
+aged man that slept in yonder cave.  But when he told them of that Jew
+and of his misery and of the secret causes thereof, out spake the noble
+Don Esclevador, full hotly,--
+
+"By our sweet Christ," he cried, "shall we not offend our blessed faith
+and do most impiously in the Virgin's sight if we give this harbor and
+this succor unto so vile a sinner as this Jew that hath denied our dear
+Lord!"
+
+Which words had like to wrought great evil with the Jew, for instantly
+the other men sprang forward as if to awaken the Jew and drive him
+forth into the night.  But the Father Miguel stretched forth his hands
+and commanded them to do no evil unto the Jew, and so persuasively did
+he set forth the godliness and the sweetness of compassion that
+presently the whole company was moved with a gentle pity toward that
+Jew.  Therefore it befell anon, when night came down from the skies and
+after they had feasted upon their homely food as was their wont, that
+they talked of the Jew, and thinking of their own hardships and
+misfortunes (whereof it is not now to speak), they had all the more
+compassion to that Jew, which spake them passing fair, I ween.
+
+Now all this while lay the Jew upon the bed of skins and furs within
+the cave, and though he slept (for he was exceeding weary), he tossed
+continually from side to side, and spoke things in his sleep, as if his
+heart were sorely troubled, and as if in his dreams he beheld grievous
+things.  And seeing the old man, and hearing his broken speech, the
+others moved softly hither and thither and made no noise soever lest
+they should awaken him.  And many an one--yes, all that valiant company
+bowed down that night before the symbol in the shrine, and with sweet
+reverence called upon our blessed Virgin to plead in the cause of that
+wretched Jew.  Then sleep came to all, and in dreams the noble Don
+Esclevador saw his sovereign liege, and kneeled before his throne, and
+heard his sovereign liege's gracious voice; in dreams the heartweary
+soldier sailed the blue waters of the Spanish main, and pressed his
+native shore, and beheld once again the lovelight in the dark eyes of
+her that awaited him; in dreams the mountain-pines were kissed of the
+singing winds, and murmured drowsily and tossed their arms as do little
+children that dream of their play; in dreams the Jew swayed hither and
+thither, scourged by that nameless horror in his bosom, and seeing the
+pleading eyes of our dying Master, and hearing that awful mandate:
+"Move on, O Jew! move on forever!"  So each slept and dreamed his
+dreams,--all slept but the Father Miguel, who alone throughout the
+night kneeled in the shrine and called unto the saints and unto our
+Mother Mary in prayer.  And his supplication was for that Jew; and the
+mists fell upon that place and compassed it about, and it was as if the
+heavens had reached down their lips to kiss the holy shrine.  And
+suddenly there came unto the Jew a quiet as of death, so that he tossed
+no more in his sleep and spake no word, but lay exceeding still,
+smiling in his sleep as one who sees his home in dreams, or his mother,
+or some other such beloved thing.
+
+It came to pass that early in the morning the Jew came from the cavern
+to go upon his way, and the Father Miguel besought him to take with him
+a goodly loaf in his wallet as wise provision against hunger.  But the
+Jew denied this, and then he said: "Last night while I slept methought
+I stood once more in the city of the Great King,--ay, in that very
+doorway where I stood, swart and lusty, when I spurned him that went
+his way to Calvary.  In my bosom burned the terror as of old, and my
+soul was consumed of a mighty anguish.  None of those that passed in
+that street knew me; centuries had ground to dust all my kin.  'O God!'
+I cried in agony, 'suffer my sin to be forgotten,--suffer me to sleep,
+to sleep forever beneath the burden of the cross I sometime spurned!'
+As I spake these words there stood before me one in shining raiment,
+and lo! 't was he who bore the cross to Calvary!  His eyes that had
+pleaded to me on a time now fell compassionately upon me, and the voice
+that had commanded me move on forever, now broke full sweetly on my
+ears: 'Thou shalt go on no more, O Jew, but as thou hast asked, so
+shall it be, and thou shalt sleep forever beneath the cross.'  Then
+fell I into a deep slumber, and, therefrom but just now awaking, I feel
+within me what peace bespeaketh pardon for my sin.  This day am I
+ransomed; so suffer me to go my way, O holy man."
+
+So went the Jew upon his way, not groaningly and in toilsome wise, as
+was his wont, but eagerly, as goeth one to meet his bride, or unto some
+sweet reward.  And the Father Miguel stood long, looking after him and
+being sorely troubled in mind; for he knew not what interpretation he
+should make of all these things.  And anon the Jew was lost to sight in
+the forest.
+
+But once, a little space thereafter, while that Jose Conejos, the
+Castilian, clambered up the yonder mountain-side, he saw amid the
+grasses there the dead and withered body of an aged man, and thereupon
+forthwith made he such clamor that Don Esclevador hastened thither and
+saw it was the Jew; and since there was no sign that wild beasts had
+wrought evil with him, it was declared that the Jew had died of age and
+fatigue and sorrow, albeit on the wrinkled face there was a smile of
+peace that none had seen thereon while yet the Jew lived.  And it was
+accounted to be a most wondrous thing that, whereas never before had
+flowers of that kind been seen in those mountains, there now bloomed
+all round about flowers of the dye of blood, which thing the noble Don
+Esclevador took full wisely to be a symbol of our dear Lord's most
+precious blood, whereby not only you and I but even the Jew shall be
+redeemed to Paradise.
+
+Within the spot where they had found the Jew they buried him, and there
+he sleeps unto this very day.  Above the grave the Father Miguel said a
+prayer; and the ground of that mountain they adjudged to be holy
+ground; but over the grave wherein lay the Jew they set up neither
+cross nor symbol of any kind, fearing to offend their holy faith.
+
+But that very night, when that they were returned unto their camp half
+a league distant, there arose a mighty tempest, and there was such an
+upheaval and rending of the earth as only God's hand could make; and
+there was a crashing and a groaning as if the world were smitten in
+twain, and the winds fled through the valleys in dismay, and the trees
+of the forest shrieked in terror and fell upon their faces.  Then in
+the morning when the tempest ceased and all the sky was calm and
+radiant they saw that an impassable chasm lay between them and that
+mountain-side wherein the Jew slept the sleep of death; that God had
+traced with his finger a mighty gulf about that holy ground which held
+the bones of the transgressor.  Between heaven and earth hung that
+lonely grave, nor could any foot scale the precipice that guarded it;
+but one might see that the spot was beautiful with kindly mountain
+verdure and that flowers of blood-red dye bloomed in that lonely place.
+
+This was the happening in a summer-time a many years ago; to the mellow
+grace of that summer succeeded the purple glory of the autumn, and then
+came on apace the hoary dignity of winter.  But the earth hath its
+resurrection too, and anon came the beauteous spring-time with warmth
+and scents and new life.  The brooks leapt forth once more from their
+hiding-places, the verdure awaked, and the trees put forth their
+foliage.  Then from the awful mountain peaks the snow silently and
+slowly slipped to the valleys, and in divers natural channels went
+onward and ever downward to the southern sea, and now at last 't was
+summer-time again and the mellow grace of August brooded over the
+earth.  But in that yonder mountain-side had fallen a symbol never to
+be removed,--ay, upon that holy ground where slept the Jew was
+stretched a cross, a mighty cross of snow on which the sun never fell
+and which no breath of wind ever disturbed.  Elsewhere was the tender
+warmth of verdure and the sacred passion of the blood-red flowers, but
+over that lonely grave was stretched the symbol of him that went his
+way to Calvary, and in that grave slept the Jew.
+
+Mightily marvelled Don Esclevador and his warrior host at this thing;
+but the Father Miguel knew its meaning; for he was minded of that
+vision wherein it was foretold unto the Jew that, pardoned for his sin,
+he should sleep forever under the burden of the cross he spurned.  All
+this the Father Miguel showed unto Don Esclevador and the others, and
+he said: "I deem that unto all ages this holy symbol shall bear witness
+of our dear Christ's mercy and compassion.  Though we, O exiled
+brothers, sleep in this foreign land in graves which none shall know,
+upon that mountain height beyond shall stretch the eternal witness to
+our faith and to our Redeemer's love, minding all that look thereon,
+not of the pains and the punishments of the Jew, but of the exceeding
+mercy of our blessed Lord, and of the certain eternal peace that cometh
+through his love!"
+
+How long ago these things whereof I speak befell, I shall not say.
+They never saw--that Spanish host--they never saw their native land,
+their sovereign liege, their loved ones' faces again; they sleep, and
+they are dust among those mighty mountains in the West.  Where is the
+grave of the Father Miguel, or of Don Esclevador, or of any of the
+valiant Spanish exiles, it is not to tell; God only knoweth, and the
+saints: all sleep in the faith, and their reward is certain.  But where
+sleepeth the Jew all may see and know; for on that awful mountain-side,
+in a spot inaccessible to man, lieth the holy cross of snow.  The winds
+pass lightly over that solemn tomb, and never a sunbeam lingereth
+there.  White and majestic it lies where God's hands have placed it,
+and its mighty arms stretch forth as in a benediction upon the fleeting
+dust beneath.
+
+So shall it bide forever upon that mountain-side, and the memory of the
+Jew and of all else human shall fade away and be forgotten in the
+surpassing glory of the love and the compassion of him that bore the
+redeeming burden to Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH
+
+There was none other in the quiet valley so happy as the
+rose-tree,--none other so happy unless perchance it was the thrush who
+made his home in the linden yonder.  The thrush loved the rose-tree's
+daughter, and he was happy in thinking that some day she would be his
+bride.  Now the rose-tree had many daughters, and each was beautiful;
+but the rose whom the thrush loved was more beautiful than her sisters,
+and all the wooers came wooing her until at last the fair creature's
+head was turned, and the rose grew capricious and disdainful.  Among
+her many lovers were the south wind and the fairy Dewlove and the
+little elf-prince Beambright and the hoptoad, whom all the rest called
+Mr. Roughbrown.  The hoptoad lived in the stone-wall several yards
+away; but every morning and evening he made a journey to the rose-tree,
+and there he would sit for hours gazing with tender longings at the
+beautiful rose, and murmuring impassioned avowals.  The rose's disdain
+did not chill the hoptoad's ardor.  "See what I have brought you, fair
+rose," he would say.  "A beautiful brown beetle with golden wings and
+green eyes!  Surely there is not in all the world a more delicious
+morsel than a brown beetle!  Or, if you but say the word, I will fetch
+you a tender little fly, or a young gnat,--see, I am willing to undergo
+all toils and dangers for your own sweet sake."
+
+Poor Mr. Roughbrown!  His wooing was very hopeless.  And all the time
+he courted the imperious rose, who should be peeping at him from her
+home in the hedge but as plump and as sleek a little Miss Dormouse as
+ever you saw, and her eyes were full of envy.
+
+"If Mr. Roughbrown had any sense," she said to herself, "he would waste
+no time on that vain and frivolous rose.  He is far too good a catch
+for _her_."
+
+The south wind was forever sighing and sobbing about.  He lives, you
+know, very many miles from here.  His home is beyond a great sea; in
+the midst of a vast desert there is an oasis, and it is among the
+palm-trees and the flowers of this oasis that the south wind abides.
+When spring calls from the North, "O south wind, where are you?  Come
+hither, my sunny friend!" the south wind leaps from his couch in the
+far-off oasis, and hastens whither the spring-time calls.  As he speeds
+across the sea the mermaids seek to tangle him in their tresses, and
+the waves try to twine their white arms about him; but he shakes them
+off and laughingly flies upon his way.  Wheresoever he goes he is
+beloved.  With their soft, solemn music the pine-trees seek to detain
+him; the flowers of earth lift up their voices and cry, "Abide with us,
+dear spirit,"--but to all he answers: "The spring-time calls me in the
+North, and I must hasten whither she calls."  But when the south wind
+came to the rose-tree he would go no farther; he loved the rose, and he
+lingered about her with singing and sighing and protestations.
+
+It was not until late in the evening that Dewlove and the elf-prince
+appeared.  Just as the moon rolled up in the horizon and poured a broad
+streak of silver through the lake the three crickets went "Chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," and then out danced Dewlove and Beambright
+from their hiding-places.  The cunning little fairy lived under the
+moss at the foot of the oak-tree; he was no bigger than a cambric
+needle,--but he had two eyes, and in this respect he had quite the
+advantage of the needle.  As for the elf-prince, his home was in the
+tiny, dark subterranean passage which the mole used to live in; he was
+plump as a cupid, and his hair was long and curly, although if you
+force me to it I must tell you that the elf-prince was really no larger
+than your little finger,--so you will see that so far as physical
+proportions were concerned Dewlove and Beambright were pretty well
+matched.  Merry, merry fellows they were, and I should certainly fail
+most lamentably did I attempt to tell you how prettily they danced upon
+the greensward of the meadowlands throughout the summer nights.
+Sometimes the other fairies and elves joined them,--delicate little
+lady fairies with gossamer wings, and chubby little lady elves clad in
+filmy spider webs,--and they danced and danced and danced, while the
+three crickets went "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," all night
+long.  Now it was very strange--was it not?--that instead of loving one
+of these delicate little lady fairies, or one of these chubby little
+lady elves, both Dewlove and Beambright loved the rose.  Yet, she was
+indeed very beautiful.
+
+The thrush did not pester the rose with his protestations of love.  He
+was not a particularly proud fellow, but he thought too much of the
+rose to vex her with his pleadings.  But all day long he would perch in
+the thicket and sing his songs as only a thrush can sing to the
+beautiful rose he loves.  He sung, we will say, of the forests he had
+explored, of the famous river he had once seen, of the dew which the
+rose loved, of the storm-king that slew the old pine and made his cones
+into a crown,--he sung of a thousand things which we might not
+understand, but which pleased the rose because she understood them.
+And one day the thrush swooped down from the linden upon a monstrous
+devil's darning-needle that came spinning along and poised himself to
+stab the beautiful rose.  Yes, like lightning the thrush swooped down
+on this murderous monster, and he bit him in two, and I am glad of it,
+and so are you if your heart be not wholly callous.
+
+"How comes it," said the rose-tree to the thrush that day,--"how comes
+it that you do not woo my daughter?  You have shown that you love her;
+why not speak to her?"
+
+"No, I will wait," answered the thrush.  "She has many wooers, and each
+wooes her in his own way.  Let me show her by my devotion that I am
+worthy of her, and then perchance she will listen kindly to me when I
+speak to her."
+
+The rose-tree thought very strange of this; in all her experience of
+bringing out her fair daughters into society she had never before had
+to deal with so curious a lover as the thrush.  She made up her mind to
+speak for him.
+
+"My daughter," said she to the rose, "the thrush loves you; of all your
+wooers he is the most constant and the most amiable.  I pray that you
+will hear kindly to his suit."
+
+The rose laughed carelessly,--yes, merrily,--as if she heeded not the
+heartache which her indifference might cause the honest thrush.
+
+"Mother," said the rose, "these suitors are pestering me beyond all
+endurance.  How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is
+forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy
+wheezing?  And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,--why, it is a
+husband I want, not a father!"
+
+"Prince Beambright pleases you, then?" asked the rose-tree.
+
+"He is a merry, capering fellow," said the daughter, "and so is his
+friend Dewlove; but I do not fancy either.  And as for the thrush who
+sends you to speak for him,--why, he is quite out of the question, I
+assure you.  The truth is, mother, that I am to fill a higher station
+than that of bride to any of these simple rustic folk.  Am I not more
+beautiful than any of my companions, and have I not ambitions above all
+others of my kind?"
+
+"Whom have you seen that you talk so vain-gloriously?" cried the
+rose-tree in alarm.  "What flattery has instilled into you this fatal
+poison?"
+
+"Have you not seen the poet who comes this way every morning?" asked
+the rose.  "His face is noble, and he sings grandly to the pictures
+Nature spreads before his eyes.  I should be his bride.  Some day he
+will see me; he will bear me away upon his bosom; he will indite to me
+a poem that shall live forever!"
+
+These words the thrush heard, and his heart sank within him.  If his
+songs that day were not so blithe as usual it was because of the words
+that the rose had spoken.  Yet the thrush sang on, and his song was
+full of his honest love.
+
+It was the next morning that the poet came that way.  He lived in the
+city, but each day he stole away from the noise and crowd of the city
+to commune with himself and with Nature in the quiet valley where
+bloomed the rose-tree, where the thrush sung, and where dwelt the fays
+and the elves of whom it has been spoken.  The sun shone fiercely;
+withal the quiet valley was cool, and the poet bared his brow to the
+breeze that swept down the quiet valley from the lake over yonder.
+
+"The south wind loves the rose!  Aha, aha, foolish brother to love the
+rose!"
+
+This was what the breeze said, and the poet heard it.  Then his eyes
+fell upon the rose-tree and upon her blooming daughters.
+
+"The hoptoad loves the rose!  Foolish old Roughbrown to love the rose,
+aha, aha!"
+
+There was a malicious squeakiness in this utterance,--of course it came
+from that envious Miss Dormouse, who was forever peeping out of her
+habitation in the hedge.
+
+"What a beautiful rose!" cried the poet, and leaping over the old
+stone-wall he plucked the rose from the mother-tree,--yes, the poet
+bore away this very rose who had hoped to be the poet's bride.
+
+Then the rose-tree wept bitterly, and so did her other daughters; the
+south wind wailed, and the old hoptoad gave three croaks so dolorous
+that if you had heard them you would have said that his heart was truly
+broken.  All were sad,--all but the envious dormouse, who chuckled
+maliciously, and said it was no more than they deserved.
+
+The thrush saw the poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the
+fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader?
+What could he do but twitter in anguish?  So there are tragedies and
+heartaches in lives that are not human.
+
+As the poet returned to the city he wore the rose upon his breast.  The
+rose was happy, for the poet spoke to her now and then, and praised her
+loveliness, and she saw that her beauty had given him an inspiration.
+
+"The rose despised my brother!  Aha, aha, foolish rose,--but she shall
+wither!"
+
+It was the breeze that spake; far away from the lake in the quiet
+valley its voice was very low, but the rose heard and trembled.
+
+"It's a lie," cried the rose.  "I shall not die.  The poet loves me,
+and I shall live forever upon his bosom."
+
+Yet a singular faintness--a faintness never felt before--came upon the
+rose; she bent her head and sighed.  The heat--that was all--was very
+oppressive, and here at the entrance to the city the tumult aroused an
+aggravating dust.  The poet seemed suddenly to forget the rose.  A
+carriage was approaching, and from the carriage leaned a lady, who
+beckoned to the poet.  The lady was very fair, and the poet hastened to
+answer her call.  And as he hastened the rose fell from his bosom into
+the hot highway, and the poet paid no heed.  Ascending into the
+carriage with the lady (I am sure she must have been a princess!) the
+poet was whirled away, and there in the stifling dust lay the fainting
+rose, all stained and dying.
+
+The sparrows flew down and pecked at her inquisitively; the cruel
+wagons crushed her beneath their iron wheels; careless feet buffeted
+her hither and thither.  She was no longer a beautiful rose; no, nor
+even a reminiscence of one,--simply a colorless, scentless, ill-shapen
+mass.
+
+But all at once she heard a familiar voice, and then she saw familiar
+eyes.  The voice was tender and the eyes were kindly.
+
+"O honest thrush," cried the rose, "is it you who have come to reproach
+me for my folly?"
+
+"No, no, dear rose," said the thrush, "how should I speak ill to you?
+Come, rest your poor head upon my breast, and let me bear you home."
+
+"Let me rather die here," sighed the rose, "for it was here that my
+folly brought me.  How could I go back with you whom I never so much as
+smiled upon?  And do they not hate and deride me in the valley?  I
+would rather die here in misery than there in shame!"
+
+"Poor, broken flower, they love you," urged the thrush.  "They grieve
+for you; let me bear you back where the mother-tree will shade you, and
+where the south wind will nurse you--for--for he loves you."
+
+So the thrush bore back the withering rose to her home in the quiet
+valley.
+
+"So she has come back, has she?" sneered the dormouse.  "Well, she has
+impudence, if nothing else!"
+
+"She was pretty once," said the old hoptoad; "but she lost her
+opportunity when I made up my mind to go wooing a certain glossy damsel
+in the hedge."
+
+The rose-tree reached out her motherly arms to welcome her dying
+daughter, and she said: "Rest here, dear one, and let me rock you to
+repose."
+
+It was evening in the quiet valley now.  Where was the south wind that
+he came not with his wooing?  He had flown to the North, for that day
+he had heard the spring-time's voice a-calling, and he went in answer
+to its summons.  Everything was still.  "Chirp-chirp,  chirp-chirp,
+chirp-chirp," piped the three crickets, and forthwith the fairy boy and
+the elf-prince danced from their habitations.  Their little feet
+tinkled over the clover and the daisies.
+
+"Hush, little folk," cried the rose-tree.  "Do not dance to-night,--the
+rose is dying."
+
+But they danced on.  The rose did not hear them; she heard only the
+voice of the thrush, who perched in the linden yonder, and, with a
+breaking heart, sung to the dying flower.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE[1]
+
+It is to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib; comely was
+he to look upon, and a braver than he lived not in these islands, nor
+one more beloved of all people.  But it chanced upon a time, while he
+was still in early manhood, that a grievous sorrow befell him; for on a
+day his mother Eleanor came to her end in this full evil wise.  It was
+her intent to go unto the neighboring island, where grazed the goats
+and the kine, and it fortuned that, as she made her way thither in the
+boat, she heard sweet music, as if one played upon a harp in the
+waters, and, looking over the side of the boat, she beheld down in the
+waters a sea-maiden making those exceeding pleasant sounds.  And the
+sea-maiden ceased to play, and smiled up at Eleanor, and stretched up
+her hands and besought Eleanor to pluck her from the sea into the boat,
+which seeking to do, Eleanor fell headlong into the waters, and was
+never thereafter seen either alive or dead by any of her kin.  Now
+under this passing heavy grief Egbert, the son of Ib, being old and
+spent by toil, brake down, and on a night died, making with his latest
+breath most heavy lamentation for Eleanor, his wife; so died he, and
+his soul sped, as they tell, to that far northern land where the souls
+of the departed make merry all the night, which merriment sendeth forth
+so vast and so beautiful a light that all the heavens are illumined
+thereby.  But Harold, the son of Egbert and of Eleanor, was left alone,
+having neither brother, nor sister, nor any of kin, save an uncle
+abiding many leagues distant in Jutland.  Thereupon befell a wonderful
+thing; if it had not happened it would not be told.  It chanced that,
+on a certain evening in the summer-time, Harold walked alone where a
+Druid circle lay coiled like a dark serpent on a hillside; his heart
+was filled with dolor, for he thought continually of Eleanor, his
+mother, and he wept softly to himself through love of that dear mother.
+While thus he walked in vast heaviness of soul, he was beheld of
+Membril, the fairy that with her goodly subjects dwelt in the ruin of
+the Pict's house hard by the Druid circle.  And Membril had compassion
+upon Harold, and upon the exceeding fine down of a tiny sea-bird she
+rode out to meet him, and it was before his eyes as if a star shined
+out of a mist in his pathway.  So it was that Membril the fairy made
+herself known to him, and having so done, she said and she sung:
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,
+  That would charm thy grief away!
+  Thou art like the little bark
+  Drifting in the cold and dark,--
+  Drifting through the tempest's roar
+  To a rocky, icy shore;
+  All the torment dost thou feel
+  Of the spent and fearful seal
+  Wounded by the hunter's steel.
+  I am Membril,--hark to me:
+  Better times await on thee!
+  Wouldst thou clasp thy mother dear,--
+  Strange things see and stranger hear?
+  Straight betake thee to thy boat
+  And to yonder haven float,--
+  Go thy way, and silent be,--
+  It is Membril counsels thee;
+  Go thy way, and thou shalt see!
+
+
+Great marvel had Harold to this thing; nevertheless he did the bidding
+of Membril the fairy, and it was full wisely done.  And presently he
+came to where his boat lay, half on the shore and half in the waters,
+and he unloosed the thong that held it, and entered into the boat; but
+he put neither hand to the oars thereof, for he was intent to do the
+bidding of Membril the fairy.  Then as if of its own accord, or as if
+the kindly waves themselves bore it along, the boat moved upon the
+waters and turned toward the yonder haven whereof it was said and sung.
+Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows fell
+from the hilltops in their sleep and lay, as they had been little weary
+children, in the valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in
+the cradles of those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung
+softly to them.  Upon the one side lay the island where grazed the
+goats and the kine, and upon the other side lay the island where Harold
+and other people abode; between these islands crept the sea with its
+gentle murmurings, and upon this sea drifted the boat bearing Harold to
+the yonder haven.  Now the haven whereunto the course lay brooded
+almost beneath the shadow of the Stennis stones, and the waters thereof
+were dark, as if, forsooth, the sea frowned whensoever it saw those
+bloody stones peering down into its tranquil bosom.  And some said that
+the place was haunted, and that upon each seventh night came thereunto
+the spirits of them that had been slain upon those stones, and waved
+their ghostly arms and wailed grievously; but of latter times none
+believeth this thing to be true.
+
+It befell that, coming into the haven and bearing toward the shore
+thereof, Harold was 'ware of sweet music, and presently he saw figures
+as of men and women dancing upon the holm; but neither could he see who
+these people were, nor could he tell wherefrom the music came.  But
+such fair music never had he heard before, and with great marvel he
+came from the boat into the cluster of beech-trees that stood between
+the haven and that holm where the people danced.  Then of a sudden
+Harold saw twelve skins lying upon the shore in the moonlight; and they
+were the comeliest and most precious sealskins that ever he saw, and he
+coveted them.  So presently he took up one of the sealskins and bore it
+with him into his boat, and pushed the boat from the shore into the
+waters of the haven again, and, so doing, there was such plashing of
+the waters that those people dancing upon the fair green holm became
+'ware of Harold's presence, and were afeared, so that, ceasing from
+their sport, they made haste down to the shore and did on the skins and
+dived into the waters with shrill cries.  But there was one of them
+that could not do so, because Harold bore off that skin wherewith she
+was wont to begird herself, and when she found it not she wailed and
+wept and besought Harold to give her that skin again,--and, lo! it was
+Eleanor, the wife of Egbert!  Now when Harold saw that it was his
+mother that so entreated him he was filled with wonder, and he drew
+nearer the shore to regard her and to hear her words, for he loved her
+passing well.  But he denied her that skin, knowing full well that so
+soon as she possessed it she would leave him and he should never again
+behold her.  Then Eleanor related to him how that she had been drowned
+in the sea through treachery of the harp-maiden, and how that the souls
+of drowned people entered into the bodies of seals, nor were permitted
+to return to earth, save only one night in every month, at which time
+each recovered his human shape and was suffered to dance in the
+moonlight upon the fair green holm from the hour of sunset unto the
+hour of sunrise.
+
+"Give me the skin, I pray thee," she cried, "for if the sun came upon
+me unawares I should crumble into dust before thine eyes, and that
+moment would a curse fall upon you.  I am happy as I am; the sea and
+those who dwell therein are good to me,--give me the skin, I beseech
+thee, that I may return whence I came, and thereby shall a great
+blessing accrue to thee and thine."
+
+But Harold said: "Nay, mother, I were a fool to part so cheerfully with
+one whom I love dearer than life itself!  I shall not let you go so
+easily; you shall come with me to our home, where I have lived alone
+too long already.  I shall be alone no longer,--come with me, I say,
+for I will not deliver up this skin, nor shall any force wrest it from
+me!"
+
+Then Eleanor, his mother, reasoned a space with him, and anon she
+showed him the folly of his way; but still he hung his head upon his
+breast and was loath to do her bidding, until at last she sware unto
+him that if he gave to her that skin he should, upon the next dancing
+night, have to wife the most beautiful maiden in the world, and
+therefore should be alone in the world no more.  To this presently
+Harold gave assent, and then Eleanor, his mother, bade him come to that
+same spot one month hence, and do what she should then bid him do.
+Receiving, therefore, the skin from him, she folded it about her and
+threw herself into the sea, and Harold betook himself unto his home.
+
+Now wit ye well that full wearily dragged the days and the nights until
+that month was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and
+upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting.
+It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from
+his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of
+the moon from out the silver waters yonder.  While thus he stood there
+appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him she said and
+she sung:--
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,
+  Come to urge thee on thy way;
+  Haste to yonder haven-side
+  Where awaits thy promised bride;
+  Daughter of a king is she,--
+  Many leagues she comes to thee,
+  Thine and only thine to be.
+  Haste and see, then come again
+  To thy pretty home, and, when
+  Smiles the sun on earth once more,
+  Will come knocking at thy door;
+  Open then, and to thy breast
+  Clasp whom thou shalt love the best!
+  It is Membril counsels thee,--
+  Haste and see what thou shalt see!
+
+
+Now by this thing was Harold mightily rejoiced, and he believed it to
+be truth that great good was in store for him; for he had seen pleasant
+things in the candle a many nights, and the smoke from his fire blew
+cheerily and lightly to the westward, and a swan had circled over his
+house that day week, and in his net each day for twice seven days had
+he drawn from the sea a fish having one golden eye and one silver eye:
+which things, as all men know, portend full goodly things, or else they
+portend nothing at all whatsoever.  So, being pleasantly minded, Harold
+returned in kind unto Membril, the fairy queen, that bespoke him so
+courteously, and to her and to them that bore her company he said and
+he sung:--
+
+  Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!
+    For thou speakest pleasing words;
+  Thou shalt have a gill of whey
+    And a thimblefull of curds;
+  In this rose is honey-dew
+  That a bee hath brought for you!
+
+  Welcome, bonnie queen of Fay!
+    Call thy sisters from the gloam,
+  And, whilst I am on my way,
+    Feast and frolic in my home,--
+  Kiss the moonbeams, blanching white,
+  Shrinking, shivering with affright!
+
+  Welcome, all, and have no fear,--
+    There is flax upon the sill,
+  No foul sprite can enter here,--
+    Feast and frolic as you will;
+  Feast and frisk till break of day,--
+  Welcome, little folk of Fay!
+
+
+Thus having said and thus having sung, Harold went upon his way, and
+came to his boat and entered into it and journeyed to the haven where
+some time he had seen and discoursed with Eleanor, his mother.  His
+course to this same haven lay, as before, over the waters that stole in
+between the two islands from the great sea beyond.  Fair shone the
+moon, and the night was passing fair; the shadows rolled from the
+hilltops in their sleep and lay like little weary children in the
+valleys and upon the shore, and they were rocked in the cradles of
+those valleys, and the waters along the shore sung softly to them.
+Upon this hand lay the island where the goats and the kine found sweet
+pasturage, and upon the other hand stretched the island where people
+abode, and where the bloody Stennis stones rebuked the smiling sky, and
+where ghosts walked and wailed and waved their white arms in the
+shadows of those haunted ruins where once upon a time the Picts had
+dwelt.  And Harold's heart was full of joy, the more in especial when,
+as he bore nigh unto the haven, he heard sweet music and beheld a
+goodly company of people that danced in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  Then, when presently his boat touched the inner shore of
+the haven, and he departed therefrom and drew the boat upon the shore,
+he saw wherefrom issued the beautiful music to which the people danced;
+he saw that the waters reached out their white fingers and touched the
+kale and the fair pebbles and the brittle shells and the moss upon the
+beach, and these things gave forth sweet sounds, which were as if a
+thousand attuned harps vied with the singing of the summer-night winds.
+Then, as before, Harold saw sealskins lying upon the shore, and
+presently came Eleanor, his mother, and pointing to a certain fair
+velvet skin, she said: "Take that fair velvet skin into thy boat and
+speed with all haste to thy home.  To-morrow at sunrise thy bride shall
+come knocking at thy door.  And so, farewell, my son,--oh, Harold, my
+only son!"  Which saying, Eleanor, the wife of Egbert, drew a skin
+about her and leapt into the sea; nor was she ever thereafter beholden
+of human eyes.
+
+Then Harold took up the fair velvet skin to which his mother had
+directed him, and he bore it away with him in his boat.  So softly went
+he upon the waters that none of them that danced upon the fair green
+holm either saw or heard him.  Still danced they on to the sweet music
+made by the white fingers of the waves, and still shone the white moon
+upon the fair green holm where they so danced.
+
+Now when came Harold to his home, bearing the precious skin with him,
+he saw the fairies at play upon the floor of his hut, and they feared
+no evil, for there was barley strewn upon the sill so that no wicked
+sprite could enter there.  And when Membril, the fairy queen, saw him
+bringing the skin that he had found upon the shore, she bade him good
+welcome, and she said and she sung:--
+
+  I am Membril, queen of Fay,--
+  Ponder well what words I say;
+  Hide that fair and velvet skin
+  Some secluded spot within;
+  In the tree where ravens croak,--
+  In the hollow of the oak,
+  In the cave with mosses lined,
+  In the earth where none may find;
+  Hide it quick and hide it deep,--
+  So secure shall be thy sleep,
+  Thine shall bride and blessings be,
+  Thine a fair posterity,--
+  So doth Membril counsel thee!
+
+
+So, pondering upon this counsel and thinking well of it, Harold took
+the fair velvet skin and hid it, and none knew where it was hid,--none
+save only the raven that lived in the hollow oak.  And when he had so
+done he returned unto his home and lay upon his bed and slept.  It came
+to pass that early upon the morrow, when the sun made all the eastward
+sky blush for the exceeding ardor of his morning kiss, there came a
+knocking at the door of Harold's hut, and Harold opened the door, and
+lo! there stood upon the threshold the fairest maiden that eyes ever
+beheld.  Unlike was she to maidens dwelling in those islands, for her
+hair was black as the waters of the long winter night, and her eyes
+were as the twin midnight rocks that look up from the white waves of
+the moonlit sea in yonder reef; withal was she most beautiful to look
+upon, and her voice was as music that stealeth to one over pleasant
+waters.
+
+The maiden's name was Persis, and she was the daughter of a Pagan king
+that ruled in a country many, many--oh, many leagues to the southward
+of these islands, in a country where unicorns and dragons be, and where
+dwelleth the phoenix and hippogriffins and the cockatrix, and where
+bloometh a tree that runneth blood, and where mighty princes do
+wondrous things.  Now it fortuned that the king was minded to wed his
+daughter Persis unto a neighboring prince, a high and mighty prince,
+but one whom Persis loved not, neither could she love.  So for the
+first time Persis said, "Nay, I will not," unto her father's mandate,
+whereat the king was passing wroth, and he put his daughter in a place
+that was like a jail to her, for it was where none might see her, and
+where she might see none,--none but those that attended upon her.  This
+much told Persis, the Pagan princess, unto Harold, and then,
+furthermore, she said: "The place wherein I was put by the king, my
+father, was hard by the sea, and oftentimes I went thereon in my little
+boat, and once, looking down from that boat into the sea, I saw the
+face of a fair young man within a magic mirror that was held up in the
+waters of the sea by two ghostly hands, and the fair young man moved
+his lips and smiled at me, and methought I heard him say: 'Come, be my
+bride, O fair and gentle Persis!'  But, vastly afeared, I cried out and
+put back again to shore.  Yet in my dreams I saw that face and heard
+that voice, nor could I find any rest until I came upon the sea again
+in hope to see the face and hear the voice once more.  Then, that
+second time, as I looked into the sea, another face came up from below
+and lifted above the waters, and a woman's voice spake thus to me: 'I
+am mother of him that loveth thee and whom thou lovest; his face hast
+thou seen in the mirror, and of thee I have spoken to him; come, let me
+bear thee as a bride to him!'  And in that moment a faintness came upon
+me and I fell into her arms, and so was I drowned (as men say), and so
+was I a seal a little space until last dancing night, when, lo! some
+one brought me to life again, and one that said her name was Membril
+showed me the way unto thy door.  And now I look upon thy face in
+truth, and thou art he who shall have me to his wife, for thou art he
+whose face I saw within the mirror which the ghostly hands bore up to
+me that day upon the sea!"
+
+Great then was Harold's joy, and he folded her in his arms, and he
+spake sweet words to her, and she was content.  So they were wed that
+very day, and there came to do them honor all the folk upon these
+islands: Dougal and Tam and Ib and Robbie and Nels and Gram and Rupert
+and Rolf and many others and all their kin, and they made merry, and it
+was well.  And never spake the Pagan princess of that soft velvet skin
+which Harold had hid away,--never spake she of it to him or to any
+other one.
+
+It is to tell that to Harold and to Persis were born these children,
+and in this order: Egbert and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) and
+Harold and Joan and Tam and Annie and Rupert the Fair and Flocken and
+Elsa and Albert and Theodoric,--these eleven children were born unto
+them in good time; and right fair children were they to see, comely and
+stout, yet sweetly minded withal.  And prosperous times continually
+befell Harold; his herds multiplied, and the fish came into his nets,
+so that presently there was none other richer than he in all that
+country, and he did great good with his riches, for he had compassion
+to the poor.  So Harold was beloved of all, and all spake full fairly
+of his wife,--how that she cared for his little ones, and kept the
+house, and did deeds of sweet charity among the needy and
+distressed,--ay, so was Persis, the wife of Harold, beloved of all, and
+by none other more than by Harold, who was wont to say that Persis had
+brought him all he loved best: his children, his fortune, his
+happiness, and, best of all, herself.  So now they were wed twice seven
+years, and in that time was Persis still as young and fair to look upon
+as when she came to Harold's door for the first time and knocked.  This
+I account to be a marvel, but still more a marvel was it that in all
+these years spake she never a word of that soft velvet skin which
+Harold took and hid,--never a word to him nor to any one else.  But the
+soft velvet skin lay meanwhile in the hollow of the oak, and in the
+branches of that tree perched a raven that croaked and croaked and
+croaked.
+
+Now it befell upon a time that a ship touched at that island, and there
+came therefrom men that knelt down upon the shore and made strange
+prayers to a strange God, and forthwith uplifted in that island a
+symbol of wood in the similitude of a cross.  Straightway went Harold
+with the rest to know the cause thereof, being fearful lest for this
+impiety their own gods, whom they served diligently, should send hail
+and fire upon them and their herds.  But those that had come in the
+ship spake gently with them and showed themselves to be peaceful folk
+whose God delighted not in wars, but rather in gentleness and love.
+How it was, I, knowing not, cannot say, but presently the cause of that
+new God, whose law was gentleness and love, waxed mightily, and the
+people came from all around to kiss that cross and worship it.  And
+among them came Harold, for in his heart had dawned the light of a new
+wisdom, and he knew the truth as we know it, you and I.  So Harold was
+baptized in the Christian faith, he and his children; but Persis, his
+wife, was not baptized, for she was the daughter of a Pagan king, and
+she feared to bring evil upon those she loved by doing any blasphemous
+thing.  Right sorely grieved was Harold because of this, and oftentimes
+he spake with her thereof, and oftentimes he prayed unto his God and
+ours to incline her mind toward the cross, which saveth all alike.  But
+Persis would say: "My best beloved, let me not do this thing in haste,
+for I fear to vex thy God since I am a Pagan and the daughter of a
+Pagan king, and therefore have not within me the light that there is in
+thee and thy kind.  Perchance (since thy God is good and gracious) the
+light will come to me anon, and shine before mine eyes as it shineth
+before thine.  I pray thee, let me bide my time."  So spake Persis, and
+her life ever thereafter was kind and charitable, as, soothly, it had
+ever before been, and she served Harold, her husband, well, and she was
+beloved of all, and a great sweetness came to all out of her daily life.
+
+It fortuned, upon a day whilst Harold was from home, there was knocking
+at the door of their house, and forthwith the door opened and there
+stood in the midst of them one clad all in black and of rueful
+countenance.  Then, as if she foresaw evil, Persis called unto her
+little ones and stood between them and that one all in black, and she
+demanded of him his name and will.  "I am the Death-Angel," quoth he,
+"and I come for the best-beloved of thy lambs!"
+
+Now Theodoric was that best-beloved; for he was her very little one,
+and had always slept upon her bosom.  So when she heard those words she
+made a great outcry, and wrestled with the Death-Angel, and sought to
+stay him in his purpose.  But the Death-Angel chilled her with his
+breath, and overcame her, and prevailed against her; and he reached
+into the midst of them and took Theodoric in his arms and folded him
+upon his breast, and Theodoric fell asleep there, and his head dropped
+upon the Death-Angel's shoulder.  But in her battle for the child,
+Persis catched at the chain about the child's neck, and the chain brake
+and remained in her hand, and upon the chain was the little cross of
+fair alabaster which an holy man had put there when Theodoric was
+baptized.  So the Death-Angel went his way with that best-beloved lamb,
+and Persis fell upon her face and wailed.
+
+The years went on and all was well upon these islands.  Egbert became a
+mighty fisherman, and Ib (that was nicknamed the Strong) wrought
+wondrous things in Norroway, as all men know; Joan was wed to Cuthbert
+the Dane, and Flocken was wooed of a rich man's son of Scotland.  So
+were all things for good and for the best, and it was a marvel to all
+that Persis, the wife of Harold, looked still to be as young and
+beautiful as when she came from the sea to be her husband's bride.  Her
+life was full of gentleness and charity, and all folk blessed her.  But
+never in all these years spake she aught to any one of the fair velvet
+skin; and through all the years that skin lay hid in the hollow of the
+oak-tree, where the raven croaked and croaked and croaked.
+
+At last upon a time a malady fell upon Persis, and a strange light came
+into her eyes, and naught they did was of avail to her.  One day she
+called Harold to her, and said: "My beloved, the time draweth near when
+we twain must part.  I pray thee, send for the holy man, for I would
+fain be baptized in thy faith and in the faith of our children."  So
+Harold fetched the holy man, and Persis, the daughter of the Pagan
+king, was baptized, and she spake freely and full sweetly of her love
+to Jesus Christ, her Saviour, and she prayed to be taken into his rest.
+And when she was baptized, there was given to her the name of Ruth,
+which was most fairly done, I trow, for soothly she had been the friend
+of all.
+
+Then, when the holy man was gone, she said to her husband: "Beloved, I
+beseech thee go to yonder oak-tree, and bring me from the hollow
+thereof the fair velvet skin that hath lain therein so many years."
+
+Then Harold marvelled, and he cried: "Who told thee that the fair
+velvet skin was hidden there?"
+
+"The raven told me all," she answered; "and had I been so minded I
+might have left thee long ago,--thee and our little ones.  But I loved
+thee and them, and the fair velvet skin hath been unseen of me."
+
+"And wouldst thou leave us now?" he cried.  "Nay, it shall not be!
+Thou shalt not see that fair velvet skin, for this very day will I cast
+it into the sea!"
+
+But she put an arm about his neck and said: "This night, dear one, we
+part; but whether we shall presently be joined together in another life
+I know not, neither canst thou say; for I, having been a Pagan and the
+daughter of a Pagan king, may by my birth and custom have so grievously
+offended our true God that even in his compassion and mercy he shall
+not find pardon for me.  Therefore I would have thee fetch--since I
+shall die this night and do require of thee this last act of
+kindness--I would have thee fetch that same fair velvet skin from
+yonder oak-tree, and wrap me therein, and bear me hence, and lay me
+upon the green holm by the farther haven, for this is dancing night,
+and the seal-folk shall come from the sea as is their wont.  Thou shalt
+lay me, so wrapped within that fair velvet skin, upon that holm, and
+thou shalt go a space aside and watch throughout the night, coming not
+anear me (as thou lovest me!) until the dawn breaks, nor shalt thou
+make any outcry, but thou shalt wait until the night is sped.  Then,
+when thou comest at daybreak to the holm, if thou findest me in the
+fair velvet skin thou shalt know that my sin hath been pardoned; but if
+I be not there thou may'st know that, being a Pagan, the seal-folk have
+borne me back into the sea unto my kind.  Thus do I require of thee;
+swear so to do, and let thy beloved bless thee."
+
+So Harold swore to do, and so he did.  Straightway he went to the
+oak-tree and took from the hollow thereof the fair velvet skin; seeing
+which deed, the raven flew away and was never thereafter seen in these
+islands.  And with a heavy heart, and with full many a caress and word
+of love, did Harold bind his fair wife in that same velvet skin, and he
+bore her to his boat, and they went together upon the waters; for he
+had sworn so to do.  His course unto the haven lay as before over the
+waters that stole in between the two islands from the great troubled
+sea beyond.  Fair shone the moon, and the night was passing fair; the
+shadows lay asleep, like little weary children, in the valleys, and the
+waters moaned, and the winds rebuked the white fingers that stretched
+up from the waves to clutch them.  And when they were come to the inner
+shore of the haven, Harold took his wife and bore her up the bank and
+laid her where the light came down from the moon and slept full sweetly
+upon the fragrant sward.  Then, kissing her, he went his way and sat
+behind the Stennis stones a goodly space beyond, and there he kept his
+watch, as he had sworn to do.
+
+Now wit ye well a grievous heavy watch it was that night, for his heart
+yearned for that beloved wife that lay that while upon the fair green
+holm,--ay, never before had night seemed so long to Harold as did that
+dancing night when he waited for the seal-folk to come where the
+some-time Pagan princess lay wrapped in the fair velvet skin.  But
+while he watched and waited, Membril, the fairy queen, came and brought
+others of her kind with her, and they made a circle about Harold, and
+threw around him such a charm that no evil could befall him from the
+ghosts and ghouls that in their shrouds walked among those bloody
+stones and wailed wofully and waved their white arms.  For Membril,
+coming to Harold in the similitude of a glow-worm, made herself known
+to him, and she said and she sung:
+
+  Loving heart, be calm a space
+  In this gloomy vigil place;
+  Though these confines haunted be
+  Naught of harm can come to thee--
+  Nothing canst thou see or hear
+  Of the ghosts that stalk anear,
+  For around thee Membril flings
+  Charms of Fay and fairy rings.
+
+
+Nothing daunted was Harold by thoughts of evil monsters, and naught
+recked he of the uncanny dangers of that haunted place; but he
+addressed these words to Membril and her host, and he said and he sung:
+
+  Tell me if thy piercing eyes
+    See the inner haven shore.
+  There my Own Beloved lies,
+    With the cowslips bending o'er:
+  Speed, O gentle folk of Fay!
+  And in guise of cowslips say
+  I shall love my love for aye!
+
+
+Even so did Membril and the rest; and presently they returned, and they
+brought these words unto Harold, saying and singing them:--
+
+  We as cowslips in that place
+  Clustered round thy dear one's face,
+  And we whispered to her there
+  Those same words we went to bear;
+  And she smiled and bade us then
+  Bear these words to thee again:
+  "Die we shall, and part we may,--
+  Love is love and lives for aye!"
+
+
+Then of a sudden there was a tumult upon the waters, as if the waters
+were troubled, and there came up out of the waters a host of seals that
+made their way to the shore and cast aside their skins and came forth
+in the forms of men and of women, for they were the drowned folk that
+were come, as was their wont, to dance in the moonlight upon the fair
+green holm.  At that moment the waters stretched out their white
+fingers and struck the kale and the pebbles and the soft moss upon the
+beach, for they sought to make music for the seal-folk to dance
+thereby; but the music that was made was not merry nor gleeful, but was
+passing gruesome and mournful.  And presently the seal-folk came where
+lay the wife of Harold wrapped in the fair velvet skin, and they knew
+her of old, and they called her by what name she was known to them,
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and there was great wailing
+among the seal-folk for a mighty space; and the seal-folk danced never
+at all that night, but wailed about the wife of Harold, and called
+"Persis!  Persis!" over and over again, and made great moan.  And at
+last all was still once more, for the seal-folk, weeping and clamoring
+grievously, went back into the sea, and the sea sobbed itself to sleep.
+
+Mindful of the oath he swore, Harold dared not go down to that shore,
+but he besought Membril, the queen of Fay, to fetch him tidings from
+his beloved, whether she still lay upon the holm, or whether the
+seal-folk had borne her away with them into the waters of the deep.
+But Membril might not go, nor any of her host, for already the dawn was
+in the east and the kine were lowing on yonder slope.  So Harold was
+left alone a tedious time, until the sun looked upon the earth, and
+then, with clamoring heart, Harold came from the Stennis stones and
+leapt downward to the holm where his beloved had lain that weary while.
+Then he saw that the fair velvet skin was still there, and presently he
+saw that within the skin his beloved still reposed.  He called to her,
+but she made no answer; with exceeding haste he kneeled down and did
+off the fair velvet skin, and folded his beloved to his breast.  The
+sun shone full upon her glorious face and kissed away the dew that
+clung to her white cheeks.
+
+"Thou art redeemed, O my beloved!" cried Harold; but her lips spake
+not, and her eyes opened not upon him.  Yet on the dead wife's face was
+such a smile as angels wear, and it told him that they should meet
+again in a love that knoweth no fear of parting.  And as Harold held
+her to his bosom and wailed, there fell down from her hand what she had
+kept with her to the last, and it lay upon the fair green holm,--the
+little alabaster cross which she had snatched from Theodoric's neck
+that day the Death-Angel bore the child away.
+
+It was to tell of Harold, the son of Egbert, the son of Ib, and of
+Persis, his wife, daughter of the Pagan king; and it hath been told.
+And there is no more to tell, for the tale is ended.
+
+
+
+[1] Orkney Folk-Lore.
+
+
+
+
+FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND
+
+My quondam friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, are no more; they are
+dead, and with them has gone out of existence as gross an imposition as
+the moral cowardice of man were capable of inventing, constructing, and
+practising.
+
+When Alice became my wife she knew that I was a lover and collector of
+books, but, being a young thing, she had no idea of the monstrous
+proportions which bibliomania, unchecked, is almost certain to acquire.
+Indeed, the dear girl innocently and rapturously encouraged this
+insidious vice.  "Some time," she used to say, "we shall have a house
+of our own, and then your library shall cover the whole top-floor, and
+the book-cases shall be built in the walls, and there shall be a lovely
+blue-glass sky-light," etc.  Moreover, although she could not tell the
+difference between an Elzevir and a Pickering, or between a folio and
+an octavo, Alice was very proud of our little library, and I recall now
+with real delight the times I used to hear her showing off those
+precious books to her lady callers.  Alice made up for certain
+inaccuracies of information with a distinct enthusiasm and garrulity
+that never failed to impress her callers deeply.  I was mighty proud of
+Alice; I was prepared to say, paraphrasing Sam Johnson's remark about
+the Scotchman, "A wife can be made much of, if caught young."
+
+It was not until after little Grolier and little Richard de Bury were
+born to us that Alice's regard for my pretty library seemed to abate.
+I then began to realize the truth of what my bachelor friend Kinzie had
+often declared,--namely, that the chief objection to children was that
+they weaned the collector from his love of books.  Grolier was a
+mischievous boy, and I had hard work trying to convince his mother that
+he should by no means be allowed to have his sweet but destructive will
+with my Bewicks and Bedfords.  Thumb and finger marks look well enough
+in certain places, but I protested that they did not enhance the quaint
+beauty of an old wood-cut, a delicate binding, or a wide margin.  And
+Richard de Bury--a lovely little 16mo of a child--was almost as
+destructive as his older brother.  The most painful feature of it all
+to me then was that their mother actually protected the toddling knaves
+in their vandalism.  I never saw another woman change so as Alice did
+after those two boys came to us.  Why, she even suggested to me one day
+that when we did build our new house we should devote the upper story
+thereof not to library but to nursery purposes!
+
+Things gradually got to the pass that I began to be afraid to bring
+books into the house.  At first Alice used to reproach me indirectly by
+eying the new book jealously, and hinting in a subtle, womanly way that
+Grolier needed new shoes, or that Richard was sadly in need of a new
+cap.  Presently, encouraged by my lamb-like reticence, Alice began to
+complain gently of what she termed my extravagance, and finally she
+fell into the pernicious practice of berating me roundly for neglecting
+my family for the selfish--yes, the cruel--gratification of a foolish
+fad, and then she would weep and gather up the two boys and wonder how
+soon we should all be in the poorhouse.
+
+I have spoken of my bachelor friend, Kinzie; there was a philosopher
+for you, and his philosophy was all the sweeter because it had never
+been embittered by marital experience.  I had confidence in Kinzie, and
+I told him all about the dilemma I was in.  He pitied me and condoled
+with me, for he was a sympathetic man, and he was, too, as consistent a
+bibliomaniac as I ever met with.  "Be of good cheer," said he, "we
+shall find a way out of all this trouble."  And he suggested a way.  I
+seized upon it as the proverbial drowning man is supposed to clutch at
+the proverbial straw.
+
+The next time I took a bundle of books home I marched into the house
+boldly with them.  Alice fetched a deep sigh.  "Ah, been buying more
+books, have you?" she asked in a despairing tone.
+
+"No, indeed," I answered triumphantly, "they were given to me,--a
+present from judge Trask.  I'm in great luck, ain't I?"
+
+Alice was almost as pleased as I was.  The interest with which she
+inspected the lovely volumes was not feigned.  "But who is Judge
+Trask?" she asked, as she read the autographic lines upon a flyleaf in
+each book.  I explained glibly that the judge was a wealthy and
+cultured citizen who felt somewhat under obligation to me for certain
+little services I had rendered him one time and another.  I was not to
+be trapped or cornered.  I had learned my sinful lesson perfectly.
+Alice never so much as suspected me of evil.
+
+The scheme worked so well that I pursued it with more or less
+diligence.  I should say that about twice a week on an average a bundle
+of books came to the house "with the compliments" of either Judge Trask
+or Colonel Flail or Mr. Bisland.  You can understand that I could not
+hope to play the Trask deception exclusively and successfully.  I
+invented Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland, and I contrived to render them
+quite as liberal in their patronage as the mythical Judge Trask
+himself.  Occasionally a donation came in, by way of variety, from
+Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell and other solitary creations of my
+mendacious imagination, when I used to blind poor dear Alice to the
+hideous truth.  Touching myself, I gave it out that I had abandoned
+book-buying, was convinced of the folly of the mania, had reformed, and
+was repentant.  Alice loved me all the better for that, and she became
+once more the sweetest, most amiable little woman in all the world.
+She was inexpressibly happy in the fond delusion that I had become
+prudent and thrifty, and was putting money in bank for that home we
+were going to buy--sometime.
+
+Meanwhile the names of Flail, Trask, and Bisland became household words
+with us.  Occasionally Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell were mentioned
+gratefully as some fair volume bearing their autograph was inspected;
+but, after all, Flail, Trask, and Bisland were the favorites, for it
+was from them that most of my beloved books came.  Yes, Alice gradually
+grew to love those three myths; she loved them because they were good
+to me.
+
+Alice had, like most others of her sex, a strong sense of duty.  She
+determined to do something for my noble friends, and finally she
+planned a lovely little dinner whereat Judge Trask and Colonel Flail
+and Mr. Bisland were to be regaled with choicest viands of Alice's
+choice larder and with the sweetest speeches of Alice's graceful heart.
+I was authorized only to convey the invitations to this delectable
+banquet, and here was a pretty plight for a man to be in, surely
+enough!  But my bachelor friend Kinzie (ough, the Mephisto!) helped me
+out.  I reported back to Alice that Judge Trask was out of town, that
+Colonel Flail was sick abed with grip, and that Mr. Bisland was
+altogether too shy a man to think of venturing out to a dinner alone.
+Alice was dreadfully disappointed.  Still there was consolation in
+feeling that she had done her duty in trying to do it.
+
+Well, this system of deception and perjury went on a long time, Alice
+never suspecting any evil, but perfectly happy in my supposed reform
+and economy, and in the gracious liberality of those three
+Maecenas-like friends, Flail, Trask, and Bisland, who kept pouring in
+rare and beauteous old tomes upon me.  She was joyous, too, in the
+prospect of that new house which we would soon be able to build, now
+that I had so long quit the old ruinous mania for book-buying!  And
+I--wretch that I was--I humored her in this conceit; I heaped perjury
+upon perjury; lying and deception had become my second nature.  Yet I
+loathed myself and I hated those books; they reproached me every time I
+came into their presence.  So I was miserable and helpless; how hard it
+is to turn about when one once gets into the downward path!  The shifts
+I was put to, and the desperate devices which I was forced to
+employ,--I shudder to recall them!  Life became a constant, terrifying
+lie.
+
+Thank Heaven, it is over now, and my face is turned the right way.  A
+third little son was born to us.  Alice was, oh! so very ill.  When she
+was convalescing she said to me one day: "Hiram, I have been thinking
+it all over, and I've made up my mind that we must name the baby Trask
+Flail Bisland, after our three good friends."
+
+I did n't make any answer, went out into the hall, and communed awhile
+with my own hideous, tormented self.  How my soul revolted against the
+prospect of giving to that innocent babe a name that would serve simply
+to scourge me through the rest of my wicked life!  No, I could not
+consent to that.  I would be a coward no longer!
+
+I went back into Alice's room, and sat upon the bed beside her, and
+took one of Alice's dear little white hands in mine, and told her
+everything, told Alice the whole truth,--all about my wickedness and
+perjuries and deceptions; told her what a selfish, cruel monster I had
+been; dispelled all the sinful delusion about Flail, Trask, and
+Bisland; threw myself, penitent and hopeless, upon my deceived,
+outraged little wife's mercy.  Was it a mean advantage to take of a
+sick woman?
+
+I fancied she would reproach me, for I knew that her heart was set upon
+that new house she had talked of so often; I told her that the savings
+she had supposed were in bank, were in reality represented only by and
+in those stately folios and sumptuous quartos which the mythical Flail,
+Trask, and Bisland had presumably donated.  "But," I added, "I shall
+sell them now, and with the money I shall build the home in which we
+may be happy again,--a lovely home, sweetheart, with no library at all,
+but all nursery if you wish it so!"
+
+"No," said Alice, when I had ended my blubbering confession, "we shall
+not part with the books; they have caused you more suffering than they
+have me, and, moreover, their presence will have a beneficial effect
+upon you.  Furthermore, I myself have become attached to them,--you
+know I thought they were given to you, and so I have learned to care
+for them.  Poor Judge Trask and Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland,--so they
+are only myths?  Dear Hiram," she added with a sigh, "I can forgive you
+for everything except for taking those three good men out of our lives!"
+
+After all this I have indeed reformed.  I have actually become prudent,
+and I have a bank-account that is constantly increasing.  I do not hate
+books; I simply do not buy them.  And I eschew that old sinner, Kinzie,
+and all the sinister influences he represents.  As for our third little
+boy, we have named him Reform Meigs, after Alice's mother's
+grandfather, who built the first saw-mill in what is now the State of
+Ohio, and was killed by the Indians in 1796.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOUCH IN THE HEART
+
+Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and so was old Abel's wife, when little
+Abel came.  For this coming they had waited many years.  God had
+prospered them elsewise; this one supreme blessing only had been
+withheld.  Yet Abel had never despaired.  "I shall some time have a
+son," said he.  "I shall call him Abel.  He shall be rich; he shall
+succeed to my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my
+fortune,--all shall be his!"  Abel Dunklee felt this to be a certainty,
+and with this prospect constantly in mind he slaved and pinched and
+bargained.  So when at last the little one did come it was as heir to a
+considerable property.
+
+The joy in the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at
+large.  Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man.  Folk had the
+well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard.  If he had
+not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good
+man.  His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order.  He had
+always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in
+keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: Abel's
+idea of goodness was to owe no man any money.  He never gave a penny to
+charities, and he never spent any time sympathizing with the
+misfortunes or distresses of other people.  He was narrow, close,
+selfish, and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large said,
+and I shall not deny that the verdict was a just one.
+
+When a little one comes into this world of ours, it is the impulse of
+the people here to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant.  When
+little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained outside the austere
+Dunklee household.  Popular sentiment found vent in an expression of
+the hope that the son and heir would grow up to scatter the dollars
+which old man Dunklee had accumulated by years of relentless avarice
+and unflagging toil.  But Dr. Hardy--he who had officiated in an
+all-important capacity upon that momentous occasion in the Dunklee
+household--Dr. Hardy shook his head wisely, and perhaps sadly, as if he
+were saying to himself: "No, the child will never do either what the
+old folk or what the other folk would have him do; he is not long for
+here."
+
+Had you questioned him closely, Dr. Hardy would have told you that
+little Abel was as frail a babe as ever did battle for life.  Dr. Hardy
+would surely never have dared say that to old Dunklee; for in his
+rapture in the coming of that little boy old Dunklee would have smote
+the offender who presumed even to intimate that the babe was not the
+most vigorous as well as the most beautiful creature upon earth.  The
+old man was simply assotted upon the child,--in a selfish way,
+undoubtedly, but even this selfish love of that puny little child
+showed that the old man was capable of somewhat better than his past
+life had been.  To hear him talk you might have fancied that Mrs.
+Dunklee had no part or parcel or interest in their offspring.  It was
+always "my little boy,"--yes, old Abel Dunklee's money had a rival in
+the old man's heart at last, and that rival was a helpless, shrunken,
+sickly little babe.
+
+Among his business associates Abel Dunklee was familiarly known as Old
+Growly, for the reason that his voice was harsh and discordant, and
+sounded for all the world like the hoarse growling of an ill-natured
+bear.  Abel was not a particularly irritable person, but his slavish
+devotion to money-getting, his indifference to the amenities of life,
+his entire neglect of the tender practices of humanity, his rough,
+unkempt personality, and his deep, hoarse voice,--these things combined
+to make that sobriquet of "Old Growly" an exceedingly appropriate one.
+And presumably Abel never thought of resenting the slur implied therein
+and thereby; he was too shrewd not to see that, however disrespectful
+and evil-intentioned the phrase might be, it served him to good
+purpose; for it conduced to that very general awe, not to say terror,
+which kept people from bothering him with their charitable and
+sentimental schemes.
+
+Yes, I think we can accept it as a fact that Abel liked that sobriquet;
+it meant more money in his pocket, and fewer demands upon his time and
+patience.
+
+But Old Growly abroad and Old Growly at home were two very different
+people.  Only the voice was the same.  The homely, furrowed, wizened
+face lighted up, and the keen, restless eyes lost their expression of
+shrewdness, and the thin, bony hands that elsewhere clutched and
+clutched and pinched and pinched for possession unlimbered themselves
+in the presence of little Abel, and reached out their long fingers
+yearningly and caressingly toward the little child.  Then the hoarse
+voice would growl a salutation that was full of tenderness, for it came
+straight from the old man's heart; only, had you not known how much he
+loved the child, you might have thought otherwise, for the old man's
+voice was always hoarse and discordant, and that was why they called
+him Old Growly.  But what proved his love for that puny babe was the
+fact that every afternoon, when he came home from the factory, Old
+Growly brought his little boy a dime; and once, when the little fellow
+had a fever on him from teething, Old Growly brought him a dollar!
+Next day the tooth came through and the fever left him, but you could
+not make the old man believe but what it was the dollar that did it
+all.  That was natural, perhaps; for his life had been spent in
+grubbing for money, and he had not the soul to see that the best and
+sweetest things in human life are not to be had by riches alone.
+
+As the doctor had in one way and another intimated would be the case,
+the child did not wax fat and vigorous.  Although Old Growly did not
+seem to see the truth, little Abel grew older only to become what the
+doctor had foretold,--a cripple.  A weakness of the spine was
+developed, a malady that dwarfed the child's physical growth, giving to
+his wee face a pinched, starved look, warping his emaciated body, and
+enfeebling his puny limbs, while at the same time it quickened the
+intellectual faculties to the degree of precocity.  And so two and
+three and four years went by, little Abel clinging to life with
+pathetic heroism, and Old Growly loving that little cripple with all
+the violence of his selfish nature.  Never once did it occur to the
+father that his child might die, that death's seal was already set upon
+the misshapen little body; on the contrary, Old Growly's thoughts were
+constantly of little Abel's famous future, of the great fortune he was
+to fall heir to, of the prosperous business career he was to pursue, of
+the influence he was to wield in the world,--of dollars, dollars,
+dollars, millions of them which little Abel was some time to possess;
+these were Old Growly's dreams, and he loved to dream them!
+
+Meanwhile the world did well by the old man; despising him,
+undoubtedly, for his avarice and selfishness, but constantly pouring
+wealth, and more wealth, and even more wealth into his coffers.  As for
+the old man, he cared not for what the world thought or said, so long
+as it paid tribute to him; he wrought on as of old, industriously,
+shrewdly, hardly, but with this new purpose: to make his little boy
+happy and great with riches.
+
+Toys and picture-books were vanities in which Old Growly never
+indulged; to have expended a farthing for chattels of that character
+would have seemed to Old Growly like sinful extravagance.  The few
+playthings which little Abel had were such as his mother
+surreptitiously bought; the old man believed that a child should be
+imbued with a proper regard for the value of money from the very start,
+so his presents were always cash in hand, and he bought a large tin
+bank for little Abel, and taught the child how to put the copper and
+silver pieces into it, and he labored diligently to impress upon the
+child of how great benefit that same money would be to him by and by.
+Just picture to yourself, if you can, that fond, foolish old man
+seeking to teach this lesson to that wan-eyed, pinched-face little
+cripple!  But little Abel took it all very seriously, and was so apt a
+pupil that Old Growly made great joy and was wont to rub his bony hands
+gleefully and say to himself, "He has great genius,--this boy of
+mine,--great genius for finance!"
+
+But on a day, coming from his factory, Old Growly was stricken with
+horror to find that during his absence from home a great change had
+come upon his child.  The doctor said it was simply the progress of the
+disease; that it was a marvel that little Abel had already held out so
+long; that from the moment of his birth the seal of death had been set
+upon him in that cruel malady which had drawn his face and warped his
+body and limbs.  Then all at once Old Growly's eyes seemed to be opened
+to the truth, and like a lightning flash it came to him that perhaps
+his pleasant dreams which he had dreamed of his child's future could
+never be realized.  It was a bitter awakening, yet amid it all the old
+man was full of hope, determination, and battle.  He had little faith
+in drugs and nursing and professional skill; he remembered that upon
+previous occasions cures had been wrought by means of money; teeth had
+been brought through, the pangs of colic beguiled, and numerous other
+ailments to which infancy is heir had by the same specific been
+baffled.  So now Old Growly set about wooing his little boy from the
+embrace of death,--sought to coax him back to health with money, and
+the dimes became dollars, and the tin bank was like to burst of
+fulness.  But little Abel drooped and drooped, and he lost all interest
+in other things, and he was content to lie, drooping-eyed and listless,
+in his mother's arms all day.  At last the little flame went out with
+hardly so much as a flutter, and the hope of the house of Dunklee was
+dissipated forever.  But even in those last moments of the little
+cripple's suffering the father struggled to call back the old look into
+the fading eyes, and the old smile into the dear, white face.  He
+brought treasure from his vaults and held it up before those fading
+eyes, and promised it all, all, all--everything he possessed, gold,
+houses, lands--all he had he would give to that little child if that
+little child would only live.  But the fading eyes saw other things,
+and the ears that were deaf to the old man's lamentations heard voices
+that soothed the anguish of that last solemn hour.  And so little Abel
+knew the Mystery.
+
+Then the old man crept away from that vestige of his love, and stood
+alone in the night, and lifted up his face, and beat his bosom, and
+moaned at the stars, asking over and over again why he had been so
+bereaved.  And while he agonized in this wise and cried there came to
+him a voice,--a voice so small that none else could hear, a voice
+seemingly from God; for from infinite space beyond those stars it sped
+its instantaneous way to the old man's soul and lodged there.
+
+"Abel, I have touched thy heart!"
+
+And so, having come into the darkness of night, old Dunklee went back
+into the light of day and found life beautiful; for the touch was in
+his heart.
+
+After that, Old Growly's way of dealing with the world changed.  He had
+always been an honest man, honest as the world goes.  But now he was
+somewhat better than honest; he was kind, considerate, merciful.
+People saw and felt the change, and they knew why it was so.  But the
+pathetic part of it all was that Old Growly would never admit--no, not
+even to himself--that he was the least changed from his old grinding,
+hard self.  The good deeds he did were not his own; they were his
+little boy's,--at least so he said.  And it was his whim when doing
+some kind and tender thing to lay it to little Abel, of whom he always
+spoke as if he were still living.  His workmen, his neighbors, his
+townsmen,--all alike felt the graciousness of the wondrous change, and
+many, ah! many a lowly sufferer blessed that broken old man for succor
+in little Abel's name.  And the old man was indeed much broken: not
+that he had parted with his shrewdness and acumen, for, as of old, his
+every venture prospered; but in this particular his mind seemed
+weakened; that, as I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was
+given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of which the burden
+seemed to be that child of his, and that his greatest pleasure appeared
+now to be watching other little ones at their play.  In fact, so
+changed was he from the Old Growly of former years, that, whereas he
+had then been wholly indifferent to the presence of those little ones
+upon earth, he now sought their company, and delighted to view their
+innocent and mirthful play.  And so, presently, the children, from
+regarding him at first with distrust, came to confide in and love him,
+and in due time the old man was known far and wide as Old Grampa
+Growly, and he was pleased thereat.  It was his wont to go every fair
+day, of an afternoon, into a park hard by his dwelling, and mingle with
+the crowd of little folk there; and when they were weary of their
+sports they used to gather about him,--some even clambering upon his
+knees,--and hear him tell his story, for he had only one story to tell,
+and that was the story that lay next his heart,--the story ever and
+forever beginning with, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy."  A very tender
+little story it was, too, told very much more sweetly than I could ever
+tell it; for it was of Old Grampa Growly's own little boy, and it came
+from that heart in which the touch--the touch of God Himself--lay like
+a priceless pearl.
+
+So you must know that the last years of the old man's life made full
+atonement for those that had gone before.  People forgot that the old
+man had ever been other than he was now, and of course the children
+never knew otherwise.  But as for himself, Old Grampa Growly grew
+tenderer and tenderer, and his goodness became a household word, and he
+was beloved of all.  And to the very last he loved the little ones, and
+shared their pleasures, and sympathized with them in their griefs, but
+always repeating that same old story, beginning with "Once ther' wuz a
+littl' boy."
+
+The curious part of it was this: that while he implied by his
+confidences to the children that his own little boy was dead, he never
+made that admission to others.  On the contrary, it was his wont, as I
+have said, to speak of little Abel as if that child still lived, and,
+humoring him in this conceit, it was the custom of the older ones to
+speak always of that child as if he lived and were known and beloved of
+all.  In this custom the old man had great content and solace.  For it
+was his wish that all he gave to and did for charity's sake should be
+known to come, not from him, but from Abel, his son, and this was his
+express stipulation at all such times.  I know whereof I speak, for I
+was one of those to whom the old man came upon a time and said: "My
+little boy--Abel, you know--will give me no peace till I do what he
+requires.  He has this sum of money which he has saved in his bank,
+count it yourselves, it is $50,000, and he bids me give it to the
+townsfolk for a hospital, one for little lame boys and girls.  And I
+have promised him--my little boy, Abel, you know--that I will give
+$50,000 more.  You shall have it when that hospital is built."  Surely
+enough, in eighteen months' time the old man handed us the rest of the
+money, and when we told him that the place was to be called the Abel
+Dunklee hospital he was sorely distressed, and shook his head, and
+said: "No, no,--not _my_ name!  Call it the _Little_ Abel hospital, for
+little Abel--my boy, you know--has done it all."
+
+The old man lived many years,--lived to hear tender voices bless him,
+and to see pale faces brighten at the sound of his footfall.  Yes, for
+many years the quaint, shuffling figure moved about our streets, and
+his hoarse but kindly voice--oh, very kindly now!--was heard repeating
+to the children that pathetic old story of "Once ther' wuz a littl'
+boy."  And where the dear old feet trod the grass grew greenest, and
+the sunbeams nestled.  But at last there came a summons for the old
+man,--a summons from away off yonder,--and the old man heard it and
+went thither.
+
+The doctor--himself hoary and stooping now--told me that toward the
+last Old Grampa Growly sunk into a sort of sleep, or stupor, from which
+they could not rouse him.  For many hours he lay like one dead, but his
+thin, creased face was very peaceful, and there was no pain.  Children
+tiptoed in with flowers, and some cried bitterly, while others--those
+who were younger--whispered to one another: "Hush, let us make no
+noise; Old Grampa Growly is sleeping."
+
+At last the old man roused up.  He had lain like one dead for many
+hours, but now at last he seemed to wake of a sudden, and, seeing
+children about him, perhaps he fancied himself in that pleasant park,
+under the trees, where so very often he had told his one pathetic story
+to those little ones.  Leastwise he made a feeble motion as if he would
+have them gather nearer, and, seeming to know his wish, the children
+came closer to him.  Those who were nearest heard him say with the
+ineffable tenderness of old, "Once ther' wuz a littl' boy--"
+
+And with those last sweet words upon his lips, and with the touch in
+his heart, the old man went down into the Valley.
+
+
+
+
+DANIEL AND THE DEVIL
+
+Daniel was a very wretched man.  As he sat with his head bowed upon his
+desk that evening he made up his mind that his life had been a failure.
+"I have labored long and diligently," said he to himself, "and although I
+am known throughout the city as an industrious and shrewd business man, I
+am still a poor man, and shall probably continue so to the end of my days
+unless--unless--"
+
+Here Daniel stopped and shivered.  For a week or more he had been
+brooding over his unhappy lot.  There seemed to be but one way out of his
+trouble, yet his soul revolted from taking that step.  That was why he
+stopped and shivered.
+
+"But," he argued, "I _must_ do something!  My nine children are growing
+up into big boys and girls.  They must have those advantages which my
+limited means will not admit of!  All my life so far has been pure,
+circumspect, and rigid; poverty has at last broken my spirit.  I give up
+the fight,--I am ready to sell my soul to the Devil!"
+
+"The determination is a wise one," said a voice at Daniel's elbow.
+Daniel looked up and beheld a grim-visaged stranger in the chair beside
+him.  The stranger was arrayed all in black, and he exhaled a distinct
+odor of sulphur.
+
+"Am I to understand," asked the stranger, "that you are prepared to enter
+into a league with the Devil?"
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, firmly; and he set his teeth together after the
+fashion of a man who is not to be moved from his purpose.
+
+"Then I am ready to treat with you," said the stranger.
+
+"Are you the Devil?" asked Daniel, eying the stranger critically.
+
+"No, but I am authorized to enter into contracts for him," explained the
+stranger.  "My name is Beelzebub, and I am my master's most trusted
+agent."
+
+"Sir," said Daniel, "you must pardon me (for I am loath to wound your
+feelings), but one of the rules governing my career as a business man has
+been to deal directly with principals, and never to trust to the offices
+of middle-men.  The affair now in hand is one concerning the Devil and
+myself, and between us two and by us two only can the preliminaries be
+adjusted."
+
+"As it so happens," explained Beelzebub, "this is Friday,--commonly
+called hangman's day,--and that is as busy a time in our particular
+locality as a Monday is in a laundry, or as the first of every month is
+at a book-keeper's desk.  You can understand, perhaps, that this is the
+Devil's busy day; therefore be content to make this deal with me, and you
+will find that my master will cheerfully accept any contract I may enter
+into as his agent and in his behalf."
+
+But no,--Daniel would not agree to this; with the Devil himself, and only
+the Devil himself, would he treat.  So he bade Beelzebub go to the Devil
+and make known his wishes.  Beelzebub departed, much chagrined.
+Presently back came the Devil, and surely it _was_ the Devil this
+time,--there could be no mistake about it; for he wore a scarlet cloak,
+and had cloven feet, and carried about with him as many suffocating
+smells as there are kinds of brimstone, sulphur, and assafoetida.
+
+The two talked over all Daniel's miseries; the Devil sympathized with
+Daniel, and ever and anon a malodorous, gummy tear would trickle down the
+Devil's sinister nose and drop off on the carpet.
+
+"What you want is money," said the Devil.  "That will give you the
+comfort and the contentment you crave."
+
+"Yes," said Daniel; "it will give me every opportunity to do good."
+
+"To do good!" repeated the Devil.  "To do good, indeed!  Yes, it's many a
+good time we shall have together, friend Daniel!  Ha, ha, ha!"  And the
+Devil laughed uproariously.  Nothing seemed more humorous than the
+prospect of "doing good" with the Devil's money!  But Daniel failed to
+see what the Devil was so jolly about.  Daniel was not a humorist; he
+was, as we have indicated, a plain business man.
+
+It was finally agreed that Daniel should sell his soul to the Devil upon
+condition that for the space of twenty-four years the Devil should serve
+Daniel faithfully, should provide him with riches, and should do
+whatsoever he was commanded to do; then, at the end of the twenty-fourth
+year, Daniel's soul was to pass into the possession of the Devil, and was
+to remain there forever, without recourse or benefit of clergy.  Surely a
+more horrible contract was never entered into!
+
+"You will have to sign your name to this contract," said the Devil,
+producing a sheet of asbestos paper upon which all the terms of the
+diabolical treaty were set forth exactly.
+
+"Certainly," replied Daniel.  "I have been a business man long enough to
+know the propriety and necessity of written contracts.  And as for you,
+you must of course give a bond for the faithful execution of your part of
+this business."
+
+"That is something I have never done before," suggested the Devil.
+
+"I shall insist upon it," said Daniel, firmly.  "This is no affair of
+sentiment; it is strictly and coldly business: you are to do certain
+service, and are to receive certain rewards therefor--"
+
+"Yes, your soul!" cried the Devil, gleefully rubbing his callous hands
+together.  "Your soul in twenty-four years!"
+
+"Yes," said Daniel.  "Now, no contract is good unless there is a quid pro
+quo."
+
+"That's so," said the Devil, "so let's get a lawyer to draw up the paper
+for me to sign."
+
+"Why a lawyer?" queried Daniel.  "A contract is a simple instrument; I,
+as a business man, can frame one sufficiently binding."
+
+"But I prefer to have a lawyer do it," urged the Devil.
+
+"And _I_ prefer to do it myself," said Daniel.
+
+When a business man once gets his mind set, not even an Archimedean lever
+could stir it.  So Daniel drew up the bond for the Devil to sign, and
+this bond specified that in case the Devil failed at any time during the
+next twenty-four years to do whatso Daniel commanded him, then should the
+bond which the Devil held against Daniel become null and void, and upon
+that same day should a thousand and one souls be released forever from
+the Devil's dominion.  The Devil winced; he hated to sign this agreement,
+but he had to.  An awful clap of thunder ratified the abominable treaty,
+and every black cat within a radius of a hundred leagues straightway fell
+to frothing and to yowling grotesquely.
+
+Presently Daniel began to prosper; the Devil was a faithful slave, and he
+served Daniel so artfully that no person on earth suspected that Daniel
+had leagued with the evil one.  Daniel had the finest house in the city,
+his wife dressed magnificently, and his children enjoyed every luxury
+wealth could provide.  Still, Daniel was content to be known as a
+business man; he deported himself modestly and kindly; he pursued with
+all his old-time diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found
+so unproductive of riches.  His indifference to the pleasures which money
+put within his reach was passing strange, and it caused the Devil vast
+uneasiness.
+
+"Daniel," said the Devil, one day, "you're not getting out of this thing
+all the fun there is in it.  You go poking along in the same old rut with
+never a suspicion that you have it in your power to enjoy every pleasure
+of human life.  Why don't you break away from the old restraints?  Why
+don't you avail yourself of the advantages at your command?"
+
+"I know what you 're driving at," said Daniel, shrewdly, "Politics!"
+
+"No, not at all," remonstrated the Devil.  "What I mean is fun,--gayety.
+Why not have a good time, Daniel?"
+
+"But I am having a good time," said Daniel.  "My business is going along
+all right, I am rich.  I 've got a lovely home; my wife is happy; my
+children are healthy and contented; I am respected,--what more could I
+ask?  What better time could I demand?"
+
+"You don't understand me," explained the Devil.  "What I mean by a good
+time is that which makes the heart merry and keeps the soul youthful and
+buoyant,--wine, Daniel!  Wine and the theatre and pretty girls and fast
+horses and all that sort of happy, joyful life!"
+
+"Tut, tut, tut!" cried Daniel; "no more of that, sir!  I sowed my wild
+oats in college.  What right have I to think of such silly follies,--I,
+at forty years of age, and a business man too?"
+
+So not even the Devil himself could persuade Daniel into a life of
+dissipation.  All you who have made a study of the business man will
+agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to swerve from
+conservative methods.  The Devil groaned and began to wonder why he had
+ever tied up to a man like Daniel,--a business man.
+
+Pretty soon Daniel developed an ambition.  He wanted reputation, and he
+told the Devil so.  The Devil's eyes sparkled.  "At last," murmured the
+Devil, with a sigh of relief,--"at last."
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, "I want to be known far and wide.  You must build a
+church for me."
+
+"What!" shrieked the Devil.  And the Devil's tail stiffened up like a
+sore thumb.
+
+"Yes," said Daniel, calmly; "you must build a church for me, and it must
+be the largest and the handsomest church in the city.  The sittings shall
+be free, and you shall provide the funds for its support forever."
+
+The Devil frothed at his mouth, and blue fire issued from his ears and
+nostrils.  He was the maddest devil ever seen on earth.
+
+"I won't do it!" roared the Devil.  "Do you suppose I'm going to spend my
+time building churches and stultifying myself just for the sake of
+gratifying your idle whims?  I won't do it,--never!"
+
+"Then the bond I gave is null and void," said Daniel.
+
+"Take your old bond," said the Devil, petulantly.
+
+"But the bond you gave is operative," continued Daniel.  "So release the
+thousand and one souls you owe me when you refuse to obey me."
+
+"Oh, Daniel!" whimpered the Devil, "how can you treat me so?  Have n't I
+always been good to you?  Have n't I given you riches and prosperity?
+Does no sentiment of friendship--"
+
+"Hush," said Daniel, interrupting him.  "I have already told you a
+thousand times that our relations were simply those of one business man
+with another.  It now behooves you to fulfil your part of our compact;
+eventually I shall fulfil mine.  Come, now, to business!  Will you or
+will you not keep your word and save your bond?"
+
+The Devil was sorely put to his trumps.  But when it came to releasing a
+thousand and one souls from hell,--ah, that staggered him!  He had to
+build the church, and a noble one it was too.  Then he endowed the
+church, and finally he built a parsonage; altogether it was a stupendous
+work, and Daniel got all the credit for it.  The preacher whom Daniel
+installed in this magnificent temple was severely orthodox, and one of
+the first things he did was to preach a series of sermons upon the
+personality of the Devil, wherein he inveighed most bitterly against that
+person and his work.
+
+By and by Daniel made the Devil endow and build a number of hospitals,
+charity schools, free baths, libraries, and other institutions of similar
+character.  Then he made him secure the election of honest men to office
+and of upright judges to the bench.  It almost broke the Devil's heart to
+do it, but the Devil was prepared to do almost anything else than forfeit
+his bond and give up those one thousand and one souls.  By this time
+Daniel came to be known far and wide for his philanthropy and his piety.
+This gratified him of course; but most of all he gloried in the
+circumstance that he was a business man.
+
+"Have you anything for me to do today?" asked the Devil, one morning.  He
+had grown to be a very meek and courteous devil; steady employment in
+righteous causes had chastened him to a degree and purged away somewhat
+of the violence of his nature.  On this particular morning he looked
+haggard and ill,--yes, and he looked, too, as blue as a whetstone.
+
+"I am not feeling robust," explained the Devil.  "To tell the truth, I am
+somewhat ill."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Daniel; "but as I am not conducting a
+sanitarium, I can do nothing further than express my regret that you are
+ailing.  Of course our business relations do not contemplate any
+interchange of sympathies; still I'll go easy with you to-day.  You may
+go up to the house and look after the children; see that they don't smoke
+cigarettes, or quarrel, or tease the cat, or do anything out of the way."
+
+Now that was fine business for the Devil to be in; but how could the
+Devil help himself?  He was wholly at Daniel's mercy.  He went groaning
+about the humiliating task.
+
+The crash came at last.  It was when the Devil informed Daniel one day
+that he was n't going to work for him any more.
+
+"You have ruined my business," said the Devil, wearily.  "A committee of
+imps waited upon me last night and told me that unless I severed my
+connection with you a permanent suspension of my interests down yonder
+would be necessitated.  While I have been running around doing your
+insane errands my personal business has gone to the dogs--I would n't be
+at all surprised if I were to have to get a new plant altogether.
+Meanwhile my reputation has suffered; I am no longer respected, and the
+number of my recruits is daily becoming smaller.  I give up,--I can make
+no further sacrifice."
+
+"Then you are prepared to forfeit your bond?" asked Daniel.
+
+"Not by any means," replied the Devil.  "I propose to throw the matter
+into the courts."
+
+"That will hardly be to your interest," said Daniel, "since, as you well
+know, we have recently elected honest men to the bench, and, as I
+recollect, most of our judges are members in good standing of the church
+we built some years ago!"
+
+The Devil howled with rage.  Then, presently, he began to whimper.
+
+"For the last time," expostulated Daniel, "let me remind you that
+sentiment does not enter into this affair at all.  We are simply two
+business parties cooeperating in a business scheme.  Our respective duties
+are exactly defined in the bonds we hold.  You keep your contract and
+I'll keep mine.  Let me see, I still have a margin of thirteen years."
+
+The Devil groaned and writhed.
+
+"They call me a dude," whimpered the Devil.
+
+"Who do?" asked Daniel.
+
+"Beelzebub and the rest," said the Devil.  "I have been trotting around
+doing pious errands so long that I 've lost all my sulphur-and-brimstone
+flavor, and now I smell like spikenard and myrrh."
+
+"Pooh!" said Daniel.
+
+"Well, I do," insisted the Devil.  "You've humiliated me so that I hain't
+got any more ambition.  Yes, Daniel, you've worked me shamefully hard!"
+
+"Well," said Daniel, "I have a very distinct suspicion that when,
+thirteen years hence, I fall into your hands I shall not enjoy what might
+be called a sedentary life."
+
+The Devil plucked up at this suggestion.  "Indeed you shall not," he
+muttered.  "I'll make it hot for you!"
+
+"But come, we waste time," said Daniel.  "I am a man of business, and I
+cannot fritter away the precious moments parleying with you.  I have
+important work for you.  Tomorrow is Sunday; you are to see that all the
+saloons are kept closed."
+
+"I sha'n't--I won't!" yelled the Devil.
+
+"But you must," said Daniel, firmly.
+
+"Do you really expect me to do _that_?" roared the Devil.  "Do you fancy
+that I am so arrant a fool as to shut off the very feeders whereby my
+hungry hell is supplied?  That would be suicidal!"
+
+"I don't know anything about that," said Daniel; "I am a business man,
+and by this business arrangement of ours it is explicitly stipulated--"
+
+"I don't care what the stipulations are!" shrieked the Devil.  "I'm
+through with you, and may I be consumed by my own fires if ever again I
+have anything to do with a business man!"
+
+The upshot of it all was that the Devil forfeited his bond, and by this
+act Daniel was released from every obligation unto the Devil, and one
+thousand and one souls were ransomed from the torture of the infernal
+fires.
+
+
+
+
+METHUSELAH
+
+The discussion now going on between our clergymen and certain
+unbelievers touching the question of Cain and his wife will surely
+result beneficially, for it will set everybody to reading his Bible
+more diligently.  Still, the biography of Cain is one that we could
+never become particularly interested in; in short, of all the Old
+Testament characters none other interests us so much as does
+Methuselah, the man who lived 969 years.  Would it be possible to find
+in all history another life at once so grand and so pathetic?  One can
+get a faint idea of the awful magnitude of Methuselah's career by
+pausing to recollect that 969 years represent 9.69 centuries, 96
+decades, 11,628 months, 50,388 weeks, 353,928 days, 8,494,272 hours,
+521,656,320 minutes, and 36,299,879,200 seconds!
+
+How came he to live so long?  Ah, that is easily enough explained.  He
+loved life and the world,--both were beautiful to him.  And one day he
+spoke his wish in words.  "Oh, that I might live a thousand years!" he
+cried.
+
+Then looking up straightway he beheld an angel, and the angel said:
+"Wouldst thou live a thousand years?"
+
+And Methuselah answered him, saying: "As the Lord is my God, I would
+live a thousand years."
+
+"It shall be even so," said the angel; and then the angel departed out
+of his sight.  So Methuselah lived on and on, as the angel had promised.
+
+How sweet a treasure the young Methuselah must have been to his parents
+and to his doting ancestors; with what tender solicitude must the old
+folks have watched the child's progress from the innocence of his first
+to the virility of his later centuries.  We can picture the happy
+reunions of the old Adam family under the domestic vines and fig-trees
+that bloomed near the Euphrates.  When Methuselah was a mere toddler of
+nineteen years, Adam was still living, and so was his estimable wife;
+the possibility is that the venerable couple gave young Methuselah a
+birthday party at which (we can easily imagine) there were present
+these following, to-wit: Adam, aged 687; Seth, aged 557; Enos, aged
+452; Cainan, aged 362; Mahalaleel, aged 292; Jared, aged 227; Enoch,
+aged 65, and his infant boy Methuselah, aged 19.  Here were represented
+eight direct generations, and there were present, of course,
+the wives and daughters; so that, on the whole, the gathering
+must have been as numerous as it was otherwise remarkable.
+Nowhere in any of the vistas of history, of romance, or of
+mythology were it possible to find a spectacle more imposing than
+that of the child Methuselah surrounded by his father Enoch,
+his grandfather Jared, his great-grandfather Mahalaleel, his
+great-great-grandfather Cainan, his great-great-great-grandfather
+Enos, his great-great-great-great-grandfather Seth, and his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam, as well as by his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve, and her feminine
+posterity for (say) four centuries!  How pretty and how kindly dear old
+grandma Eve must have looked on that gala occasion, attired, as she
+must have been, in all the quaint simplicity of that primeval period;
+and how must the dear old soul have fretted through fear that little
+Methuselah would eat too many papaws, or drink too much goat's milk.
+It is a marvel, we think, that in spite of the indulgence and the
+petting in which he was reared, Methuselah grew to be a good, kind man.
+
+Profane historians agree that just about the time he reached the age of
+ninety-four Methuselah became deeply enamoured of a comely and
+sprightly damsel named Mizpah,--a young thing scarce turned
+seventy-six.  Up to this period of adolescence his cautious father
+Enoch had kept Methuselah out of all love entanglements, and it is
+probable that he would not have approved of this affair with Mizpah had
+not Jared, the boy's grandfather, counselled Enoch to give the boy a
+chance.  But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful
+affection!  It befell in an evil time that there came over from the
+land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with
+finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that
+incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing
+young stranger of 102 as his bride.
+
+This shocking blow so grievously affected Methuselah that for some time
+(that is to say, for a period of ninety-one years) he shunned female
+society.  But having recovered somewhat from the bitterness of that
+great disappointment received in the callowness of his ninth decade, he
+finally met and fell in love with Adah, a young woman of 148, and her
+he married.  The issue of this union was a boy whom they named Lamech,
+and this child from the very hour of his birth gave his father vast
+worriment, which, considering the disparity in their ages, is indeed
+most shocking of contemplation.  The tableau of a father (aged 187)
+vainly coddling a colicky babe certainly does not call for our
+enthusiasm.  Yet we presume to say that Methuselah bore his trials
+meekly, that he cherished and adored the baby, and that he spent weeks
+and months playing peek-a-boo and ride-a-cock-horse.  In all our
+consideration of Methuselah we must remember that the mere matter of
+time was of no consequence to him.
+
+Lamech grew to boyhood, involving his father in all those ridiculous
+complications which parents nowadays do not heed so much, but which
+must have been of vast annoyance to a man of Methuselah's advanced age
+and proper notions.  Whittling with the old gentleman's razor, hooking
+off from school, trampling down the neighbors' rowen, tracking mud into
+the front parlor--these were some of Lamech's idiosyncrasies, and of
+course they tormented Methuselah, who recalled sadly that boys were no
+longer what they used to be when he was a boy some centuries previous.
+But when he got to be 182 years old Lamech had sowed all his wild oats,
+and it was then he married a clever young girl of 98, who bore him a
+son whom they called Noah.  Now if Methuselah had been worried and
+plagued by Lamech, he was more than compensated therefor by this baby
+grandson, whom he found to be, aside from all prejudices, the prettiest
+and the smartest child he had ever seen.  Old father Adam, who was now
+turned of his ninth century, tottered over to see the baby, and he,
+too, allowed that it was an uncommonly bright child.  And dear old
+grandma Eve declared that there was an expression about the upper part
+of the little Noah's face that reminded her very much of the soft-eyed
+boy she lost 800 years ago.  And dear old grandma Eve used to rock
+little Noah and sing to him, and cry softly to herself all the while.
+
+Now, in good time, Noah grew to lusty youth, and although he was, on
+the whole, a joy to his grandsire Methuselah, he developed certain
+traits and predilections that occasioned the old gentleman much
+uneasiness.  At the tender age of 265 Noah exhibited a strange passion
+for aquatics, and while it was common for other boys of that time to
+divert themselves with the flocks and herds, with slingshots and
+spears, with music and dancing, Noah preferred to spend his hours
+floating toy-ships in the bayous of the Euphrates.  Every day he took
+his little shittim-wood boats down to the water, tied strings to them,
+and let them float hither and thither on the crystal bosom of the tide.
+Naturally enough these practices worried the grandfather mightily.
+
+"May not the crocodiles compass him round about?" groaned Methuselah.
+"May not behemoth prevail against him?  Or, verily, it may befall that
+the waves shall devour him.  Woe is me and lamentation unto this
+household if destruction come to him through the folly of his fathers!"
+
+So Methuselah's age began to be full of care and trouble, and many a
+time he felt weary of living, and sometimes--yes, sometimes--he wished
+he were dead.  People in those times were not afraid to die; they
+believed in the second and better life, because God spoke with them and
+told them it should be.
+
+The last century of this good man's sojourn upon earth was
+particularly pathetic.  His ancestors were all dead; he alone
+remained the last living reminiscence of a time that but for him
+would have been forgotten.  Deprived of the wise counsels of his
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam and of the gentle
+admonitions of his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eve,
+Methuselah felt not only lonesome but even in danger of wrong-doing, so
+precious to him had been the teachings of these worthy progenitors.
+And what particularly disturbed Methuselah were the dreadful changes
+that had taken place in society since he was a boy.  Dress, speech,
+customs, and morals were all different now from what they used to be.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy,--ah, he remembered it well,--people went
+hither and thither clad only in simple fig-leaf garb; and they were
+content therewith.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy, people spoke a plain, direct language,
+strong in its truth, its simplicity, and its honest vigor.
+
+When Methuselah was a boy, manners were open and unaffected, and morals
+were pure and healthy.
+
+But now all these things were changed.  An evil called fashion had
+filled the minds of men and women with vanity.  From the sinful land of
+Nod and from other pagan countries came divers tradesmen with purples
+and linens and fine feathers, whereby a wicked pride was engendered,
+and from these sinful countries, too, came frivolous manners that
+supplanted the guileless etiquette of the past.
+
+Moreover, traffic and intercourse with the subtle heathen had corrupted
+and perverted the speech of Adam's time: crafty phrases and false
+rhetorics had crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were
+fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete.  Such new-fangled
+words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas,"
+and "sithence" had stolen into common usage, making more direct and
+simpler speech a jest and a byword.
+
+Likewise had prudence given way to extravagance, abstemiousness to
+intemperance, dignity to frivolity, and continence to lust; so that by
+these evils was Methuselah grievously tormented, and it repented him
+full sore that he had lived to see such exceeding wickedness upon
+earth.  But in the midst of all these follies did Methuselah maintain
+an upright and godly life, and continually did he bless God for that he
+had held him in the path of rectitude.
+
+Now when Methuselah was in the 964th summer of his sojourn he was
+called upon to mourn the death of his son Lamech, whom an inscrutable
+Providence had cut off in what in those days was considered the flower
+of a man's life,--namely, the eighth century thereof.  Lamech's
+untimely decease was a severe blow to his doting father, who,
+forgetting all his son's boyish indiscretions, remembered now only
+Lamech's good and lovable traits and deeds.  It is reasonable to
+suppose, however, that the old gentleman was somewhat beguiled from his
+grief by the lively dispositions and playful antics of Lamech's
+grandsons, Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,--Shem, Ham, and
+Japheth,--who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of
+ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively.  These boys
+inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and
+scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and
+sloughs of the Euphrates in their gopher-wood canoes.
+
+"Gran'pa," Noah used to say, "the conduct of those boys causes me
+constant vexation.  I have no time to follow them around, and I am
+haunted continually by the fear that they will be drowned, or that the
+crocodiles will get them if they don't watch out!"
+
+But Methuselah would smiling answer: "Possess thy soul in patience and
+thy bowels in peace; for verily is it not written 'boys will be boys!'"
+
+Now Shem, Ham, and Japheth were very fond of their great-grandpa, and
+to their credit be it said that next to paddling over the water
+privileges of the Euphrates they liked nothing better than to sit in
+the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times.
+Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half
+centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally
+suppose.  Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for
+Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on
+earth.  On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in
+very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually
+referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a
+"mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they
+took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him
+with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say
+shocking, to a gentleman of his years.
+
+It was perhaps, however, at the old settlers' picnics, which even then
+were of annual occurrence, that Methuselah most enjoyed himself; for on
+these occasions he was given the place of prominence and he was
+deferred to in everything, since he antedated all the others by at
+least three centuries.  The historians and the antiquarians of the time
+found him of much assistance to them in their labors, since he was
+always ready to provide them with dates touching incidents of the
+remote period from which he had come down unscathed.  He remembered
+vividly how, when he was 186 years of age, the Euphrates had frozen
+over to a depth of seven feet; the 209th winter of his existence he
+referred to as "the winter of the deep snow;" he remembered that
+when he was a boy the women had more character than the women
+of these later years; he had a vivid recollection of the great
+plague that prevailed in the city of Enoch during his fourth
+century; he could repeat, word for word, the address of welcome
+his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Adam delivered to an
+excursion party that came over from the land of Nod one time when
+Methuselah was a mere child of eighty-seven,--oh, yes, poor old
+Methuselah was full of reminiscence, and having crowded an active
+career into the brief period of 969 years, it can be imagined that
+ponderous tomes would not hold the tales he told whenever he was
+encouraged.
+
+One day, however, Methuselah's grandson Noah took the old gentleman
+aside and confided into his ear-trumpet a very solemn secret which must
+have grieved the old gentleman immensely, for he gnashed his gums and
+wrung his thin, bony hands and groaned dolorously.
+
+"The end of all flesh is at hand," said Noah.  "The earth is filled
+with violence through them, and God will destroy them with the earth.
+I will make an ark of gopher-wood, the length thereof 300 cubits, the
+breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits, and I will
+pitch it within and without with pitch.  Into the ark will I come, and
+my sons and my wife, and my sons' wives, and certain living beasts
+shall come, and birds of the air, and we and they shall be saved.  Come
+thou also, for thou art an austere man and a just."
+
+But as Methuselah sate alone upon his couch that night he thought of
+his life: how sweet it had been,--how that, despite the evil now and
+then, there had been more of happiness than of sorrow in it.  He even
+forgot the wickedness of the world and remembered only its good and its
+sunshine, its kindness and its love.  He blessed God for it all, and he
+prayed for the death-angel to come to him ere he beheld the destruction
+of all he so much loved.
+
+Then the angel came and spread his shadow about the old man.
+
+And the angel said: "Thy prayer is heard, and God doth forgive thee the
+score-and-ten years of the promised span of thy life."
+
+And Methuselah gathered up his feet into the bed, and prattling of the
+brooks, he fell asleep; and so he slept with his fathers.
+
+
+
+
+FELICE AND PETIT-POULAIN
+
+The name was singularly appropriate, for assuredly Felice was the
+happiest of all four-footed creatures.  Her nature was gentle; she was
+obedient, long-suffering, kind.  She had known what it was to toil and
+to bear burdens; sometimes she had suffered from hunger and from
+thirst; and before she came into the possession of Jacques she had been
+beaten, for Pierre, her former owner, was a hard master.  But Felice
+was always a kind, faithful, and gentle creature; presumably that was
+why they named her that pretty name, Felice.  She may not have been
+happy when Pierre owned and overworked and starved and beat her; that
+does not concern us now, for herein it is to tell of that time when she
+belonged to Jacques, and Jacques was a merciful man.
+
+Jacques was a farmer; he lived a short distance from Cinqville, which,
+as you are probably aware, is a town of considerable importance upon
+what used to be the boundary line between France and Germany.  The
+country round about is devoted to agriculture.  You can fancy that,
+with its even roads, leafy woods, quiet lanes, velvety paddocks, tall
+hedges, and bountiful fields, this country was indeed as pleasant a
+home as Felice--or, for that matter, any other properly minded
+horse--could hope for.  Toward the southern horizon there were hills
+that looked a grayish blue from a distance; upon these hills were
+vineyards, and the wine that came therefrom is very famous wine, as
+your uncle, if he be a club man, will very truly assure you.  There was
+a pretty little river that curled like a silver snake through the
+fertile meadows, and lost its way among the hills, and there were many
+tiny brooks that scampered across lots and got tangled up with that
+pretty little river in most bewildering fashion.  So, as you can
+imagine, this was a fair country, and you do not wonder that, with so
+merciful a master as Jacques, our friend Felice was happy.
+
+But what perfected her happiness was the coming of her little colt, as
+cunning and as blithe a creature as ever whisked a tail or galloped on
+four legs.  I do not know why they called him by that name, but
+Petit-Poulain was what they called him, and that name seemed to please
+Felice, for when farmer Jacques came thrice a day to the stile and
+cried, "Petit-Poulain, petit, petit, Petit-Poulain!" the kind old
+mother would look up fondly, and, with doting eyes, watch her dainty
+little colt go bounding toward his calling master.  And he was indeed a
+lovely little fellow.  The cure, the holy pere Francois, predicted that
+in due time that colt would make a great name for himself and a great
+fortune for his owner.  The holy pere knew whereof he spake, for in his
+youth he had tasted of the sweets of Parisian life, and upon one
+memorable occasion had successfully placed ten francs upon the winner
+of le grand prix.  We can suppose that Felice thought well of the holy
+pere.  He never came down the road that she did not thrust her nose
+through the hedge and give a mild whinny of recognition, as if she fain
+would say: "Pray stop a moment and see Petit-Poulain and his old
+mother!"
+
+What happy days those were for Felice and her darling colt.  With what
+tenderness they played together in the paddock; or, when the sky was
+overcast and a storm came on, with what solicitude would the old mother
+lead the way into the thatched stable, where there was snug protection
+against the threatening element.  There are those who say that none but
+humankind is immortal,--that none but man has a soul.  I do not make or
+believe that claim.  There is that within me which tells me that no
+thing in this world and life of ours which has felt the grace of
+maternity shall utterly perish.  And this I say in all reverence, and
+with the hope that I offend neither God nor man.
+
+You are to know that old Felice's devotion to Petit-Poulain was human
+in its tenderness.  As readily, as gladly, and as surely as your dear
+mother would lay down her life for you would old Felice have yielded up
+her life for her innocent, blithe darling.  So old Felice was happy
+that pleasant time in that fair country, and Petit-Poulain waxed hale
+and evermore blithe and beautiful.
+
+Happy days, too, were those for that peaceful country and the other
+dwellers therein.  There was no thought of evil there; the seasons were
+propitious, the vineyards thrived, the crops were bountiful; as far as
+eye could see all was prosperity and contentment.  But one day the holy
+Father Francois came hurrying down the road, and it was too evident
+that he brought evil tidings.  Felice thought it very strange that he
+paid no heed to her when, as was her wont, she thrust her nose through
+the hedge and gave a mild whinny of welcome.  Anon she saw that he
+talked long and earnestly with her master Jacques, and presently she
+saw that Jacques went into the cottage and came again therefrom with
+his wife Justine and kissed her, and then went away with Pere Francois
+toward the town off yonder.  Felice saw that Justine was weeping, and
+with never a suspicion of impending evil, she wondered why Justine
+should weep when all was so prosperous and bright and fair and happy
+about her.  Felice saw and wondered, and meanwhile Petit-Poulain
+scampered gayly about that velvety paddock.
+
+That night the vineyard hills, bathed in the mellow grace of moonlight,
+saw a sight they had never seen before.  From the east an army came
+riding and marching on,--an army of strange, determined men, speaking a
+language before unheard in that fair country and threatening things of
+which that peaceful valley had never dreamed.  You and I, of course,
+know that these were the Germans advancing upon France,--a nation of
+immortals eager to destroy the possessions and the human lives of
+fellow-immortals!  But old Felice, hearing the din away off
+yonder,--the unwonted noise of cavalry and infantry advancing with
+murderous intent,--she did not understand it all, she did not even
+suspect the truth.  You cannot wonder, for what should a soulless beast
+know of the noble, the human privilege of human slaughter?  Old Felice
+heard that strange din, and instinct led her to coax her little colt
+from the pleasant paddock into that snug and secure retreat, the
+thatched stable, and there, in the early morning, they found her,
+Petit-Poulain pulling eagerly at her generous dugs.
+
+Those who came riding up were strangers in those parts; they were
+ominously accoutred and they spoke words that old Felice had never
+heard before.  Yes, as you have already guessed, they were German
+cavalry-men.  A battle was impending, and they needed more horses.
+
+"Old enough; but in lieu of a better, she will do."  That was what they
+said.  They approached her carefully, for they suspected that she might
+be vicious.  Poor old Felice, she had never harmed even the flies that
+pestered her.  "They are going to put me at the plough," she thought.
+"It is a long time since I did work of any kind,--nothing, in fact,
+since Petit-Poulain was born.  Poor Petit-Poulain will miss me; but I
+will soon return."  With these thoughts she turned her head fondly and
+caressed her pretty colt.
+
+"The colt must be tied in the stall or he will follow her."  So said
+the cavalrymen.  They threw a rope about his neck and made him fast in
+the stable.  Petit-Poulain was very much surprised, and he remonstrated
+vainly with his fierce little heels.
+
+They put a halter upon old Felice.  Justine, the farmer's wife, met
+them in the yard, and reproached them wildly in French.  They laughed
+boisterously, and answered her in German.  Then they rode away, leading
+old Felice, who kept turning her head and whinnying pathetically, for
+she was thinking of Petit-Poulain.
+
+Of peace I know and can speak,--of peace, with its solace of love,
+plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty,
+heartache, disappointment, tears, bereavement.  Of war I know nothing,
+and never shall know; it is not in my heart of for my hand to break
+that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee.
+I do not know of war, nor can I tell you of that battle which men with
+immortal souls fought one glorious day in a fertile country with
+vineyard hills all round about.  But when night fell there was
+desolation everywhere and death.  The Eden was a wilderness; the
+winding river was choked with mangled corpses; shell and shot had mowed
+down the acres of waving grain, the exuberant orchards, the gardens and
+the hedgerows; black, charred ruins, gaunt and ghostlike, marked the
+spots where homes had stood.  The vines had been cut and torn away, and
+the despoiled hills seemed to crouch down like bereaved mothers under
+the pitiless gaze of the myriad eyes of heaven.
+
+The victors went their way; a greater triumph was in store for them; a
+mighty capital was to be besieged; more homes were to be
+desolated,--more blood shed, more hearts broken.  So the victors went
+their way, their hands red and their immortal souls elated.
+
+In the early dawn a horse came galloping homeward.  It is Felice, old
+Felice, riderless, splashed with mud, wild-eyed, sore with fatigue!
+Felice, Felice, what horrors hast thou not seen!  If thou couldst
+speak, if that tongue of thine could be loosed, what would it say of
+those who, forgetful of their souls, sink lower than the soulless
+brutes!  Better it is thou canst not speak; the anguish in thine eyes,
+the despair in thy honest heart, the fear, the awful fear in thy mother
+breast,--what tongue could utter them?
+
+Adown the road she galloped,--the same road she had traversed, perhaps,
+a thousand times before, yet it was so changed now she hardly knew it.
+Twenty-four hours had ruthlessly levelled the noble trees, the
+hedgerows, and the fields of grain.  Twenty-four hours of battle had
+done all this and more.  In all those ghastly hours, one thought had
+haunted Felice; one thought alone,--the thought of Petit-Poulain!  She
+pictured him tied in that far-away stall, wondering why she did not
+come.  He was hungry, she knew; her dugs were full of milk and they
+pained her; how sweet would be her relief when her Petit-Poulain broke
+his long fast.  Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain, Petit-Poulain,--this one
+thought and this alone had old Felice throughout those hours of battle
+and of horror.
+
+Could this have been the farm-house?  It was a ruin now.  Shells had
+torn it apart.  Where was the good master Jacques; had he gone with the
+cure to the defence of the town?  And Justine,--where was she?  Bullets
+had cut away the rose-trees and the smoke-bush; the garden was no more.
+The havoc, the desolation, was complete.  The cote, which had
+surmounted the pole around which an ivy twined, had been swept away.
+The pigeons now circled here and there bewildered; wondering, perhaps,
+why Justine did not come and call to them and feed them.
+
+To this seared, scarred spot came old Felice.  He that had ridden her
+into battle lay with his face downward near those distant vineyard
+hills.  His blood had stained Felice's neck; a bullet had grazed her
+flank, but that was a slight wound,--riderless, she turned and came
+from the battle-field and sought her Petit-Poulain once again.
+
+Hard by the ruins of cottage, of garden, and of cote, she came up
+standing; she was steaming and breathless.  She rolled her eyes wildly
+around,--she looked for the stable where she had left Petit-Poulain.
+She trembled as if an overwhelming apprehension of disaster suddenly
+possessed her.  She gave a whinny, pathetic in its tenderness.  She was
+calling Petit-Poulain.  But there was no answer.
+
+Petit-Poulain lay dead in the ruins of the stable.  His shelter had not
+escaped the fury of the battle.  He could not run away, for they had
+tied him fast when they carried his old mother off.  So now he lay amid
+that debris, his eyes half open in death and his legs stretched out
+stark and stiff.
+
+And old Felice,--her udder bursting with the maternal grace he never
+again should know, and her heart breaking with the agony of sudden and
+awful bereavement,--she staggered, as if blinded by despair, toward
+that vestige of her love, and bent over him and caressed her
+Petit-Poulain.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER
+
+Once upon a time a little boy came, during his play, to the bank of a
+river.  The waters of the river were very dark and wild, and there was
+so black a cloud over the river that the little boy could not see the
+further shore.  An icy wind came up from the cloud and chilled the
+little boy, and he trembled with cold and fear as the wind smote his
+cheeks and ran its slender icicle fingers through his yellow curls.  An
+old man sat on the bank of the river; he was very, very old; his head
+and shoulders were covered with a black mantle; and his beard was white
+as snow.
+
+"Will you come with me, little boy?" asked the old man.
+
+"Where?" inquired the little boy.
+
+"To yonder shore," replied the old man.
+
+"Oh, no; not to that dark shore," said the little boy.  "I should be
+afraid to go."
+
+"But think of the sunlight always there," said the old man, "the birds
+and flowers; and remember there is no pain, nor anything of that kind
+to vex you."
+
+The little boy looked and saw the dark cloud hanging over the waters,
+and he felt the cold wind come up from the river; moreover, the sight
+of the strange man terrified him.  So, hearing his mother calling him,
+the little boy ran back to his home, leaving the old man by the river
+alone.
+
+Many years after that time the little boy came again to the river; but
+he was not a little boy now,--he was a big, strong man.
+
+"The river is the same," said he; "the wind is the same cold, cutting
+wind of ice, and the same black cloud obscures yonder shore.  I wonder
+where the strange old man can be."
+
+"I am he," said a solemn voice.
+
+The man turned and looked on him who spoke, and he saw a warrior clad
+in black armor and wielding an iron sword.
+
+"No, you are not he!" cried the man.  "You are a warrior come to do me
+harm."
+
+"I am indeed a warrior," said the other.  "Come with me across the
+river."
+
+"No," replied the man, "I will not go with you.  Hark, I hear the
+voices of my wife and children calling to me,--I will return to them!"
+
+The warrior strove to hold him fast and bear him across the river to
+the yonder shore, but the man prevailed against him and returned to his
+wife and little ones, and the warrior was left upon the river-bank.
+
+Then many years went by and the strong man became old and feeble.  He
+found no pleasure in the world, for he was weary of living.  His wife
+and children were dead, and the old man was alone.  So one day in those
+years he came to the bank of the river for the third time, and he saw
+that the waters had become quiet and that the wind which came up from
+the river was warm and gentle and smelled of flowers; there was no dark
+cloud overhanging the yonder shore, but in its place was a golden mist
+through which the old man could see people walking on the yonder shore
+and stretching out their hands to him, and he could hear them calling
+him by name.  Then he knew they were the voices of his dear ones.
+
+"I am weary and lonesome," cried the old man.  "All have gone before
+me: father, mother, wife, children,--all whom I have loved.  I see them
+and hear them on yonder shore, but who will bear me to them?"
+
+Then a spirit came in answer to this cry.  But the spirit was not a
+strange old man nor yet an armored warrior; but as he came to the
+river's bank that day he was a gentle angel, clad in white; his face
+was very beautiful, and there was divine tenderness in his eyes.
+
+"Rest thy head upon my bosom," said the angel, "and I will bear thee
+across the river to those who call thee."
+
+So, with the sweet peace of a little child sinking to his slumbers, the
+old man drooped in the arms of the angel and was borne across the river
+to those who stood upon the yonder shore and called.
+
+
+
+
+FRANZ ABT
+
+Many years ago a young composer was sitting in a garden.  All around
+bloomed beautiful roses, and through the gentle evening air the
+swallows flitted, twittering cheerily.  The young composer neither saw
+the roses nor heard the evening music of the swallows; his heart was
+full of sadness and his eyes were bent wearily upon the earth before
+him.
+
+"Why," said the young composer, with a sigh, "should I be doomed to all
+this bitter disappointment?  Learning seems vain, patience is
+mocked,--fame is as far from me as ever."
+
+The roses heard his complaint.  They bent closer to him and whispered,
+"Listen to us,--listen to us."  And the swallows heard him, too, and
+they flitted nearer him; and they, too, twittered, "Listen to
+us,--listen to us."  But the young composer was in no mood to be
+beguiled by the whisperings of the roses and the twitterings of the
+birds; with a heavy heart and sighing bitterly he arose and went his
+way.
+
+It came to pass that many times after that the young composer came at
+evening and sat in the garden where the roses bloomed and the swallows
+twittered; his heart was always full of disappointment, and often he
+cried out in anguish against the cruelty of fame that it came not to
+him.  And each time the roses bent closer to him, and the swallows flew
+lower, and there in the garden the sweet flowers and little birds
+cried, "Listen to us,--listen to us, and we will help you."
+
+And one evening the young composer, hearing their gentle pleadings,
+smiled sadly, and said: "Yes, I will listen to you.  What have you to
+say, pretty roses?"
+
+"Make your songs of us," whispered the roses,--"make your songs of us."
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the composer.  "A song of the roses would be very
+strange, indeed!  No, sweet flowers,--it is fame I seek, and fame would
+scorn even the beauty of your blushes and the subtlety of your
+perfumes."
+
+"You are wrong," twittered the swallows, flying lower.  "You are wrong,
+foolish man.  Make a song for the heart,--make a song of the swallows
+and the roses, and it will be sung forever, and your fame shall never
+die."
+
+But the composer laughed louder than before; surely there never had
+been a stranger suggestion than that of the roses and the swallows!
+Still, in his chamber that night the composer thought of what the
+swallows had said, and in his dreams he seemed to hear the soft tones
+of the roses pleading with him.  Yes, many times thereafter the
+composer recalled what the birds and flowers had said, but he never
+would ask them as he sat in the garden at evening how he could make the
+heart-song of which they chattered.  And the summer sped swiftly by,
+and one evening when the composer came into the garden the roses were
+dead, and their leaves lay scattered on the ground.  There were no
+swallows fluttering in the sky, and the nests under the eaves were
+deserted.  Then the composer knew his little friends were beyond
+recall, and he was oppressed by a feeling of loneliness.  The roses and
+the swallows had grown to be a solace to the composer, had stolen into
+his heart all unawares,--now that they were gone, he was filled with
+sadness.
+
+"I will do as they counselled," said he; "I will make a song of
+them,--a song of the swallows and the roses.  I will forget my greed
+for fame while I write in memory of my little friends."
+
+Then the composer made a song of the swallows and the roses, and, while
+he wrote, it seemed to him that he could hear the twittering of the
+little birds all around him, and scent the fragrance of the flowers,
+and his soul was warmed with a warmth he had never felt before, and his
+tears fell upon his manuscript.
+
+When the world heard the song which the composer had made of the
+swallows and the roses, it did homage to his genius.  Such sentiment,
+such delicacy, such simplicity, such melody, such heart, such
+soul,--ah, there was no word of rapturous praise too good for the
+composer now: fame, the sweetest and most enduring kind of fame, had
+come to him.
+
+And the swallows and the roses had done it all.  Their subtle
+influences had filled the composer's soul with a great inspiration,--by
+means like this God loves to speak to the human heart.
+
+"We told you so," whispered the roses when they came again in the
+spring.  "We told you that if you sang of us the world would love your
+song."
+
+Then the swallows, flying back from the south, twittered: "We told you
+so; sing the songs the heart loves, and you shall live forever."
+
+"Ah, dear ones," said the composer, softly; "you spoke the truth.  He
+who seeks a fame that is immortal has only to reach and abide in the
+human heart."
+
+The lesson he learned of the swallows and the roses he never forgot.
+It was the inspiration and motive of a long and beautiful life.  He
+left for others that which some called a loftier ambition.  He was
+content to sit among the flowers and hear the twitter of birds and make
+songs that found an echo in all breasts.  Ah, there was such a
+beautiful simplicity,--such a sweet wisdom in his life!  And where'er
+the swallows flew, and where'er the roses bloomed, he was famed and
+revered and beloved, and his songs were sung.
+
+Then his hair grew white at last, and his eyes were dim and his steps
+were slow.  A mortal illness came upon him, and he knew that death was
+nigh.
+
+"The winter has been long," said he, wearily.  "Open the window and
+raise me up that I may see the garden, for it must be that spring is
+come."
+
+It was indeed spring, but the roses had not yet bloomed.  The swallows
+were chattering in their nests under the eaves or flitting in the mild,
+warm sky.
+
+"Hear them," he said faintly.  "How sweetly they sing.  But alas! where
+are the roses?"
+
+Where are the roses?  Heaped over thee, dear singing heart; blooming on
+thy quiet grave in the Fatherland, and clustered and entwined all in
+and about thy memory, which with thy songs shall go down from heart to
+heart to immortality.
+
+
+
+
+MISTRESS MERCILESS
+
+This is to tell of our little Mistress Merciless, who for a season
+abided with us, but is now and forever gone from us unto the far-off
+land of Ever-Plaisance.  The tale is soon told; for it were not seemly
+to speak all the things that are in one's heart when one hath to say of
+a much-beloved child, whose life here hath been shortened so that, in
+God's wisdom and kindness, her life shall be longer in that garden that
+bloometh far away.
+
+You shall know that all did call her Mistress Merciless; but her
+mercilessness was of a sweet, persuasive kind: for with the beauty of
+her face and the music of her voice and the exceeding sweetness of her
+virtues was she wont to slay all hearts; and this she did unwittingly,
+for she was a little child.  And so it was in love that we did call her
+Mistress Merciless, just as it was in love that she did lord it over
+all our hearts.
+
+Upon a time walked she in a full fair garden, and there went with her
+an handmaiden that we did call in merry wise the Queen of Sheba; for
+this handmaiden was in sooth no queen at all, but a sorry and
+ill-favored wench; but she was assotted upon our little Mistress
+Merciless and served her diligently, and for that good reason was
+vastly beholden of us all.  Yet, in a jest, we called her the Queen of
+Sheba; and I make a venture that she looked exceeding fair in the eyes
+of our little Mistress Merciless: for the eyes of children look not
+upon the faces but into the hearts and souls of others.  Whilst these
+two walked in the full fair garden at that time they came presently
+unto an arbor wherein there was a rustic seat, which was called the
+Siege of Restfulness; and hereupon sate a little sick boy that, from
+his birth, had been lame, so that he could not play and make merry with
+other children, but was wont to come every day into this full fair
+garden and content himself with the companionship of the flowers.  And,
+though he was a little lame boy, he never trod upon those flowers; and
+even had he done so, methinks the pressure of those crippled feet had
+been a caress, for the little lame boy was filled with the spirit of
+love and tenderness.  As the tiniest, whitest, shrinking flower
+exhaleth the most precious perfume, so in and from this little lame
+boy's life there came a grace that was hallowing in its beauty.
+
+Since they never before had seen him, they asked him his name; and he
+answered them that of those at home he was called Master Sweetheart, a
+name he could not understand: for surely, being a cripple, he must be a
+very sorry sweetheart; yet, that he was a sweetheart unto his mother at
+least he had no doubt, for she did love to hold him in her lap and call
+him by that name; and many times when she did so he saw that tears were
+in her eyes,--a proof, she told him when he asked, that Master
+Sweetheart was her sweetheart before all others upon earth.
+
+It befell that our little Mistress Merciless and Master Sweetheart
+became fast friends, and the Queen of Sheba was handmaiden to them
+both; for the simple, loyal creature had not a mind above the artless
+prattle of childhood, and the strange allegory of the lame boy's speech
+filled her with awe, even as the innocent lisping of our little
+Mistress Merciless delighted her heart and came within the
+comprehension of her limited understanding.  So each day, when it was
+fair, these three came into the full fair garden, and rambled there
+together; and when they were weary they entered into the arbor and sate
+together upon the Siege of Restfulness.  Wit ye well there was not a
+flower or a tree or a shrub or a bird in all that full fair garden
+which they did not know and love, and in very sooth every flower and
+tree and shrub and bird therein did know and love them.
+
+When they entered into the arbor, and sate together upon the Siege of
+Restfulness, it was Master Sweetheart's wont to tell them of the land
+of Ever-Plaisance, for it was a conceit of his that he journeyed each
+day nearer and nearer to that land, and that his journey thitherward
+was nearly done.  How came he to know of that land I cannot say, for I
+do not know; but I am fain to believe that, as he said, the exceeding
+fair angels told him thereof when by night, as he lay sleeping, they
+came singing and with caresses to his bedside.
+
+I speak now of a holy thing, therefore I speak truth when I say that
+while little children lie sleeping in their beds at night it pleaseth
+God to send His exceeding fair angels with singing and caresses to bear
+messages of His love unto those little sleeping children.  And I have
+seen those exceeding fair angels bend with folded wings over the little
+cradles and the little beds, and kiss those little sleeping children
+and whisper God's messages of love to them, and I knew that those
+messages were full of sweet tidings; for, even though they slept, the
+little children smiled.  This have I seen, and there is none who loveth
+little children that will deny the truth of this thing which I have now
+solemnly declared.
+
+Of that land of Ever-Plaisance was our little Mistress Merciless ever
+fain to hear tell.  But when she beset the rest of us to speak thereof
+we knew not what to say other than to confirm such reports as Master
+Sweetheart had already made.  For when it cometh to knowing of that
+far-off land,--ah me, who knoweth more than the veriest little child?
+And oftentimes within the bosom of a little, helpless, fading one there
+bloometh a wisdom which sages cannot comprehend.  So when she asked us
+we were wont to bid her go to Master Sweetheart, for he knew the truth
+and spake it.
+
+It is now to tell of an adventure which on a time befell in that full
+fair garden of which you have heard me speak.  In this garden lived
+many birds of surpassing beauty and most rapturous song, and among them
+was one that they called Joyous, for that he did ever carol forth so
+joyously, it mattered not what the day soever might be.  This bird
+Joyous had his home in the top of an exceeding high tree, hard by the
+pleasant arbor, and here did he use to sit at such times as the little
+people came into that arbor, and then would he sing to them such songs
+as befitted that quiet spot, and them that came thereto.  But there was
+a full evil cat that dwelt near by, and this cruel beast found no
+pleasure in the music that Joyous did make continually; nay, that music
+filled this full evil cat with a wicked thirst for the blood of that
+singing innocent, and she had no peace for the malice that was within
+her seeking to devise a means whereby she might comprehend the bird
+Joyous to her murderous intent.  Now you must know that it was the wont
+of our little Mistress Merciless and of Master Sweetheart to feed the
+birds in that fair garden with such crumbs as they were suffered to
+bring with them into the arbor, and at such times would those birds fly
+down with grateful twitterings and eat of those crumbs upon the
+greensward round about the arbor.  Wit ye well, it was a merry sight to
+see those twittering birds making feast upon the good things which
+those children brought, and our little Mistress Merciless and little
+Master Sweetheart had sweet satisfaction therein.  But, on a day,
+whilst thus those twittering birds made great feasting, lo! on a sudden
+did that full evil cat whereof I have spoken steal softly from a
+thicket, and with one hideous bound make her way into the very midst of
+those birds and seize upon that bird Joyous, that was wont to sing so
+merrily from the tree hard by the arbor.  Oh, there was a mighty din
+and a fearful fluttering, and the rest flew swiftly away, but Joyous
+could not do so, because the full evil cat held him in her cruel fangs
+and claws.  And I make no doubt that Joyous would speedily have met his
+death, but that with a wrathful cry did our little Mistress Merciless
+hasten to his rescue.  And our little Mistress belabored that full evil
+cat with Master Sweetheart's crutch, until that cruel beast let loose
+her hold upon the fluttering bird and was full glad to escape with her
+aching bones into the thicket again.  So it was that Joyous was
+recovered from death; but even then might it have fared ill with him,
+had they not taken him up and dressed his wounds and cared for him
+until duly he was well again.  And then they released him to do his
+plaisance, and he returned to his home in the tree hard by the arbor
+and there he sung unto those children more sweetly than ever before;
+for his heart was full of gratitude to our little Mistress Merciless
+and Master Sweetheart.
+
+Now, of the dolls that she had in goodly number, that one which was
+named Beautiful did our little Mistress Merciless love best.  Know well
+that the doll Beautiful had come not from oversea, and was neither of
+wax nor of china; but she was right ingeniously constructed of a
+bed-key that was made of wood, and unto the top of this bed-key had the
+Queen of Sheba superadded a head with a fair face, and upon the body
+and the arms of the key had she hung passing noble raiment.  Unto this
+doll Beautiful was our little Mistress Merciless vastly beholden, and
+she did use to have the doll Beautiful lie by her side at night whilst
+she slept, and whithersoever during the day she went, there also would
+she take the doll Beautiful, too.  Much sorrow and lamentation,
+therefore, made our little Mistress Merciless when on an evil day the
+doll Beautiful by chance fell into the fish-pond, and was not rescued
+therefrom until one of her beauteous eyes had been devoured of the
+envious water; so that ever thereafter the doll Beautiful had but one
+eye, and that, forsooth, was grievously faded.  And on another evil day
+came a monster ribald dog pup and seized upon the doll Beautiful whilst
+she reposed in the arbor, and bore her away, and romped boisterously
+with her upon the sward, and tore off her black-thread hair, and sought
+to destroy her wholly, which surely he would have done but for the
+Queen of Sheba, who made haste to rescue the doll Beautiful, and
+chastise that monster ribald dog pup.
+
+Therefore, as you can understand, the time was right busily spent.  The
+full fair garden, with its flowers and the singing birds and the
+gracious arbor and the Siege of Restfulness, found favor with those
+children, and amid these joyous scenes did Master Sweetheart have to
+tell each day of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance, whither he said
+he was going.  And one day, when the sun shone very bright, and the
+full fair garden joyed in the music of those birds, Master Sweetheart
+did not come, and they missed the little lame boy and wondered where he
+was.  And as he never came again they thought at last that of a surety
+he had departed into that country whereof he loved to tell.  Which
+thing filled our little Mistress Merciless with wonder and inquiry; and
+I think she was lonely ever after that,--lonely for Master Sweetheart.
+
+I am thinking now of her and of him; for this is the Christmas
+season,--the time when it is most meet to think of the children and
+other sweet and holy things.  There is snow everywhere, snow and cold.
+The garden is desolate and voiceless: the flowers are gone, the trees
+are ghosts, the birds have departed.  It is winter out there, and it is
+winter, too, in this heart of mine.  Yet in this Christmas season I
+think of them, and it pleaseth me--God forbid that I offend with much
+speaking--it pleaseth me to tell of the little things they did and
+loved.  And you shall understand it all if, perchance, this sacred
+Christmas time a little Mistress Merciless of your own, or a little
+Master Sweetheart, clingeth to your knee and sanctifieth your
+hearthstone.
+
+When of an evening all the joy of day was done, would our little
+Mistress Merciless fall aweary; and then her eyelids would grow
+exceeding heavy and her little tired hands were fain to fold.  At such
+a time it was my wont to beguile her weariness with little tales of
+faery, or with the gentle play that sleepy children like.  Much was her
+fancy taken with what I told her of the train that every night whirleth
+away to Shut-Eye Town, bearing unto that beauteous country sleepy
+little girls and boys.  Nor would she be content until I told her
+thereof,--yes, every night whilst I robed her in her cap and gown would
+she demand of me that tale of Shut-Eye Town, and the wonderful train
+that was to bear her thither.  Then would I say in this wise:--
+
+
+At Bedtime-ville there is a train of cars that waiteth for you, my
+sweet,--for you and for other little ones that would go to quiet,
+slumbrous Shut-Eye Town.
+
+But make no haste; there is room for all.  Each hath a tiny car that is
+snug and warm, and when the train starteth each car swingeth soothingly
+this way and that way, this way and that way, through all the journey
+of the night.
+
+Your little gown is white and soft; your little cap will hold those
+pretty curls so fast that they cannot get away.  Here is a curl that
+peepeth out to see what is going to happen.  Hush, little curl! make no
+noise; we will let you peep out at the wonderful sights, but you must
+not tell the others about it; let them sleep, snuggled close together.
+
+The locomotive is ready to start.  Can you not hear it?
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"  That is what the locomotive is
+saying, all to itself.  It knoweth how pleasant a journey it is about
+to make.
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+Oh, many a time hath it proudly swept over prairie and hill, over river
+and plain, through sleeping gardens and drowsy cities, swiftly and
+quietly, bearing the little ones to the far, pleasant valley where
+lieth Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+So sayeth the locomotive to itself at the station in Bedtime-ville; for
+it knoweth how fair and far a journey is before it.
+
+Then a bell soundeth.  Surely my little one heareth the bell!
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+So soundeth the bell, and it seemeth to invite you to sleep and dreams.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+How sweetly ringeth and calleth that bell.
+
+"To sleep--to dreams, O little lambs!" it seemeth to call.  "Nestle
+down close, fold your hands, and shut your dear eyes!  We are off and
+away to Shut-Eye Town!  Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!  To
+sleep--to dreams, O little cosset lambs!"
+
+And now the conductor calleth out in turn.  "All aboard!" he calleth,
+"All aboard for Shut-Eye Town!" he calleth in a kindly tone.
+
+But, hark ye, dear-my-soul, make thou no haste; there is room for all.
+Here is a cosey little car for you.  How like your cradle it is, for it
+is snug and warm, and it rocketh this way and that way, this way and
+that way, all night long, and its pillows caress you tenderly.  So step
+into the pretty nest, and in it speed to Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+
+That is the whistle.  It soundeth twice, but it must sound again before
+the train can start.  Now you have nestled down, and your dear hands
+are folded; let your two eyes be folded, too, my sweet; for in a moment
+you shall be rocked away, and away, away into the golden mists of Balow!
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"
+
+And so my little golden apple is off and away for Shut-Eye Town!
+
+Slowly moveth the train, yet faster by degrees.  Your hands are folded,
+my beloved, and your dear eyes they are closed; and yet you see the
+beauteous sights that skirt the journey through the mists of Balow.
+And it is rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, that your speeding cradle
+goes,--rockaway, rockaway, rockaway, through the golden glories that
+lie in the path that leadeth to Shut-Eye Town.
+
+"Toot!  Toot!"
+
+So crieth the whistle, and it is "down-brakes," for here we are at
+Ginkville, and every little one knoweth that pleasant waking-place,
+where mother with her gentle hands holdeth the gracious cup to her
+sleepy darling's lips.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!" and off is the train again.  And
+swifter and swifter it speedeth,--oh, I am sure no other train speedeth
+half so swiftly!  The sights my dear one sees!  I cannot tell of
+them--one must see those beauteous sights to know how wonderful they
+are!
+
+"Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!  Shug-chug!"
+
+On and on and on the locomotive proudly whirleth the train.
+
+"Ting-long!  Ting-a-long!  Ting-long!"
+
+The bell calleth anon, but fainter and evermore fainter; and fainter
+and fainter groweth that other calling--"Toot!  Toot!  Toot!"--till
+finally I know that in that Shut-Eye Town afar my dear one dreameth the
+dreams of Balow.
+
+
+This was the bedtime tale which I was wont to tell our little Mistress
+Merciless, and at its end I looked upon her face to see it calm and
+beautiful in sleep.
+
+Then was I wont to kneel beside her little bed and fold my two
+hands,--thus,--and let my heart call to the host invisible: "O guardian
+angels of this little child, hold her in thy keeping from all the
+perils of darkness and the night!  O sovereign Shepherd, cherish Thy
+little lamb and mine, and, Holy Mother, fold her to thy bosom and thy
+love!  But give her back to me,--when morning cometh, restore ye unto
+me my little one!"
+
+But once she came not back.  She had spoken much of Master Sweetheart
+and of that land of Ever-Plaisance whither he had gone.  And she was
+not afeared to make the journey alone; so once upon a time when our
+little Mistress Merciless bade us good-by, and went away forever, we
+knew that it were better so; for she was lonely here, and without her
+that far-distant country whither she journeyed were not content.
+Though our hearts were like to break for love of her, we knew that it
+were better so.
+
+The tale is told, for it were not seemly to speak all the things that
+are in one's heart when one hath to say of a much-beloved child whose
+life here hath been shortened so that, in God's wisdom and kindness,
+her life shall be longer in that garden that bloometh far away.
+
+About me are scattered the toys she loved, and the doll Beautiful hath
+come down all battered and grim,--yet, oh! so very precious to me, from
+those distant years; yonder fareth the Queen of Sheba in her service as
+handmaiden unto me and mine,--gaunt and doleful-eyed, yet stanch and
+sturdy as of old.  The garden lieth under the Christmas snow,--the
+garden where ghosts of trees wave their arms and moan over the graves
+of flowers; the once gracious arbor is crippled now with the
+infirmities of age, the Siege of Restfulness fast sinketh into decay,
+and long, oh! long ago did that bird Joyous carol forth his last sweet
+song in the garden that was once so passing fair.
+
+And amid it all,--this heartache and the loneliness which the years
+have brought,--cometh my Christmas gift to-day: the solace of a vision
+of that country whither she--our little Mistress Merciless--hath gone;
+a glimpse of that far-off land of Ever-Plaisance.
+
+
+
+
+THE PLATONIC BASSOON
+
+All who knew the beautiful and accomplished Aurora wondered why she did
+not marry.  She had now reached the mature age of twenty-five years,
+and was in full possession of those charms which are estimated by all
+men as the choicest gifts a woman can possess.  You must know that
+Aurora had a queenly person, delightful manners, an extensive
+education, and an amiable disposition; and, being the only child of
+wealthy parents, she should not have lacked the one thing that seemed
+necessary to perfect and round out her usefulness as a member of
+society.
+
+The truth was, Aurora did not fancy the male sex.  She regarded men as
+conveniences that might come handy at times when an escort to the
+theatre was required, or when a partner in a dance was demanded, when a
+fan was to be picked up, or when an errand was to be run; but the idea
+of marrying any man was as distasteful to Aurora as the proposition to
+marry a hat-rack or any other piece of household furniture would have
+been.
+
+The secret of this strange aversion might have been traced to Aurora's
+maiden aunt Eliza, who had directed Aurora's education, and had from
+her niece's early youth instilled into Aurora's mind very distinct
+notions touching the masculine sex.
+
+Aurora had numerous admirers among the young gentlemen who moved in the
+same elevated social circle as herself and frequently called at her
+father's house.  Any one of them would gladly have made her his wife,
+and many of them had expressed a tender yearning for her life
+companionship.  But Aurora was quick to recognize in each suitor some
+objectionable trait or habit or feature which her aunt Eliza had told
+about, and which imperatively prohibited a continuance of the young
+gentleman's attentions.
+
+Aurora's father could not understand why his daughter was so
+hypercritical and fastidious in a matter which others of her sex were
+so apt to accept with charitable eyes.  "They are bright, honest
+fellows," he urged, "worthy of any girl's love.  Receive their advances
+kindly, my child, and having chosen one among them, you will be the
+happier for it."
+
+"Never mind, Aurora," said Aunt Eliza.  "Men are all alike.  They show
+their meanness in different ways, but the same spirit of evil is in 'em
+all.  I have lived in this world forty-six years, and during that time
+I have found men to be the most unfeeling and most untrustworthy of
+brutes."
+
+So it was that at the age of twenty-five Aurora was found beautiful,
+amiable, and accomplished, but thoroughly and hopelessly a man-hater.
+And it was about this time that she became involved in that unhappy
+affair which even to this day is talked of by those who knew her then.
+
+On the evening of a certain day Aurora attended the opera with her
+father and mother and Morgan Magnus, the young banker.  Their box at
+the opera was so close to the orchestra that by reaching out her hand
+Aurora could have touched several of the instruments.  Now it happened
+that a bassoon was the instrument nearest the box in which Aurora sat,
+and it was natural therefore that the bassoon attracted more of
+Aurora's attention than any other instrument in the orchestra.  If you
+have never beheld or heard a bassoon you are to understand that it is
+an instrument of wood, of considerable more length than breadth,
+provided with numerous stops and keys, and capable of producing an
+infinite variety of tones, ranging from the depth of lugubriousness to
+the highest pitch of vivacity.  This particular bassoon was of an
+appearance that bordered upon the somber, the polished white of his
+keys emphasizing the solemn black of his long, willowy body.  And, as
+he loomed up above the serene bald head of the musician that played
+him, Aurora thought she had never seen a more distingue object.
+
+The opera was "Il Trovatore," a work well calculated to call in play
+all that peculiar pathos of which the bassoon is capable.  When Aurora
+saw the player raise the bassoon and apply the tiny tube thereunto
+appertaining to his lips, and heard him evoke from the innermost
+recesses of the bassoon tones that were fairly reeking with tears and
+redolent of melancholy, she felt a curious sentiment of pity awakened
+in her bosom.
+
+Aurora had seen many an agonized swain at her feet, and had heard his
+impassioned pleadings for mercy; she had perused many a love missive
+wherein her pity was eloquently implored, but never had she experienced
+the tender, melting sentiment that percolated through her breast when
+she heard the bassoon mingling his melancholy tones with Manrico's
+plaints.  The tears welled up into Aurora's eyes, her bosom heaved
+convulsively, and the most subtile emotions thrilled her soul.
+
+In vain did young Magnus, the banker, seek to learn the cause of her
+agitation, and it seemed like a cruel mockery when Aurora's mother
+said: "You must remember, dear, that it is not real; it is only a
+play."  After this memorable evening, wherein an unexpected and
+indescribable sweetness had crept into the young woman's life, Aurora
+more frequently insisted upon going to the opera.  A strange
+fascination attracted her thither, and on each succeeding evening she
+found some new beauty in the bassoon, some new phase in his
+kaleidoscopic character to wonder at, some new accomplishment to
+admire.  On one occasion--it was at the opera bouffe--this musical
+prodigy exhibited a playfulness and an exuberance of wit and humor that
+Aurora had never dreamed of.  He ran the gamut of vocal conceit, and
+the polyglot fertility of his fancy simply astounded his rapt auditor.
+She was dazed, enchanted, spellbound.  So here we find the fair Aurora
+passing from the condition of pity into the estate of admiration.
+
+And now, having first conceived a wondrous pity for the bassoon, and
+then having become imbued with an admiration of his wit, sarcasm,
+badinage, repartee, and humor, it followed naturally and logically that
+Aurora should fall desperately in love with him; for pity and
+admiration are but the forerunners of the grand passion.
+
+"Aunt Eliza," said Aurora one day, "you have instilled into my
+sensitive nature an indelible aversion to men, compared with which all
+such deleble passions as affection and love are as inconsequential as
+summer zephyrs.  I believe men to be by nature and practice gross,
+vulgar, sensual, and unworthy; and from this opinion I feel that I
+shall never recede.  Yet such a clinging and fragile thing is woman's
+heart that it must needs have some object about which it may twine,
+even as the gentle ivy twines about the oak.  Now, as you know, some
+women there are who, convinced of the utter worthlessness of the
+opposite sex, dedicate their lives to the adoration of some art or
+science, lavishing thereupon that love which women less prudent
+squander upon base men and ungrateful children; in the painting of
+pictures, devotion to the drama, the cultivation of music, pursuit of
+trade, or the exclusive attention to a profession, some women find the
+highest pleasure.  But you and I, dear aunt, who are directed by even
+higher and purer motives than these women, scorn the pursuits of the
+arts and sciences, the professions and trades, and lay our hearts as
+willing sacrifices upon the altars of a tabby cat and a bassoon.  What
+could be purer or more exalted than a love of that kind?"
+
+Having uttered this eloquent preface, which was, indeed, characteristic
+of the fair creature, Aurora told Aunt Eliza of the bassoon, and as she
+spoke of his versatile accomplishments and admirable qualities her eyes
+glowed with an unwonted animation, and a carmine hue suffused her
+beautiful cheeks.  It was plain that Aurora was deeply in love, and
+Aunt Eliza was overjoyed.
+
+"It is gratifying," said Aunt Eliza, "to find that my teachings promise
+such happy results, that the seeds I have so carefully sown already
+show signs of a glorious fruition.  Now, while it is true that I cannot
+conceive of a happier love than that which exists between my own dear
+tabby cat and myself, it is also true that I recognize your bassoon as
+an object so much worthier of adoration than mankind in general, and
+your male acquaintances in particular, that I most heartily felicitate
+you upon the idol you have chosen for your worship.  Bassoons do not
+smoke, nor chew tobacco, nor swear, nor bet on horse-races, nor play
+billiards, nor do any of those horrid things which constitute the
+larger part of a man's ambitions and pursuits.  You have acted wisely,
+my dear, and heaven grant you may be as happy in his love as I am in
+tabby's."
+
+"I feel that I shall be," murmured Aurora; "already my bassoon is very
+precious to me."
+
+With the dawn of this first passion a new motive seemed to come into
+Aurora's life--a gentle melancholy, a subdued sentiment whose
+accompaniments were sighings and day-dreamings and solitary tears and
+swoonings.
+
+Quite naturally Aurora sought Aunt Eliza's society more than ever now,
+and her conversation and thoughts were always on the bassoon.  It was
+very beautiful.
+
+But late one night Aurora burst into Aunt Eliza's room and threw
+herself upon Aunt Eliza's bed, sobbing bitterly.  Aunt Eliza was
+inexpressibly shocked, and under a sudden impulse of horror the tabby
+sprang to her feet, arched her back, bristled her tail, and uttered
+monosyllables of astonishment.
+
+"Why, Aurora, what ails you?" inquired Aunt Eliza, kindly.
+
+"Oh, auntie, my heart is broken, I know it is," wailed Aurora.
+
+"Come, come, my child," said Aunt Eliza, soothingly, "don't take on so.
+Tell auntie what ails you."
+
+"He was harsh and cruel to me to-night, and oh!  I loved him so!"
+moaned Aurora.
+
+"A lovers' quarrel, eh?" thought Aunt Eliza; and she got up, slipped
+her wrapper on, and brewed Aurora a big bowl of boneset tea.  Oh, how
+nice and bitter and fragrant it was, and how Aunt Eliza's nostrils
+sniffed, and how her eyes sparkled as she sipped the grateful beverage.
+
+"There, drink that, my dear," said Aunt Eliza, "and then tell me all
+about it."
+
+Aurora quaffed the bowl of boneset tea, and the wholesome draught
+seemed to give her fortitude, for now she told Aunt Eliza the whole
+story.  It seems that Aurora had been to the opera as usual, not for
+the purpose of hearing and seeing the performance, but simply for the
+sake of being where the beloved bassoon was.  The opera was Wagner's
+"Die Walkuere," and the part played by the bassoon in the orchestration
+was one of conspicuous importance.  Fully appreciating his importance,
+the bassoon conducted himself with brutal arrogance and
+superciliousness on this occasion.  His whole nature seemed changed;
+his tones were harsh and discordant, and with malevolent obstinacy he
+led all the other instruments in the orchestra through a seemingly
+endless series of musical pyrotechnics.  There never was a more
+remarkable exhibition of stubbornness.  When the violins and the
+'cellos, the hautboys and the flutes, the cornets and the trombones,
+said "Come, let us work together in G minor," or "Let us do this
+passage in B flat," the bassoon would lead off with a wild shriek in D
+sharp or some other foreign key, and maintain it so lustily that the
+other instruments--e. g., the violins, the 'cellos, the hautboys, and
+all--were compelled to back, switch, and wheel into the bassoon's lead
+as best they could.
+
+But no sooner had they come into harmony than the bassoon--oh,
+melancholy perversity of that instrument--would strike off into another
+key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and
+another stampede.  And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept
+up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in
+his riotous, brutal conduct.
+
+At first Aurora was mortified; then her mortification deepened into
+chagrin.  In the hope of touching his heart she bestowed upon him a
+look of such tender supplication that, had he not been the most callous
+creature in the world, he must have melted under it.  To his eternal
+shame, let it be said, the bassoon remained as impervious to her
+beseeching glances as if he had been a sphinx or a rhinoceros.  In
+fact, Aurora's supplicating eyes seemed to instigate him to further and
+greater madness, for after that he became still more riotous, and at
+many times during the evening the crisis in the orchestra threatened
+anarchy and general disintegration.
+
+Aurora's humiliation can be imagined by those only who have experienced
+a like bitterness--the bitterness of awakening to a realization of the
+cruelty of love.  Aurora loved the bassoon tenderly, deeply,
+absorbingly.  The sprightliness of his lighter moods, no less than the
+throbbing pathos of his sadder moments, had won her heart.  She had
+given him her love unreservedly, she fairly worshipped him, and now she
+awakened, as it were, from a golden dream, to find her idol clay!  It
+was very sad.  Yet who that has loved either man or bassoon does not
+know this bitterness?
+
+"He will be gentler hereafter," said Aunt Eliza, encouragingly.  "You
+must always remember that we should be charitable and indulgent with
+those we love.  Who knows why the bassoon was harsh and wayward and
+imperious to-night?  Let us not judge him till we have heard the whys
+and wherefores.  He may have been ill; depend upon it, my dear, he had
+cause for his conduct."
+
+Aunt Eliza's prudent words were a great solace to Aurora.  And she
+forgave the bassoon all the pain he had inflicted when she went to the
+opera the next night and heard him in "I Puritani," a work in which the
+grand virility of his nature, its vigor and force, came out with
+telling effect.  There was not a trace of the insolence he had
+manifested in "Die Walkuere," nor of the humorous antics he had
+displayed in "La Grande Duchesse"; divested of all charlatanism, he was
+now a magnificent, sonorous, manly bassoon, and you may depend upon it
+Aurora was more in love with him than ever.
+
+It was about this time that, perceiving a marked change in his
+daughter's appearance and demeanor, Aurora's father began to question
+her mother about it all, and that good lady at last made bold to tell
+the old gentleman the whole truth of the matter, which was simply that
+Aurora cherished a passion for the bassoon.  Now the father was an
+exceedingly matter-of-fact, old-fashioned man, who possessed not the
+least bit of sentiment, and when he heard that his only child had
+fallen in love with a bassoon, his anger was very great.  He summoned
+Aurora into his presence, and regarded her with an austere countenance.
+
+"Girl," he said, in icy tones, "is it true that you have been flirting
+with a bassoon?"
+
+"Father," replied Aurora, with dignity, "I have never flirted with
+anybody, and you grievously wrong the bassoon when you intimated that
+he, too, is capable of such frivolity."
+
+"It is nevertheless true," roared the old gentleman, "that you have
+conceived a passion for this bassoon, and have cherished it
+clandestinely."
+
+"It _is_ true, father, that I love the bassoon," said Aurora; "it is
+true that I admire his wit, vivacity, sentiment, soul, force, power,
+and manliness, but I have loved in secret.  We have never met; he may
+know I love him, and he may reciprocate my love, but he has never
+spoken to me nor I to him, so there is nothing clandestine in the
+affair."
+
+"Oh, my child! my child!" sobbed the old man, breaking down; "how could
+you love a bassoon, when so many eligible young men are suitors for
+your hand?"
+
+"Don't mention him in the same breath with those horrid creatures!"
+cried Aurora, indignantly.  "What scent of tobacco or odor of wines has
+ever profaned the purity of his balmy breath?  What does he know of
+billiards, of horse-racing, of actresses, and those other features of
+brutal men's lives?  Father, he is pure and good and exalted; seek not
+to debase him by naming him in the category of man!"
+
+"These are Eliza's teachings!" shrieked the old gentleman; and off he
+bundled to vent his wrath on the maiden aunt.  But it was little
+satisfaction he got from Aunt Eliza.
+
+After that the old gentleman kept a strict eye on Aurora, and very soon
+he became satisfied of two things: First, that Aurora was sincerely in
+love with the bassoon; and, second, that the bassoon cared nothing for
+Aurora.  That Aurora loved the bassoon was evidenced by her demeanor
+when in his presence--her steadfast eyes, her parted lips, her heaving
+bosom, her piteous sighs, her flushed cheeks, and her varying emotions
+as his tones changed, bore unimpeachable testimony to the sincerity of
+her passion.  That the bassoon did not care for Aurora was proved by
+his utter disregard of her feelings, for though he might be tender this
+moment he was harsh the next--though pleading now he spurned her anon;
+and so, variable and fickle and false as the winds, he kept Aurora in
+misery and hysterics about half the time.
+
+One morning the old gentleman entered the theatre while the orchestra
+was rehearsing.
+
+"Who plays the bassoon?" he asked, in an imperative tone.
+
+"Ich!" said a man with a bald head and gold spectacles.
+
+"Your name?" demanded the old gentleman.
+
+"Otto Baumgarten," replied he of the bald head and gold spectacles.
+
+"Then, Otto Baumgarten," said the father, "I will give you one hundred
+dollars for your bassoon."
+
+"Mein Gott!" said Herr Baumgarten, "dat bassoon gost me not half so
+much fon dot!"
+
+"Never mind!" replied the old gentleman.  "Take the money and give me
+the bassoon."
+
+Herr Baumgarten did not hesitate a moment.  He clutched at the gold
+pieces, and while he counted them Aurora's father was hastening up the
+street with the bassoon under his arm.  Aurora saw him coming, and she
+recognized the idol of her soul; his silver-plated keys were not to be
+mistaken.  With a cry of joy she met her father in the hallway,
+snatched the bassoon to her heart, and covered him with kisses.
+
+"He makes no answer to your protestations!" said her father.  "Come,
+give over a love that is hopeless; cast aside this bassoon, who is
+hollow at heart, and whose affection at best is only platonic!"
+
+"You speak blasphemies, father," cried Aurora, "and you yourself shall
+hear how he loves me, for when I but put my lips to this slender
+mouthpiece there shall issue from my worshipped bassoon tones of such
+ineffable tenderness that even you shall be convinced that my passion
+is reciprocated."
+
+With these words Aurora glued her beauteous lips to the slender
+blowpipe of the bassoon, and, having inflated her lungs to their
+capacity, breathed into it a respiration that seemed to come from her
+very soul.  But no sound issued from the cold, hollow, unresponsive
+bassoon.  Aurora repeated the effort with increased vigor.  There came
+no answer at all.
+
+"Aha!" laughed her father.  "I told you so; he loves you not."
+
+But then, with a last superhuman effort, Aurora made her third attempt;
+her eyeballs started from their sockets, big, blue veins and cords
+stood out on her lovely neck, and all the force and vigor of her young
+life seemed to go out through her pursed lips into the bassoon's
+system.  And then, oh then! as if to mock her idolatry and sound the
+death knell of her unhappy love, the bassoon recoiled and emitted a
+tone so harsh, so discordant, so supernatural, that even Aurora's
+father drew back in horror.
+
+And lo! hearing that supernatural sound that told her of the
+hopelessness of love, Aurora dropped the hollow, mocking scoffer,
+clutched spasmodically at her heart, and, with an agonizing shriek,
+fell lifeless to the floor.
+
+
+
+
+HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES
+
+
+I
+
+THE EEL-KING
+
+There was a maiden named Liliokani whose father was a fisherman.  But
+the maiden liked not her father's employment, for she believed it to be
+an offence against Atua, the all-god, to deprive any animal of that
+life which Atua had breathed into it.  And this was pleasing unto Atua,
+and he blessed Liliokani with exceeding beauty; no other eyes were so
+large, dark, and tender as hers; the braids of her long, soft hair fell
+like silken seagrass upon her shoulders; she was tall and graceful as
+the palm, and her voice was the voice of the sea when the sea cradles
+the moonlight and sings it to sleep.
+
+Full many kings' sons came wooing Liliokani, and chiefs renowned in
+war; and with others came Tatatao, that was a mighty hunter of hares
+and had compassed famous hardships.  For those men that delight in
+adventure and battle are most pleasantly minded to gentle women, for
+thus capriciously hath Atua, the all-god, ordained.  But Liliokani had
+no ear to the wooing of these men, and the fisherman's daughter was a
+virgin when Mimi came.
+
+Mimi was king of the eels, and Atua had given him eternal life and the
+power to change his shape when it pleased him to issue from the water
+and walk the earth.  It befell that this eel-king, Mimi, beheld
+Liliokani upon a time as he swam the little river near her father's
+abode, and he saw that she was exceeding fair and he heard the soft,
+sad sea-tone in her voice.  So for many days Mimi frequented those
+parts and grew more and more in love with the maiden.
+
+Upon a certain day, while she helped her father to mend his nets,
+Liliokani saw a young man of goodly stature and handsome face
+approaching, and to herself she said: "Surely if ever I be tempted to
+wed it shall be with this young man, whose like I have never before
+known."  But she had no thought that it was Mimi, the eel-king, who in
+this changed shape now walked the earth.
+
+Sweetly he made obeisance and pleasant was his discourse with the
+fisherman and his daughter, and he told them many things of his home,
+which he said was many kumes distant from that spot.  Though he spake
+mostly to the old man, his eyes were fixed upon Liliokani, and, after
+the fashion of her sex, that maiden presently knew that he had great
+love unto her.  Many days after that came Mimi to hold discourse with
+them, and they had joy of his coming, for in sooth he was of fair
+countenance and sweet address, and the fisherman, being a single-minded
+and a simple man, had no suspicion of the love between Mimi and
+Liliokani.  But once Mimi said to Liliokani in such a voice as the
+sea-wind hath to the maiden palm-trees: "Brown maiden mine, let thy
+door be unlatched this night, and I will come to thee."
+
+So the door was not latched that night and Mimi went in unto her, and
+they two were together and alone.
+
+"What meaneth that moaning of the sea?" asked Liliokani.
+
+"The sea chanteth our bridal anthem," he answered.
+
+"And what sad music cometh from the palms to-night?" she asked.
+
+"They sing soft and low of our wedded love," he answered.
+
+But Liliokani apprehended evil, and, although she spake no more of it
+at that time, a fear of trouble was in her heart.
+
+Now Atua, the all-god, was exceeding wroth at this thing, and in
+grievous anger he beheld how that every night the door was unlatched
+and Mimi went in unto Liliokani.  And Atua set about to do vengeance,
+and Atua's wrath is sure and very dreadful.
+
+There was a night when Mimi did not come; the door was unlatched and
+the breath of Liliokani was as the perfume of flowers and of spices
+commingled; yet he came not.  Then Liliokani wept and unbraided her
+hair and cried as a widow crieth, and she thought that Mimi had found
+another pleasanter than she unto him.  So, upon the next night, she
+latched the door.  But in the middle of the night, when the fire was
+kindled in the island moon, there was a gentle tapping at the door, and
+Mimi called to her.  And when she had unlatched the door she began to
+chide him, but he stopped her chiding, and with great groaning he took
+her to his breast, and she knew by the beating of his heart that evil
+had come upon him.
+
+Then Mimi told her who he was and how wroth the all-god was because the
+eel-king, forgetful of his immortality and neglectful of his domain,
+loved the daughter of a mortal.
+
+"Forswear me, then," quoth Liliokani, "forswear me, and come not hither
+again, and the anger of the all-god shall be appeased."
+
+"It is not to lie to Atua," answered Mimi.  "The all-god readeth every
+heart and knoweth every thought.  How can I, that love thee only,
+forswear thee?  More just and terrible would be Atua's wrath for that
+lie to him and that wrong to thee and to myself.  Brown maiden, I go
+back into the sea and from thee forever, bearing with me a love for
+thee which even the all-god's anger cannot chill."
+
+So he kissed her for the last time and bade her a last farewell, and
+then he went from that door down to the water's edge and into his
+domain.  And Liliokani made great moan and her heart was like to break.
+But the sea was placid as a hearthstone and the palms lay asleep in the
+sky that night, for it was Atua's will that the woman should suffer
+alone.
+
+In the middle of the next night a mighty tempest arose.  The clouds
+reached down and buffeted the earth and sea, and the winds and the
+waters cried out in anger against each other and smote each other.
+Above the tumult Atua's voice was heard.  "Arise, Liliokani," quoth
+that voice, "and with thy father's stone hatchet smite off the head of
+the fish that lieth upon the threshold of the door."
+
+Then Liliokani arose with fear and trembling and went to the door, and
+there, on the threshold, lay a monster eel whose body had been floated
+thither by the flood and the tempest.  With her father's stone hatchet
+she smote off the eel's head, and the head fell into the hut, but the
+long, dead body floated back with the flood into the sea and was seen
+no more.  Then the tempest abated, and with the morning came the sun's
+light and its tender warmth.  And at the earliest moment Liliokani took
+the eel's head secretly and buried it with much sorrow and weeping, for
+the eyes within that lifeless head were Mimi's eyes, and Liliokani knew
+that this thing was come of the all-god's wrath.
+
+It was her wont to go each day and make moan over the spot where she
+had hid this vestige of her love, and presently Atua pitied her, for
+Atua loveth his children upon this earth, even though they sin most
+grievously.  So, by and by, Liliokani saw that two green leaves were
+sprouting from the earth, and in a season these two leaves became twin
+stalks and grew into trees, the like of which had never before been
+seen upon earth.  And Liliokani lived to see and to taste the fruit of
+these twin trees that sprung from Mimi's brain--the red cocoanut and
+the white cocoanut, whereof all men have eaten since that time.  And
+all folk hold that fruit in sweet estimation, for it cometh from the
+love that a god had unto a mortal woman, and mortality is love and love
+is immortality.
+
+Atua forgot not Liliokani when the skies opened to her; she liveth
+forever in the star that looketh only upon this island, and it is her
+tender grace that nourishes the infant cocoas and maketh the elder ones
+fruitful.  Meanwhile no woman that dwelleth upon earth hath
+satisfaction in tasting the flesh of eels, for a knowledge of Mimi's
+love and sacrifice hath been subtly implanted by Atua, the all-god, in
+every woman's breast.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MOON LADY
+
+Once there were four maidens who were the daughters of Talakoa, and
+they were so very beautiful that their fame spread through the
+universe.  The oldest of these maidens was named Kaulualua, and it is
+of her that it is to tell this tale.
+
+One day while Kaulualua was combing her hair she saw a tall, fair man
+fishing in the rivulet, and he was a stranger to her.  Never before had
+she seen so fair a man, though in very sooth she had been wooed of many
+king's sons and of chiefs from every part of the earth.  Then she
+called to her three sisters and asked them his name, but they could not
+answer; this, however, they knew--he was of no country whereof they had
+heard tell, for he was strangely clad and he was of exceeding fair
+complexion and his stature surpassed that of other men.
+
+The next day these maidens saw this same tall, fair man, but he no
+longer fished in the rivulet; he hunted the hares and was passing
+skilful thereat, so that the maidens admired him not only for his
+exceeding comeliness but also for his skill as a huntsman, for surely
+there was no hare that could escape his vigilance and the point of his
+arrow.  So when Talakoa, their father, came that evening the maidens
+told him of this stranger, and he wondered who he was and whence he
+fared.  Awaking from sleep in the middle of that night, Kaulualua saw
+that the stars shone with rare brilliancy, and that by their light a
+man was gazing upon her through the window.  And she saw that the man
+was the tall, fair man of whom it has been spoken.  So she uttered no
+cry, but feigned that she slept, for she saw that there was love in the
+tall, fair man's eyes, and it pleaseth a maiden to be looked upon in
+that wise.
+
+When it was morning this tall, fair man came and entered that house and
+laid a fish and a hare upon the hearthstone and called for Talakoa.
+And he quoth to Talakoa:
+
+"Old man, I would have your daughter to wife."
+
+Being a full crafty man, as beseemeth one of years, Talakoa replied:
+"Four daughters have I."
+
+The tall, fair man announced: "You speak sooth, as well becometh a full
+crafty man.  Four daughters have you, and it is Kaulualua that I would
+have to wife."
+
+Saith that full crafty man, the father: "How many palm trees grow in
+thy possession, and how many rivers flow through thy chiefdom?  Whence
+comest thou, gentle sir, for assuredly neither I nor mine have seen the
+like of thee before."
+
+"Good sooth," answered the tall, fair man, "I will tell you no lie, for
+I would have that daughter to wife, and the things you require do well
+beseem a full crafty man that meaneth for his child's good.  I am the
+man of the moon, and my name is Marama."
+
+Then Talakoa and his daughters looked at one another and were sore
+puzzled, for they knew not whereof Marama spake.  And they deemed him a
+madman; yet did they not laugh him to scorn, because that he had come
+a-wooing, and had laid the fish and the hare upon the hearthstone.
+
+"Kind sir, bringing gifts," quoth Talakoa, "I say no lie to you, but we
+know not that country whereof you speak.  Pray tell us of the moon and
+where is it situate, and how many kumes is it distant from here?"
+
+"Full crafty man, father of her whom I would have to wife, I will tell
+you truly," answered Marama.  "The moon wherefrom I come is a mighty
+island in the vast sea of night, and it is distant from here so great a
+space that it were not to count the kumes that lie between.  Exceeding
+fair is that island in that vast sea, and it hath mountains and valleys
+and plains and seas and rivers and lakes, and I am the chief overall.
+Atua made that island for me and put it in that mighty sea, for I am
+the son of Atua, and over that island in that sea I shall rule forever."
+
+Great wonder had they to hear tell of these things, and they knew now
+that Marama was the child of Atua, who made the universe and is the
+all-god.  Then Marama said on:
+
+"Atua bade me search and find me a wife, and upon the stars have I
+walked two hundred years, fishing and hunting, and seeing maidens, but
+of all maidens seen there is none that I did love.  So now at last, in
+this island of this earth, I have found Kaulualua, and have seen the
+pearl of her beauty and smelled the cinnamon of her breath, and I would
+fain have her to wife that she may be ruler with me over the moon, my
+island in the vast, black sea of night."
+
+It was not for Talakoa, being of earth such as all human kind, to
+gainsay the words of Marama.  And there was a flame in Kaulualua's
+heart and incense in her breath and honey in her eyes toward this tall,
+fair man that was the son of Atua.  So the old father said to her:
+"Take up the fish and the hare and roast them, my daughter, and spread
+them before us, and we will eat them and so pledge our troth, one to
+another."
+
+This thing did Kaulualua, and so the man from the moon had her to wife.
+
+That night they went from the home of Talakoa to the island in the sea
+of night, and Talakoa and the three maidens watched for a signal from
+that island, for Kaulualua told them she would build a fire thereon
+that they might know when she was come thither.  Many, many nights they
+watched, and their hair grew white, and Time marked their faces with
+his fingers, and the moss gathered on the palm trees.  At last, as if
+he would sleep forever, Talakoa laid himself upon his mat by the door
+and asked that the skies be opened to him, for he was enfeebled with
+age.
+
+And while he asked this thing the three sisters saw a dim light afar
+off in the black sea of night, and it was such a light as had never
+before been seen.  And this light grew larger and brighter, so that in
+seven nights it was thrice the size of the largest palm leaf, and it
+lighted up all that far-off island in the sea of night, and they knew
+that Kaulualua and the moon-god were in their home at last.  So old
+Talakoa was soothed and the skies that opened unto him found him
+satisfied.
+
+The three sisters lived long, and yet two hundred ages are gone since
+the earth received them into its bosom.  Yet still upon that island in
+the dark sea of night abideth in love the moon-god with his bride.
+Atua hath been good to her, for he hath given her eternal youth, as he
+giveth to all wives that do truly love and serve their husbands.  It is
+for us to see that pleasant island wherein Kaulualua liveth; it is for
+us to see that when Marama goeth abroad to hunt or to fish his
+moon-lady sitteth alone and maketh moan, and heedeth not her fires; it
+is for us to see that when anon he cometh back she buildeth up those
+fires whereon to cook food for him, and presently the fires grow
+brighter and the whole round moon island is lighted and warmed thereby.
+In this wise an exceeding fair example is set unto all wives of their
+duty unto their mates.
+
+When the sea singeth to the sands, when the cane beckoneth to the
+stars, and when the palm-leaves whisper to sweet-breathed night, how
+pleasant it is, my brown maiden, to stand with thee and look upon that
+island in the azure sea that spreadeth like a veil above the cocoa
+trees.  For there we see the moon-lady, and she awaiteth her dear lord
+and she smileth in love; and that grace warmeth our hearts--your heart
+and mine, O little maiden! and we are glad with a joy that knoweth no
+speaking.
+
+
+
+
+LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM
+
+The Plainfield boys always had the name of being smart, and I guess
+Lute Baker was just about the smartest boy the old town ever turned
+out.  Well, he came by it naturally; Judge Baker was known all over
+western Massachusetts as the sage of Plainfield, and Lute's mother--she
+was a Kellogg before the judge married her--she had more faculty than a
+dozen of your girls nowadays, and her cooking was talked about
+everywhere--never was another woman, as folks said, could cook like
+Miss Baker.  The boys--Lute's friends--used to hang around the back
+porch of noonings just to get some of her doughnuts; she was always
+considerate and liberal to growing boys.  May be Lute would n't have
+been so popular if it had n't been for those doughnuts, and may be he
+would n't have been so smart if it had n't been for all the good things
+his mother fed into him.  Always did believe there was piety and wisdom
+in New England victuals.
+
+Lute went to Amherst College and did well; was valedictorian; then he
+taught school a winter, for Judge Baker said that nobody could amount
+to much in the world unless he taught school a spell.  Lute was set on
+being a lawyer, and so presently he went down to Springfield and read
+and studied in Judge Morris' office, and Judge Morris wrote a letter
+home to the Bakers once testifying to Lute's "probity" and
+"acumen"--things that are never heard tell of except high up in the
+legal profession.
+
+How Lute came to get the western fever I can't say, but get it he did,
+and one winter he up and piked off to Chicago, and there he hung out
+his shingle and joined a literary social and proceeded to get rich and
+famous.  The next spring Judge Baker fell off the woodshed while he was
+shingling it, and it jarred him so he kind of drooped and pined round a
+spell and then one day up and died.  Lute had to come back home and
+settle up the estate.
+
+When he went west again he took a wife with him--Emma Cowles that was
+(everybody called her Em for short), pretty as a picture and as likely
+a girl as there was in the township.  Lute had always had a hankering
+for Em, and Em thought there never was another such a young fellow as
+Lute; she understood him perfectly, having sung in the choir with him
+two years.  The young couple went west well provided.
+
+Lute and Em went to housekeeping in Chicago.  Em wanted to do her own
+work, but Lute would n't hear to it; so they hired a German girl that
+was just over from the vineyards of the Rhine country.
+
+"Lute," says Em, "Hulda does n't know much about cooking."
+
+"So I see," says Lute, feelingly.  "She's green as grass; you'll have
+to teach her."
+
+Hulda could swing a hoe and wield a spade deftly, but of the cuisine
+she knew somewhat less than nothing.  Em had lots of patience and
+pluck, but she found teaching Hulda how to cook a precious hard job.
+Lute was amiable enough at first; used to laugh it off with a cordial
+bet that by and by Em would make a famous cook of the obtuse but
+willing immigrant.  This moral backing buoyed Em up considerable, until
+one evening in an unguarded moment Lute expressed a pining for some
+doughnuts "like those mother makes," and that casual remark made Em
+unhappy.  But next evening when Lute came home there were doughnuts on
+the table--beautiful, big, plethoric doughnuts that fairly reeked with
+the homely, delicious sentiment of New England.  Lute ate one.  Em felt
+hurt.
+
+"I guess it's because I 've eaten so much else," explained Lute, "but
+somehow or other they don't taste like mother's."
+
+Next day Em fed the rest of the doughnuts to a poor man who came and
+said he was starving.  "Thank you, marm," said he, with his heart full
+of gratitude and his mouth full of doughnuts; "I ha' n't had anything
+as good as this since I left Connecticut twenty years ago."
+
+That little subtlety consoled Em, but still she found it hard to bear
+up under her apparent inability to do her duty by Lute's critical
+palate.  Once when Lute brought Col. Hi Thomas home to dinner they had
+chicken pie.  The colonel praised it and passed his plate a third time.
+
+"Oh, but you ought to eat some of mother's chicken pie," said Lute.
+"Mother never puts an under crust in her chicken pies, and that makes
+'em juicier."
+
+Same way when they had fried pork and potatoes; Lute could not
+understand why the flesh of the wallowing, carnivorous western hog
+should n't be as white and firm and sweet as the meat of the swill-fed
+Yankee pig.  And why were the Hubbard squashes so tasteless and why was
+maple syrup so very different?  Yes, amid all his professional duties
+Lute found time to note and remark upon this and other similar things,
+and of course Em was--by implication, at least--held responsible for
+them all.
+
+And Em did try so hard, so very hard, to correct the evils and to
+answer the hypercritical demands of Lute's foolishly petted and spoiled
+appetite.  She warred valorously with butchers, grocers, and hucksters;
+she sent down east to Mother Baker for all the famous family recipes;
+she wrestled in speech and in practice with that awful Hulda; she
+experimented long and patiently; she blistered her pretty face and
+burned her little hands over that kitchen range--yes, a slow, constant
+martyrdom that conscientious wife willingly endured for years in her
+enthusiastic determination to do her duty by Lute.  Doughnuts,
+chicken-pies, boiled dinners, layer-cakes, soda biscuits, flapjacks,
+fish balls, baked beans, squash pies, corned-beef hash, dried-apple
+sauce, currant wine, succotash, brown bread--how valorously Em toiled
+over them, only to be rewarded with some cruel reminder of how "mother"
+used to do these things!  It was terrible; a tedious martyrdom.
+
+Lute--mind you--Lute was not wilfully cruel; no, he was simply and
+irremediably a heedless idiot of a man, just as every married man is,
+for a spell, at least.  But it broke Em's heart, all the same.
+
+Lute's mother came to visit them when their first child was born, and
+she lifted a great deal of trouble off the patient wife.  Old Miss
+Baker always liked Em; had told the minister three years ago that she
+knew Em would make Lute a good Christian wife.  They named the boy
+Moses, after the old judge who was dead, and old Miss Baker said he
+should have his gran'pa's watch when he got to be twenty-one.
+
+Old Miss Baker always stuck by Em; may be she remembered how the old
+judge had talked once on a time about his mother's cooking.  For all
+married men are, as I have said, idiotically cruel about that sort of
+thing.  Yes, old Miss Baker braced Em up wonderful; brought a lot of
+dried catnip out west with her for the baby; taught Em how to make
+salt-rising bread; told her all about stewing things and broiling
+things and roasting things; showed her how to tell the real Yankee
+codfish from the counterfeit--oh, she just did Em lots of good, did old
+Miss Baker!
+
+The rewards of virtue may be slow in coming, but they are sure to come.
+Em's three boys--the three bouncing boys that came to Em and
+Lute--those three boys waxed fat and grew up boisterous, blatant
+appreciators of their mother's cooking.  The way those boys did eat
+mother's doughnuts!  And mother's pies--wow!  Other boys--the
+neighbors' boys--came round regularly in troops, battalions, armies,
+and like a consuming fire licked up the wholesome viands which Em's
+skill and liberality provided for her own boys' enthusiastic playmates.
+And all those boys--there must have been millions of 'em--were living,
+breathing, vociferous testimonials to the unapproachable excellence of
+Em's cooking.
+
+Lute got into politics, and they elected him to the legislature.  After
+the campaign, needing rest, he took it into his head to run down east
+to see his mother; he had not been back home for eight years.  He took
+little Moses with him.  They were gone about three weeks.  Gran'ma
+Baker had made great preparations for them; had cooked up enough pies
+to last all winter, and four plump, beheaded, well-plucked,
+yellow-legged pullets hung stiff and solemn-like in the chill pantry
+off the kitchen, awaiting the last succulent scene of all.
+
+Lute and the little boy got there late of an evening.  The dear old
+lady was so glad to see them; the love that beamed from her kindly eyes
+well nigh melted the glass in her silver-bowed specks.  The table was
+spread in the dining-room; the sheet-iron stove sighed till it seemed
+like to crack with the heat of that hardwood fire.
+
+"Why, Lute, you ain't eatin' enough to keep a fly alive," remonstrated
+old Miss Baker, when her son declined a second doughnut; "and what ails
+the child?" she continued; "ha' n't he got no appetite?  Why, when you
+wuz his age, Lute, seemed as if I could n't cook doughnuts fast enough
+for you!"
+
+Lute explained that both he and his little boy had eaten pretty
+heartily on the train that day.  But all the time of their visit there
+poor old Gran'ma Baker wondered and worried because they did n't eat
+enough--seemed to her as if western folks had n't the right kind of
+appetite.  Even the plump pullets, served in a style that had made Miss
+Baker famed throughout those discriminating parts--even those pullets
+failed to awaken the expected and proper enthusiasm in the visitors.
+
+Home again in Chicago, Lute drew his chair up to the table with an
+eloquent sigh of relief.  As for little Moses, he clamored his delight.
+
+"Chicken pie!" he cried, gleefully; and then he added a soulful "wow!"
+as his eager eyes fell upon a plateful of hot, exuberant, voluptuous
+doughnuts.
+
+"Yes, we are both glad to get back," said Lute.
+
+"But I am afraid," suggested Em, timidly, "that gran'ma's cooking has
+spoiled you."
+
+Little Moses (bless him) howled an indignant, a wrathful remonstrance.
+"Gran'ma can't cook worth a cent!" said he.
+
+Em expected Lute to be dreadfully shocked, but he was n't.
+
+"I would n't let her know it for all the world," remarked Lute,
+confidentially, "but mother has lost her grip on cooking.  At any rate,
+her cooking is n't what it used to be; it has changed."
+
+Then Em came bravely to the rescue.  "No, Lute," says she, and she
+meant it, "your mother's cooking has n't changed, but _you_ have.  The
+man has grown away from the boy, and the tastes, the ways, and the
+delights of boyhood have no longer any fascination for the man."
+
+"May be you 're right," said Lute.  "At any rate, I 'm free to say that
+_your_ cooking beats the world."
+
+Good for Lute!  Virtue triumphs and my true story ends.  But first an
+explanation to concinnate my narrative.
+
+I should never have known this true story if Lute himself had n't told
+it to me at the last dinner of the Sons of New England--told it to me
+right before Em, that dear, patient little martyred wife of his.  And I
+knew by the love light in Em's eyes that she was glad that she had
+endured that martyrdom for Lute's sake.
+
+
+
+
+JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS
+
+One Christmas eve Joel Baker was in a most unhappy mood.  He was
+lonesome and miserable; the chimes making merry Christmas music outside
+disturbed rather than soothed him, the jingle of the sleigh-bells
+fretted him, and the shrill whistling of the wind around the corners of
+the house and up and down the chimney seemed to grate harshly on his
+ears.
+
+"Humph," said Joel, wearily, "Christmas is nothin' to me; there _was_ a
+time when it meant a great deal, but that was long ago--fifty years is
+a long stretch to look back over.  There is nothin' in Christmas now,
+nothin' for _me_ at least; it is so long since Santa Claus remembered
+me that I venture to say he has forgotten that there ever was such a
+person as Joel Baker in all the world.  It used to be different; Santa
+Claus _used_ to think a great deal of me when I was a boy.  Ah!
+Christmas nowadays ain't what it was in the good old time--no, not what
+it used to be."
+
+As Joel was absorbed in his distressing thoughts he became aware very
+suddenly that somebody was entering or trying to enter the room.  First
+came a draft of cold air, then a scraping, grating sound, then a
+strange shuffling, and then,--yes, then, all at once, Joel saw a pair
+of fat legs and a still fatter body dangle down the chimney, followed
+presently by a long white beard, above which appeared a jolly red nose
+and two bright twinkling eyes, while over the head and forehead was
+drawn a fur cap, white with snowflakes.
+
+"Ha, ha," chuckled the fat, jolly stranger, emerging from the chimney
+and standing well to one side of the hearthstone; "ha, ha, they don't
+have the big, wide chimneys they used to build, but they can't keep
+Santa Claus out--no, they can't keep Santa Claus out!  Ha, ha, ha.
+Though the chimney were no bigger than a gas pipe, Santa Claus would
+slide down it!"
+
+It didn't require a second glance to assure Joel that the new-comer was
+indeed Santa Claus.  Joel knew the good old saint--oh, yes--and he had
+seen him once before, and, although that was when Joel was a little
+boy, he had never forgotten how Santa Claus looked.
+
+Nor had Santa Claus forgotten Joel, although Joel thought he had; for
+now Santa Claus looked kindly at Joel and smiled and said: "Merry
+Christmas to you, Joel!"
+
+"Thank you, old Santa Claus," replied Joel, "but I don't believe it's
+going to be a very merry Christmas.  It's been so long since I 've had
+a merry Christmas that I don't believe I 'd know how to act if I had
+one."
+
+"Let's see," said Santa Claus, "it must be going on fifty years since I
+saw you last--yes, you were eight years old the last time I slipped
+down the chimney of the old homestead and filled your stocking.  Do you
+remember it?"
+
+"I remember it well," answered Joel.  "I had made up my mind to lie
+awake and see Santa Claus; I had heard tell of you, but I 'd never seen
+you, and Brother Otis and I concluded we 'd lie awake and watch for you
+to come."
+
+Santa Claus shook his head reproachfully.  "That was very wrong," said
+he, "for I 'm so scarey that if I 'd known you boys were awake I 'd
+never have come down the chimney at all, and then you 'd have had no
+presents."
+
+"But Otis could n't keep awake," explained Joel.  "We talked about
+everythin' we could think of, till father called out to us that if we
+did n't stop talking he 'd have to send one of us up into the attic to
+sleep with the hired man.  So in less than five minutes Otis was sound
+asleep and no pinching could wake him up.  But _I_ was bound to see
+Santa Claus and I don't believe anything would 've put me to sleep.  I
+heard the big clock in the sitting-room strike eleven, and I had begun
+wonderin' if you never were going to come, when all of a sudden I heard
+the tinkle of the bells around your reindeers' necks.  Then I heard the
+reindeers prancin' on the roof and the sound of your sleigh-runners
+cuttin' through the crust and slippin' over the shingles.  I was kind
+o' scared and I covered my head up with the sheet and quilts--only I
+left a little hole so I could peek out and see what was goin' on.  As
+soon as I saw you I got over bein' scared--for you were jolly and
+smilin' like, and you chuckled as you went around to each stockin' and
+filled it up."
+
+"Yes, I can remember the night," said Santa Claus.  "I brought you a
+sled, did n't I?"
+
+"Yes, and you brought Otis one, too," replied Joel.  "Mine was red and
+had 'Yankee Doodle' painted in black letters on the side; Otis' was
+black and had 'Snow Queen' in gilt letters."
+
+"I remember those sleds distinctly," said Santa Claus, "for I made them
+specially for you boys."
+
+"You set the sleds up against the wall," continued Joel, "and then you
+filled the stockin's."
+
+"There were six of 'em, as I recollect?" said Santa Claus.
+
+"Let me see," queried Joel.  "There was mine, and Otis', and Elvira's,
+and Thankful's, and Susan Prickett's--Susan was our help, you know.
+No, there were only five, and, as I remember, they were the biggest we
+could beg or borrer of Aunt Dorcas, who weighed nigh unto two hundred
+pounds.  Otis and I did n't like Susan Prickett, and we were hopin' you
+'d put a cold potato in her stockin'."
+
+"But Susan was a good girl," remonstrated Santa Claus.  "You know I put
+cold potatoes only in the stockin's of boys and girls who are bad and
+don't believe in Santa Claus."
+
+"At any rate," said Joel, "you filled all the stockin's with candy and
+pop-corn and nuts and raisins, and I can remember you said you were
+afraid you 'd run out of pop-corn balls before you got around.  Then
+you left each of us a book.  Elvira got the best one, which was 'The
+Garland of Frien'ship,' and had poems in it about the bleeding of
+hearts, and so forth.  Father was n't expectin' anything, but you left
+him a new pair of mittens, and mother got a new fur boa to wear to
+meetin'."
+
+"Of course," said Santa Claus, "I never forgot father and mother."
+
+"Well, it was as much as I could do to lay still," continued Joel, "for
+I 'd been longin' for a sled, an' the sight of that red sled with
+'Yankee Doodle' painted on it jest made me wild.  But, somehow or
+other, I began to get powerful sleepy all at once, and I could n't keep
+my eyes open.  The next thing I knew Otis was nudgin' me in the ribs.
+'Git up, Joel,' says he; 'it's Chris'mas an' Santa Claus has been
+here.'  'Merry Christ'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' we cried as we tumbled
+out o' bed.  Then Elvira an' Thankful came in, not more 'n half
+dressed, and Susan came in, too, an' we just made Rome howl with 'Merry
+Chris'mas!  Merry Chris'mas!' to each other.  'Ef you children don't
+make less noise in there,' cried father, 'I'll hev to send you all back
+to bed.'  The idea of askin' boys an' girls to keep quiet on Chris'mas
+mornin' when they 've got new sleds an' 'Garlands of Frien'ship'!"
+
+Santa Claus chuckled; his rosy cheeks fairly beamed joy.
+
+"Otis an' I did n't want any breakfast," said Joel.  "We made up our
+minds that a stockin'ful of candy and pop-corn and raisins would stay
+us for a while.  I do believe there was n't buckwheat cakes enough in
+the township to keep us indoors that mornin'; buckwheat cakes don't
+size up much 'longside of a red sled with 'Yankee Doodle' painted onto
+it and a black sled named 'Snow Queen.'  _We_ did n't care how cold it
+was--so much the better for slidin' down hill!  All the boys had new
+sleds--Lafe Dawson, Bill Holbrook, Gum Adams, Rube Playford, Leander
+Merrick, Ezra Purple--all on 'em had new sleds excep' Martin Peavey,
+and he said he calculated Santa Claus had skipped him this year 'cause
+his father had broke his leg haulin' logs from the Pelham woods and had
+been kep' indoors six weeks.  But Martin had his ol' sled, and he
+didn't hev to ask any odds of any of us, neither."
+
+"I brought Martin a sled the _next_ Christmas," said Santa Claus.
+
+"Like as not--but did you ever slide down hill, Santa Claus?  I don't
+mean such hills as they hev out here in this _new_ country, but one of
+them old-fashioned New England hills that was made 'specially for boys
+to slide down, full of bumpers an' thank-ye-marms, and about ten times
+longer comin' up than it is goin' down!  The wind blew in our faces and
+almos' took our breath away.  'Merry Chris'mas to ye, little boys!' it
+seemed to say, and it untied our mufflers an' whirled the snow in our
+faces, just as if it was a boy, too, an' wanted to play with us.  An
+ol' crow came flappin' over us from the corn field beyond the meadow.
+He said: 'Caw, caw,' when he saw my new sled--I s'pose he 'd never seen
+a red one before.  Otis had a hard time with _his_ sled--the black
+one--an' he wondered why it would n't go as fast as mine would.  'Hev
+you scraped the paint off'n the runners?' asked Wralsey Goodnow.
+'Course I hev,' said Otis; 'broke my own knife an' Lute Ingraham's
+a-doin' it, but it don't seem to make no dif'rence--the darned ol'
+thing won't go!'  Then, what did Simon Buzzell say but that, like 's
+not, it was because Otis's sled's name was 'Snow Queen.'  'Never did
+see a girl sled that was worth a cent, anyway,' sez Simon.  Well, now,
+that jest about broke Otis up in business.  'It ain't a girl sled,' sez
+he, 'and its name ain't "Snow Queen"!  I'm a-goin' to call it "Dan'l
+Webster," or "Ol'ver Optic," or "Sheriff Robbins," or after some other
+big man!'  An' the boys plagued him so much about that pesky girl sled
+that he scratched off the name, an', as I remember, it _did_ go better
+after that!
+
+"About the only thing," continued Joel, "that marred the harmony of the
+occasion, as the editor of the 'Hampshire County Phoenix' used to say,
+was the ashes that Deacon Morris Frisbie sprinkled out in front of his
+house.  He said he was n't going to have folks breakin' their necks
+jest on account of a lot of frivolous boys that was goin' to the
+gallows as fas' as they could!  Oh, how we hated him! and we 'd have
+snowballed him, too, if we had n't been afraid of the constable that
+lived next door.  But the ashes did n't bother us much, and every time
+we slid sidesaddle we 'd give the ashes a kick, and that sort of
+scattered 'em."
+
+The bare thought of this made Santa Claus laugh.
+
+"Goin' on about nine o'clock," said Joel, "the girls come along--Sister
+Elvira an' Thankful, Prudence Tucker, Belle Yocum, Sophrone Holbrook,
+Sis Hubbard, an' Marthy Sawyer.  Marthy's brother Increase wanted her
+to ride on _his_ sled, but Marthy allowed that a red sled was her
+choice every time.  'I don't see how I 'm goin' to hold on,' said
+Marthy.  'Seems as if I would hev my hands full keepin' my things from
+blowin' away.'  'Don't worry about yourself, Marthy,' sez I, 'for if
+you'll look after your things, I kind o' calc'late I'll manage not to
+lose _you_ on the way.'  Dear Marthy--seems as if I could see you now,
+with your tangled hair a-blowin' in the wind, your eyes all bright and
+sparklin', an' your cheeks as red as apples.  Seems, too, as if I could
+hear you laughin' an' callin', jist as you did as I toiled up the old
+New England hill that Chris'mas mornin'--a callin': 'Joel, Joel,
+Joel--ain't ye ever comin', Joel?'  But the hill is long and steep,
+Marthy, an' Joel ain't the boy he used to be; he 's old, an' gray, an'
+feeble, but there 's love an' faith in his heart, an' they kind o' keep
+him totterin' tow'rds the voice he hears a-callin': 'Joel, Joel, Joel!'"
+
+"I know--I see it all," murmured Santa Claus, very softly.
+
+"Oh, that was so long ago," sighed Joel; "so very long ago!  And I've
+had no Chris'mas since--only once, when our little one--Marthy's an'
+mine--you remember him, Santa Claus?"
+
+"Yes," said Santa Claus, "a toddling little boy with blue eyes--"
+
+"Like his mother," interrupted Joel; "an' he was like her, too--so
+gentle an' lovin', only we called him Joel, for that was my father's
+name and it kind o' run in the fam'ly.  He wa' n't more 'n three years
+old when you came with your Chris'mas presents for him, Santa Claus.
+We had told him about you, and he used to go to the chimney every night
+and make a little prayer about what he wanted you to bring him.  And
+you brought 'em, too--a stick-horse, an' a picture-book, an' some
+blocks, an' a drum--they 're on the shelf in the closet there, and his
+little Chris'mas stockin' with 'em--I 've saved 'em all, an' I 've
+taken 'em down an' held 'em in my hands, oh, so many times!"
+
+"But when I came again," said Santa Claus--
+
+"His little bed was empty, an' I was alone.  It killed his
+mother--Marthy was so tender-hearted; she kind o' drooped an' pined
+after that.  So now they 've been asleep side by side in the
+buryin'-ground these thirty years.
+
+"That's why I 'm so sad-like whenever Chris'mas comes," said Joel,
+after a pause.  "The thinkin' of long ago makes me bitter almost.  It's
+so different now from what it used to be."
+
+"No, Joel, oh, no," said Santa Claus.  "'T is the same world, and human
+nature is the same and always will be.  But Christmas is for the little
+folks, and you, who are old and grizzled now, must know it and love it
+only through the gladness it brings the little ones."
+
+"True," groaned Joel; "but how may I know and feel this gladness when I
+have no little stocking hanging in my chimney corner--no child to
+please me with his prattle?  See, I am alone."
+
+"No, you 're not alone, Joel," said Santa Claus.  "There are children
+in this great city who would love and bless you for your goodness if
+you but touched their hearts.  Make them happy, Joel; send by me this
+night some gift to the little boy in the old house yonder--he is poor
+and sick; a simple toy will fill his Christmas with gladness."
+
+"His little sister, too--take _her_ some present," said Joel; "make
+them happy for me, Santa Claus--you are right--make them happy for me."
+
+How sweetly Joel slept!  When he awoke, the sunlight streamed in
+through the window and seemed to bid him a merry Christmas.  How
+contented and happy Joel felt!  It must have been the talk with Santa
+Claus that did it all; he had never known a sweeter sense of peace.  A
+little girl came out of the house over the way.  She had a new doll in
+her arms, and she sang a merry little song and she laughed with joy as
+she skipped along the street.  Ay, and at the window sat the little
+sick boy, and the toy Santa Claus left him seemed to have brought him
+strength and health, for his eyes sparkled and his cheeks glowed, and
+it was plain to see his heart was full of happiness.
+
+And, oh! how the chimes did ring out, and how joyfully they sang their
+Christmas carol that morning!  They sang of Bethlehem and the manger
+and the Babe; they sang of love and charity, till all the Christmas air
+seemed full of angel voices.
+
+  Carol of the Christmas morn--
+    Carol of the Christ-child born--
+  Carol to the list'ning sky
+    Till it echoes back again
+    "Glory be to God on high,
+    Peace on earth, good will tow'rd men!"
+
+
+So all this music--the carol of the chimes, the sound of children's
+voices, the smile of the poor little boy over the way--all this sweet
+music crept into Joel's heart that Christmas morning; yes, and with
+these sweet, holy influences came others so subtile and divine that, in
+its silent communion with them, Joel's heart cried out amen and amen to
+the glory of the Christmas time.
+
+
+
+
+THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE
+
+The clock was in ill humor; so was the vase.  It was all on account of
+the little shoe that had been placed on the mantel-piece that day, and
+had done nothing but sigh dolorously all the afternoon and evening.
+
+"Look you here, neighbor," quoth the clock, in petulant tones, "you are
+sadly mistaken if you think you will be permitted to disturb our peace
+and harmony with your constant sighs and groans.  If you are ill, pray
+let us know; otherwise, have done with your manifestations of distress."
+
+"Possibly you do not know what befell the melancholy plaque that
+intruded his presence upon us last week," said the vase.  "We pitched
+him off the mantelpiece, and he was shattered into a thousand bits."
+
+The little shoe gave a dreadful shudder.  It could not help thinking it
+had fallen among inhospitable neighbors.  It began to cry.  The brass
+candlestick took pity on the sobbing thing, and declared with some show
+of temper that the little shoe should not be imposed on.
+
+"Now tell us why you are so full of sadness," said the brass
+candlestick.
+
+"I do not know how to explain," whimpered the little shoe.  "You see I
+am quite a young thing, albeit I have a rusty appearance and there is a
+hole in my toes and my heel is badly run over.  I feel so lonesome and
+friendless and sort of neglected-like, that it seems as if there were
+nothing for me to do but sigh and grieve and weep all day long."
+
+"Sighing and weeping do no good," remarked the vase, philosophically.
+
+"I know that very well," replied the little shoe; "but once I was so
+happy that my present lonesome lot oppresses me all the more
+grievously."
+
+"You say you once were happy--pray tell us all about it," demanded the
+brass candlestick.
+
+The vase was eager to hear the little shoe's story, and even the proud,
+haughty clock expressed a willingness to listen.  The matchbox came
+from the other end of the mantel-piece, and the pen-wiper, the
+paper-cutter, and the cigar-case gathered around the little shoe, and
+urged it to proceed with its narrative.
+
+"The first thing I can remember in my short life," said the little
+shoe, "was being taken from a large box in which there were many of my
+kind thrown together in great confusion.  I found myself tied with a
+slender cord to a little mate, a shoe so very like me that you could
+not have told us apart.  We two were taken and put in a large window in
+the midst of many grown-up shoes, and we had nothing to do but gaze out
+of the window all day long into the wide, busy street.  That was a very
+pleasant life.  Sometimes the sunbeams would dance through the
+window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate;
+they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very
+much--they were so warm and gentle and merrisome.  Sometimes the
+raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to
+us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness.
+When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at
+us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from behind a cloud to
+give us a kindly smile.  The wind used to sing us lullabies, and in one
+corner of our window there was a little open space where the mice gave
+a grand ball every night to the music of the crickets and a blind frog.
+Altogether we had a merry time."
+
+"I 'd have liked it all but the wind," said the brass candlestick.  "I
+don't know why it is, but I 'm dreadfully put out by the horrid old
+wind!"
+
+"Many people," continued the little shoe, "used to stop and look in at
+the window, and I believe my little mate and I were admired more than
+any of our larger and more pretentious companions.  I can remember
+there was a pair of red-top boots that was exceedingly jealous of us.
+But that did not last long, for one day a very sweet lady came and
+peered in at the window and smiled very joyously when she saw me and my
+little mate.  Then I remember we were taken from the window, and the
+lady held us in her hands and examined us very closely, and measured
+our various dimensions with a string, and finally, I remember, she said
+she would carry us home.  We did not know what that meant, only we
+realized that we would never live in the shop window again, and we were
+loath to be separated from the sunbeams and the mice and the other
+friends that had been so kind to us."
+
+"What a droll little shoe!" exclaimed the vase.  Whereupon the clock
+frowned and ticked a warning to the vase not to interrupt the little
+shoe in the midst of its diverting narrative.
+
+"It is not necessary for me to tell you how we were wrapped in paper
+and carried a weary distance," said the little shoe; "it is sufficient
+to my purpose to say that, after what seemed to us an interminable
+journey and a cruel banging around, we were taken from the paper and
+found ourselves in a quiet, cozy room--yes, in this very apartment
+where we all are now!  The sweet lady held us in her lap, and at the
+sweet lady's side stood a little child, gazing at us with an expression
+of commingled astonishment, admiration, and glee.  We knew the little
+child belonged to the sweet lady, and from the talk we heard we knew
+that henceforth the child was to be our little master."
+
+As if some sudden anguish came upon it, hushing its speech, the little
+shoe paused in its narrative.  The others said never a word.  Perhaps
+it was because they were beginning to understand.  The proud, haughty
+clock seemed to be less imperious for the moment, and its ticking was
+softer and more reverential.
+
+"From that time," resumed the little shoe, "our little master and we
+were inseparable during all the happy day.  We played and danced with
+him and wandered everywhere through the grass, over the carpets, down
+the yard, up the street--ay, everywhere our little master went, we went
+too, sharing his pretty antics and making music everywhere.  Then, when
+evening came and little master was put to sleep, in yonder crib, we
+were set on the warm carpet near his bed where we could watch him while
+he slept, and bid him good-morrow when the morning came.  Those were
+pleasant nights, too, for no sooner had little master fallen asleep
+than the fairies came trooping through the keyholes and fluttering down
+the chimney to dance over his eyes all night long, giving him happy
+dreams, and filling his baby ears with sweetest music."
+
+"What a curious conceit!" said the pen-wiper.
+
+"And is it true that fairies dance on children's eyelids at night?"
+asked the paper-cutter.
+
+"Certainly," the clock chimed in, "and they sing very pretty lullabies
+and very cunning operettas, too.  I myself have seen and heard them."
+
+"I should like to hear a fairy operetta," suggested the pen-wiper.
+
+"I remember one the fairies sang my little master as they danced over
+his eyelids," said the little shoe, "and I will repeat it if you wish."
+
+"Nothing would please me more," said the pen-wiper.
+
+"Then you must know," said the little shoe, "that, as soon as my master
+fell asleep, the fairies would make their appearance, led by their
+queen, a most beautiful and amiable little lady no bigger than a
+cambric needle.  Assembling on the pillow of the crib, they would order
+their minstrels and orchestra to seat themselves on little master's
+forehead.  The minstrels invariably were the cricket, the flea, the
+katydid, and the gnat, while the orchestra consisted of mosquitos,
+bumblebees, and wasps.  Once in a great while, on very important
+occasions, the fairies would bring the old blind hop-toad down the
+chimney and set him on the window-sill, where he would discourse droll
+ditties to the infinite delight of his hearers.  But on ordinary
+occasions, the fairy queen, whose name was Taffie, would lead the
+performance in these pleasing words, sung to a very dulcet air:
+
+  AN INVITATION TO SLEEP
+
+  Little eyelids, cease your winking;
+    Little orbs, forget to beam;
+  Little soul, to slumber sinking,
+    Let the fairies rule your dream.
+  Breezes, through the lattice sweeping,
+    Sing their lullabies the while--
+  And a star-ray, softly creeping
+    To thy bedside, woos thy smile.
+  But no song nor ray entrancing
+    Can allure thee from the spell
+  Of the tiny fairies dancing
+    O'er the eyes they love so well.
+  See, we come in countless number--
+    I, their queen, and all my court--
+  Haste, my precious one, to slumber
+    Which invites our fairy sport.
+
+
+"At the conclusion of this song Prince Whimwham, a tidy little
+gentleman fairy in pink silk small-clothes, approaching Queen Taffie
+and bowing graciously, would say:
+
+  Pray, lady, may I have the pleasure
+  Of leading you this stately measure?
+
+To which her majesty would reply with equal graciousness in the
+affirmative.  Then Prince Whimwham and Queen Taffie would take their
+places on one of my master's eyelids, and the other gentleman fairies
+and lady fairies would follow their example, till at last my master's
+face would seem to be alive with these delightful little beings.  The
+mosquitos would blow a shrill blast on their trumpets, the orchestra
+would strike up, and then the festivities would begin in earnest.  How
+the bumblebees would drone, how the wasps would buzz, and how the
+mosquitos would blare!  It was a delightful harmony of weird sounds.
+The strange little dancers floated hither and thither over my master's
+baby face, as light as thistledowns, and as graceful as the slender
+plumes they wore in their hats and bonnets.  Presently they would weary
+of dancing, and then the minstrels would be commanded to entertain
+them.  Invariably the flea, who was a rattle-headed fellow, would
+discourse some such incoherent song as this:
+
+  COQUETRY
+
+  Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-dee--
+  The spider courted the frisky flea;
+  Tiddle-de-dumpty, tiddle-de-doo--
+  The flea ran off with the bugaboo!
+      "Oh, tiddle-de-dee!"
+      Said the frisky flea--
+      For what cared she
+      For the miseree
+      The spider knew,
+      When, tiddle-de-doo,
+  The flea ran off with the bugaboo!
+
+  Rumpty-tumpty, pimplety-pan--
+  The flubdub courted a catamaran
+  But timplety-topplety, timpity-tare--
+  The flubdub wedded the big blue bear!
+      The fun began
+      With a pimplety-pan
+      When the catamaran,
+      Tore up a man
+      And streaked the air
+      With his gore and hair
+  Because the flubdub wedded the bear!
+
+
+"I remember with what dignity the fairy queen used to reprove the flea
+for his inane levity:
+
+  Nay, futile flea; these verses you are making
+  Disturb the child--for, see, he is awaking!
+  Come, little cricket, sing your quaintest numbers,
+  And they, perchance, shall lull him back to slumbers.
+
+
+"Upon this invitation the cricket, who is justly one of the most famous
+songsters in the world, would get his pretty voice in tune and sing as
+follows:
+
+  THE CRICKET'S SONG
+
+  When all around from out the ground
+    The little flowers are peeping,
+  And from the hills the merry rills
+    With vernal songs are leaping,
+  I sing my song the whole day long
+    In woodland, hedge, and thicket--
+  And sing it, too, the whole night through,
+    For I 'm a merry cricket.
+
+  The children hear my chirrup clear
+    As, in the woodland straying,
+  They gather flow'rs through summer hours--
+    And then I hear them saying:
+  "Sing, sing away the livelong day,
+    Glad songster of the thicket--
+  With your shrill mirth you gladden earth,
+    You merry little cricket!"
+
+  When summer goes, and Christmas snows
+    Are from the north returning,
+  I quit my lair and hasten where
+    The old yule-log is burning.
+  And where at night the ruddy light
+    Of that old log is flinging
+  A genial joy o'er girl and boy,
+    There I resume my singing.
+
+  And, when they hear my chirrup clear,
+    The children stop their playing--
+  With eager feet they haste to greet
+    My welcome music, saying:
+  "The little thing has come to sing
+    Of woodland, hedge, and thicket--
+  Of summer day and lambs at play--
+    Oh, how we love the cricket!"
+
+
+"This merry little song always seemed to please everybody except the
+gnat.  The fairies appeared to regard the gnat as a pestiferous insect,
+but a contemptuous pity led them to call upon him for a recitation,
+which invariably was in the following strain:
+
+  THE FATE OF THE FLIMFLAM
+
+  A flimflam flopped from a fillamaloo,
+    Where the pollywog pinkled so pale,
+  And the pipkin piped a petulant "pooh"
+    To the garrulous gawp of the gale.
+  "Oh, woe to the swap of the sweeping swipe
+    That booms on the hobbling bay!"
+  Snickered the snark to the snoozing snipe
+    That lurked where the lamprey lay.
+
+  The gluglug glinked in the glimmering gloam,
+    Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee--
+  When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam,
+    From the sozzling and succulent sea.
+  "Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!"
+    She swore as she swayed in a swoon,
+  And a doleful dank dumped over the deep,
+    To the lay of the limpid loon!
+
+
+"This was simply horrid, as you all will allow.  The queen and her
+fairy followers were much relieved when the honest katydid narrated a
+pleasant moral in the form of a ballad to this effect:
+
+  CONTENTMENT
+
+  Once on a time an old red hen
+    Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks,
+  For she had little babies ten,
+    A part of which were tiny ducks.
+  "'T is very rare that hens," said she,
+    "Have baby ducks as well as chicks--
+  But I possess, as you can see,
+    Of chickens four and ducklings six!"
+
+  A season later, this old hen
+    Appeared, still cackling of her luck,
+  For, though she boasted babies ten,
+    Not one among them was a duck!
+  "'T is well," she murmured, brooding o'er
+    The little chicks of fleecy down--
+  "My babies now will stay ashore,
+    And, consequently, cannot drown!"
+
+  The following spring the old red hen
+    Clucked just as proudly as of yore--
+  But lo! her babes were ducklings ten,
+    Instead of chickens, as before!
+  "'T is better," said the old red hen,
+    As she surveyed her waddling brood;
+  "A little water now and then
+    Will surely do my darlings good!"
+
+  But oh! alas, how very sad!
+    When gentle spring rolled round again
+  The eggs eventuated bad,
+    And childless was the old red hen!
+  Yet patiently she bore her woe,
+    And still she wore a cheerful air,
+  And said: "'T is best these things are so,
+    For babies are a dreadful care!"
+
+  I half suspect that many men,
+    And many, many women, too,
+  Could learn a lesson from the hen
+    With foliage of vermilion hue;
+  She ne'er presumed to take offence
+    At any fate that might befall,
+  But meekly bowed to Providence--
+    She was contented--that was all!
+
+
+"Then the fairies would resume their dancing.  Each little gentleman
+fairy would bow to his lady fairy and sing in the most musical of
+voices:
+
+      Sweet little fairy,
+      Tender and airy,
+  Come, let us dance on the good baby-eyes;
+      Merrily skipping,
+      Cheerily tripping,
+  Murmur we ever our soft lullabies.
+
+
+"And then, as the rest danced, the fairy queen sang the following
+slumber-song, accompanied by the orchestra:
+
+  A FAIRY LULLABY
+
+  There are two stars in yonder steeps
+  That watch the baby while he sleeps.
+    But while the baby is awake
+      And singing gayly all day long,
+    The little stars their slumbers take
+      Lulled by the music of his song.
+  So sleep, dear tired baby, sleep
+  While little stars their vigils keep.
+
+  Beside his loving mother-sheep
+  A little lambkin is asleep;
+    What does he know of midnight gloom---
+      He sleeps, and in his quiet dreams
+    He thinks he plucks the clover bloom
+      And drinks at cooling, purling streams.
+  And those same stars the baby knows
+  Sing softly to the lamb's repose.
+
+  Sleep, little lamb; sleep, little child--
+  The stars are dim--the night is wild;
+    But o'er the cot and o'er the lea
+      A sleepless eye forever beams--
+    A shepherd watches over thee
+      In all thy little baby dreams;
+  The shepherd loves his tiny sheep--
+  Sleep, precious little lambkin, sleep!
+
+
+"That is very pretty, indeed!" exclaimed the brass candlestick.
+
+"So it is," replied the little shoe, "but you should hear it sung by
+the fairy queen!"
+
+"Did the operetta end with that lullaby?" inquired the cigar-case.
+
+"Oh, no," said the little shoe.  "No sooner had the queen finished her
+lullaby than an old gran'ma fairy, wearing a quaint mob-cap and large
+spectacles, limped forward with her crutch and droned out a curious
+ballad, which seemed to be for the special benefit of the boy and girl
+fairies, very many of whom were of the company.  This ballad was as
+follows:
+
+  BALLAD OF THE JELLY-CAKE
+
+  A little boy whose name was Tim
+    Once ate some jelly-cake for tea--
+  Which cake did not agree with him,
+    As by the sequel you shall see.
+  "My darling child," his mother said,
+    "Pray do not eat that jelly-cake,
+  For, after you have gone to bed,
+    I fear 't will make your stomach ache!"
+  But foolish little Tim demurred
+  Unto his mother's warning word.
+
+  That night, while all the household slept,
+    Tim felt an awful pain, and then
+  From out the dark a nightmare leapt
+    And stood upon his abdomen!
+  "I cannot breathe!" the infant cried--
+    "Oh, Mrs. Nightmare, pity take!"
+  "There is no mercy," she replied,
+    "For boys who feast on jelly-cake!"
+  And so, despite the moans of Tim,
+  The cruel nightmare went for him.
+
+  At first, she 'd tickle Timmy's toes
+    Or roughly smite his baby cheek--
+  And now she 'd rudely tweak his nose
+    And other petty vengeance wreak;
+  And then, with hobnails in her shoes
+    And her two horrid eyes aflame,
+  The mare proceeded to amuse
+    Herself by prancing o'er his frame---
+  First to his throbbing brow, and then
+  Back to his little feet again.
+
+  At last, fantastic, wild, and weird,
+    And clad in garments ghastly grim,
+  A scowling hoodoo band appeared
+    And joined in worrying little Tim.
+  Each member of this hoodoo horde
+    Surrounded Tim with fierce ado
+  And with long, cruel gimlets bored
+    His aching system through and through,
+  And while they labored all night long
+  The nightmare neighed a dismal song.
+
+  Next morning, looking pale and wild,
+    Poor little Tim emerged from bed--
+  "Good gracious! what can ail the child!"
+    His agitated mother said.
+  "We live to learn," responded he,
+    "And I have lived to learn to take
+  Plain bread and butter for my tea,
+    And never, never, jelly-cake!
+  For when my hulk with pastry teems,
+  I must _expect_ unpleasant dreams!"
+
+
+"Now you can imagine this ballad impressed the child fairies very
+deeply," continued the little shoe.  "Whenever the gran'ma fairy sang
+it, the little fairies expressed great surprise that boys and girls
+ever should think of eating things which occasioned so much trouble.
+So the night was spent in singing and dancing, and our master would
+sleep as sweetly as you please.  At last the lark--what a beautiful
+bird she is--would flutter against the window panes, and give the
+fairies warning in these words:
+
+  MORNING SONG
+
+  The eastern sky is streaked with red,
+    The weary night is done,
+  And from his distant ocean bed
+    Rolls up the morning sun.
+  The dew, like tiny silver beads
+    Bespread o'er velvet green,
+  Is scattered on the wakeful meads
+    By angel hands unseen.
+  "Good-morrow, robin in the trees!"
+    The star-eyed daisy cries;
+  "Good-morrow," sings the morning breeze
+    Unto the ruddy skies;
+  "Good-morrow, every living thing!"
+    Kind Nature seems to say,
+  And all her works devoutly sing
+    A hymn to birth of day,
+  So, haste, without delay,
+    Haste, fairy friends, on silver wing,
+  And to your homes away!
+
+
+"But the fairies could never leave little master so unceremoniously.
+Before betaking themselves to their pretty homes under the rocks near
+the brook, they would address a parting song to his eyes, and this song
+they called a matin invocation:
+
+  TO A SLEEPING BABY'S EYES
+
+  And thou, twin orbs of love and joy!
+      Unveil thy glories with the morn--
+      Dear eyes, another day is born--
+  Awake, O little sleeping boy!
+  Bright are the summer morning skies,
+      But in this quiet little room
+      There broods a chill, oppressive gloom--
+  All for the brightness of thine eyes.
+  Without those radiant orbs of thine
+      How dark this little world would be--
+      This sweet home-world that worships thee--
+  So let their wondrous glories shine
+  On those who love their warmth and joy--
+  Awake, O sleeping little boy.
+
+
+"So that ended the fairy operetta, did it?" inquired the match-box.
+
+"Yes," said the little shoe, with a sigh of regret.  "The fairies were
+such bewitching creatures, and they sang so sweetly, I could have
+wished they would never stop their antics and singing.  But, alas!  I
+fear I shall never see them again."
+
+"What makes you think so?" asked the brass candlestick.
+
+"I 'm sure I can't tell," replied the little shoe; "only everything is
+so strange-like and so changed from what it used to be that I hardly
+know whether indeed I am still the same little shoe I used to be."
+
+"Why, what can you mean?" queried the old clock, with a puzzled look on
+her face.
+
+"I will try to tell you," said the little shoe.  "You see, my mate and
+our master and I were great friends; as I have said, we roamed and
+frolicked around together all day, and at night my little mate and I
+watched at master's bedside while he slept.  One day we three took a
+long ramble, away up the street and beyond where the houses were built,
+until we came into a beautiful green field, where the grass was very
+tall and green, and where there were pretty flowers of every kind.  Our
+little master talked to the flowers and they answered him, and we all
+had a merry time in the meadow that afternoon, I can tell you.  'Don't
+go away, little child,' cried the daisies, 'but stay and be our
+playfellow always.'  A butterfly came and perched on our master's hand,
+and looked up and smiled, and said: 'I 'm not afraid of _you_; you
+would n't hurt me, would you?'  A little mouse told us there was a
+thrush's nest in the bush yonder, and we hurried to see it.  The lady
+thrush was singing her four babies to sleep.  They were strange-looking
+babies, with their gaping mouths, bulbing eyes, and scant feathers!
+'Do not wake them up,' protested the lady thrush.  'Go a little further
+on and you will come to the brook.  I will join you presently.'  So we
+went to the brook."
+
+"Oh, but I would have been afraid," suggested the pen-wiper.
+
+"Afraid of the brook!" cried the little shoe.  "Oh, no; what could be
+prettier than the brook!  We heard it singing in the distance.  We
+called to it and it bade us welcome.  How it smiled in the sunshine!
+How restless and furtive and nimble it was, yet full of merry prattling
+and noisy song.  Our master was overjoyed.  He had never seen the brook
+before; nor had we, for that matter.  'Let me cool your little feet,'
+said the brook, and, without replying, our master waded knee-deep into
+the brook.  In an instant we were wet through--my mate and I; but how
+deliciously cool it was here in the brook, and how smooth and bright
+the pebbles were!  One of the pebbles told me it had come many, many
+miles that day from its home in the hills where the brook was born."
+
+"Pooh, I don't believe it," sneered the vase.
+
+"Presently our master toddled back from out the brook," continued the
+little shoe, heedless of the vase's interruption, "and sat among the
+cowslips and buttercups on the bank.  The brook sang on as merrily as
+before.  'Would you like to go sailing?' asked our master of my mate.
+'Indeed I would,' replied my mate, and so our master pulled my mate
+from his little foot and set it afloat upon the dancing waves of the
+brook.  My mate was not the least alarmed.  It spun around gayly
+several times at first and then glided rapidly away.  The butterfly
+hastened and alighted upon the merry little craft.  'Where are you
+going?' I cried.  'I am going down to the sea,' replied my little mate,
+with laughter.  'And I am going to marry the rose in the far-away
+south,' cried the butterfly.  'But will you not come back?' I cried.
+They answered me, but they were so far away I could not hear them.  It
+was very distressing, and I grieved exceedingly.  Then, all at once, I
+discovered my little master was asleep, fast asleep among the cowslips
+and buttercups.  I did not try to wake him--only I felt very miserable,
+for I was so cold and wet.  Presently the lady thrush came, as she had
+said she would.  The child is asleep--he will be ill--I must hasten to
+tell his mother,' she cried, and away she flew."
+
+"And was he sick?" asked the vase.
+
+"I do not know," said the little shoe.  "I can remember it was late
+that evening when the sweet lady and others came and took us up and
+carried us back home, to this very room.  Then I was pulled off very
+unceremoniously and thrown under my little master's bed, and I never
+saw my little master after that.
+
+"How very strange!" exclaimed the match-safe.
+
+"Very, very strange," repeated the shoe.  "For many days and nights I
+lay under the crib all alone.  I could hear my little master sighing
+and talking as if in a dream.  Sometimes he spoke of me, and of the
+brook, and of my little mate dancing to the sea, and one night he
+breathed very loud and quick and he cried out and seemed to struggle,
+and then, all at once, he stopped, and I could hear the sweet lady
+weeping.  But I remember all this very faintly.  I was hoping the
+fairies would come back, but they never came.
+
+"I remember," resumed the little shoe, after a solemn pause, "I
+remember how, after a long, long time, the sweet lady came and drew me
+from under the crib and held me in her lap and kissed me and wept over
+me.  Then she put me in a dark, lonesome drawer, where there were
+dresses and stockings and the little hat my master used to wear.  There
+I lived, oh! such a weary time, and we talked--the dresses, the
+stockings, the hat, and I did--about our little master, and we wondered
+that he never came.  And every little while the sweet lady would take
+us from the drawer and caress us, and we saw that she was pale and that
+her eyes were red with weeping."
+
+"But has your little master never come back!" asked the old clock.
+
+"Not yet," said the little shoe, "and that is why I am so very
+lonesome.  Sometimes I think he has gone down to the sea in search of
+my little mate and that the two will come back together.  But I do not
+understand it.  The sweet lady took me from the drawer to-day and
+kissed me and set me here on the mantelpiece."
+
+"You don't mean to say she kissed you?" cried the haughty vase, "you
+horrid little stumped-out shoe!"
+
+"Indeed she did," insisted the lonesome little shoe, "and I know she
+loves me.  But why she loves me and kisses me and weeps over me I do
+not know.  It is all very strange.  I do not understand it at all."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY CROSS AND OTHER TALES***
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