ur farrier contrived to bring both parts
together while hot. He sewed them up with sprigs and young shoots of
laurels that were at hand; the wound healed, and, what could not have
happened but to so glorious a horse, the sprigs took root in his body,
grew up, and formed a bower over me; so that afterwards I could go
upon many other expeditions in the shade of my own and my horse's
laurels.

THE BARON'S COLD DAY

_By Rodolph Eric Raspe_

Success was not always with me. I had the misfortune to be overpowered
by numbers, to be made prisoner of war; and, what is worse, but always
usual among the Turks, to be sold for a slave. In that state of
humiliation my daily task was not very hard and laborious, but rather
singular and irksome. It was to drive the Sultan's bees every morning
to their pasture grounds, to attend them all the day long, and against
night to drive them back to their hives. One evening I missed a bee,
and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to
pieces for the honey she carried. I had nothing like an offensive
weapon in my hands but the silver hatchet which is the badge of the
Sultan's gardeners and farmers. I threw it at the robbers, with an
intention to frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but
by an unlucky turn of my arm, it flew upwards, and continued rising
till it reached the moon. How should I recover it? how fetch it down
again? I recollected that Turkey beans grow very quick, and run up to
an astonishing height. I planted one immediately; it grew, and
actually fastened itself to one of the moon's horns. I had no more to
do now but to climb up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived,
and had a troublesome piece of business before I could find my silver
hatchet, in a place where everything has the brightness of silver; at
last, however, I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw. I was
now for returning: but, alas! the heat of the sun had dried up my
bean; it was totally useless for my descent; so I fell to work, and
twisted me a rope of that chopped straw, as long and as well as I
could make it. This I fastened to one of the moon's horns, and slid
down to the end of it. Here I held myself fast with the left hand, and
with the hatchet in my right, I cut the long, now useless, end of the
upper part, which, when tied to the lower end, brought me a good deal
lower: this repeated splicing and tying o