opposite,
would be in motion; all the new booths, with their not very
courtier-like swarm of seamen, would join them out of curiosity, and
would greet him with a wild "hurrah!" while he was standing in his
pillory: there would be a mob, a hissing, and rejoicing, and jeering,
ten times worse than in the rows about the Jews some years ago--"Oh, my
blood is mounting to my brain; 'tis enough to drive one mad! I shall go
wild! I know not what to do. Oh! were I but loose; my dizziness would
then cease; oh, were my head but loose!"

You see he ought to have said that sooner; for the moment he expressed
the wish his head was free; and cured of all his paroxysms of love, he
hastened off to his room, where the pains consequent on the fright the
Shoes had prepared for him, did not so soon take their leave.

But you must not think that the affair is over now; it grows much worse.

The night passed, the next day also; but nobody came to fetch the Shoes.

In the evening "Dramatic Readings" were to be given at the little
theatre in King Street. The house was filled to suffocation; and among
other pieces to be recited was a new poem by H. C. Andersen, called, My
Aunt's Spectacles; the contents of which were pretty nearly as follows:

"A certain person had an aunt, who boasted of particular skill in
fortune-telling with cards, and who was constantly being stormed by
persons that wanted to have a peep into futurity. But she was full of
mystery about her art, in which a certain pair of magic spectacles
did her essential service. Her nephew, a merry boy, who was his aunt's
darling, begged so long for these spectacles, that, at last, she lent
him the treasure, after having informed him, with many exhortations,
that in order to execute the interesting trick, he need only repair to
some place where a great many persons were assembled; and then, from a
higher position, whence he could overlook the crowd, pass the company in
review before him through his spectacles. Immediately 'the inner man' of
each individual would be displayed before him, like a game of cards, in
which he unerringly might read what the future of every person presented
was to be. Well pleased the little magician hastened away to prove the
powers of the spectacles in the theatre; no place seeming to him more
fitted for such a trial. He begged permission of the worthy audience,
and set his spectacles on his nose. A motley phantasmagoria presents
itself before him, which he