e half to any poor,
homeless stranger that may come along and need it."

"That's right, husband!" said Baucis. "So we will!"

These old folks, you must know, were quite poor, and had to work pretty
hard for a living. Old Philemon toiled diligently in his garden, while
Baucis was always busy with her distaff, or making a little butter and
cheese with their cow's milk, or doing one thing and another about the
cottage. Their food was seldom anything but bread, milk, and vegetables,
with sometimes a portion of honey from their beehive, and now and then a
bunch of grapes, that had ripened against the cottage wall. But they were
two of the kindest old people in the world, and would cheerfully have gone
without their dinners, any day, rather than refuse a slice of their brown
loaf, a cup of new milk, and a spoonful of honey, to the weary traveler
who might pause before their door. They felt as if such guests had a sort
of holiness, and that they ought, therefore, to treat them better and more
bountifully than their own selves.

Their cottage stood on a rising ground, at some short distance from a
village, which lay in a hollow valley, that was about half a mile in
breadth. This valley, in past ages, when the world was new, had probably
been the bed of a lake. There fishes had glided to and fro in the depths,
and water-weeds had grown along the margin, and trees and hills had seen
their reflected images in the broad and peaceful mirror. But, as the
waters subsided, men had cultivated the soil, and built houses on it, so
that it was now a fertile spot, and bore no traces of the ancient lake,
except a very small brook, which meandered through the midst of the
village, and supplied the inhabitants with water. The valley had been dry
land so long that oaks had sprung up, and grown great and high, and
perished with old age, and been succeeded by others, as tall and stately
as the first. Never was there a prettier or more fruitful valley. The very
sight of the plenty around them should have made the inhabitants kind and
gentle, and ready to show their gratitude to Providence by doing good to
their fellow-creatures.

But, we are sorry to say, the people of this lovely village were not
worthy to dwell in a spot on which Heaven had smiled so beneficently. They
were a very selfish and hard-hearted people, and had no pity for the poor,
nor sympathy with the homeless. They would only have laughed, had anybody
told them that human beings