ld I but reach one aim--could but reach the
happiest of all!"

And as he spoke the word he was again in his home; the long white
curtains hung down from the windows, and in the middle of the floor
stood the black coffin; in it he lay in the sleep of death. His wish
was fulfilled--the body rested, while the spirit went unhindered on its
pilgrimage. "Let no one deem himself happy before his end," were the
words of Solon; and here was a new and brilliant proof of the wisdom of
the old apothegm.

Every corpse is a sphynx of immortality; here too on the black coffin
the sphynx gave us no answer to what he who lay within had written two
days before:

"O mighty Death! thy silence teaches nought,
Thou leadest only to the near grave's brink;
Is broken now the ladder of my thoughts?
Do I instead of mounting only sink?

Our heaviest grief the world oft seeth not,
Our sorest pain we hide from stranger eyes:
And for the sufferer there is nothing left
But the green mound that o'er the coffin lies."

Two figures were moving in the chamber. We knew them both; it was the
fairy of Care, and the emissary of Fortune. They both bent over the
corpse.

"Do you now see," said Care, "what happiness your Galoshes have brought
to mankind?"

"To him, at least, who slumbers here, they have brought an imperishable
blessing," answered the other.

"Ah no!" replied Care. "He took his departure himself; he was not called
away. His mental powers here below were not strong enough to reach the
treasures lying beyond this life, and which his destiny ordained he
should obtain. I will now confer a benefit on him."

And she took the Galoshes from his feet; his sleep of death was ended;
and he who had been thus called back again to life arose from his
dread couch in all the vigor of youth. Care vanished, and with her the
Galoshes. She has no doubt taken them for herself, to keep them to all
eternity.

THE FIR TREE

Out in the woods stood a nice little Fir Tree. The place he had was a
very good one: the sun shone on him: as to fresh air, there was enough
of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as
firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.

He did not think of the warm sun and of the fresh air; he did not care
for the little cottage children that ran about and prattled when they
were in the woods looking for wild-strawberries. The children of