light as he accompanies you home. There is an old legend about a saint
who was allowed to choose one of the seven deadly sins, and who
accordingly chose drunkenness, which appeared to him the least, but
which led him to commit all the other six. The man's blood is mingled
with that of the demon--it is the sixth glass, and with that the germ
of all evil shoots up within us; and each one grows up with a strength
like that of the grains of mustard seed, and shoots up into a tree,
and spreads over the whole world; and most people have no choice but
to go into the oven, to be re-cast in a new form.

"That's the history of the glasses," said the tower-keeper Ole, "and
it can be told with lacquer or only with grease; but I give it you
with both!"

THIRD VISIT.

On this occasion I chose the general "moving-day" for my visit to Ole,
for on that day it is anything but agreeable down in the streets in
the town; for they are full of sweepings, shreds, and remnants of all
sorts, to say nothing of the cast-off bed straw in which one has to
wade about. But this time I happened to see two children playing in
this wilderness of sweepings. They were playing at "going to bed," for
the occasion seemed especially favourable for this sport: they crept
under the straw, and drew an old bit of ragged curtain over themselves
by way of coverlet. "It was splendid!" they said; but it was a little
too strong for me, and besides, I was obliged to mount up on my visit.

"It's moving-day to-day," he said; "streets and houses are like a
dust-bin, a large dust-bin; but I'm content with a cartload. I may get
something good out of that, and I really did get something good out of
it, once. Shortly after Christmas I was going up the street; it was
rough weather, wet and dirty; the right kind of weather to catch cold
in. The dustman was there with his cart, which was full, and looked
like a sample of streets on moving-day. At the back of the cart stood
a fir tree, quite green still, and with tinsel on its twigs: it had
been used on Christmas-eve, and now it was thrown out into the street,
and the dustman had stood it up at the back of his cart. It was droll
to look at, or you may say it was mournful--all depends on what you
think of when you see it; and I thought about it, and thought this and
that of many things that were in the cart: or I might have done so,
and that comes to the same thing. There was an old lady's glove too: I
wonder what that was th