know. I had not
strength enough to ring it all out. I became so wearied, so heavy,
that the beam from which I hung broke, and I flew through the luminous
air down to where the river is deepest, where the merman dwells alone
in solitude; and here I am, year after year, relating to him what I
have seen and what I have heard. 'Ding-dong! ding-dong!'"

Thus rang the chimes from "The Bell's Hollow" in the Odensee river, as
my grandmother declares.

But our schoolmaster says there is no bell ringing down there, for it
could not be; and there is no merman down there, for there are no
mermen; and, when all the church bells are ringing loudly, he says
that it is not the bells, but the air that makes the sound. My
grandmother told me that the bell also said this; so, since the
schoolmaster and the bell agree in this, no doubt it is true.

The air knows everything. It is round us, it is in us; it speaks of
our thoughts and our actions; and it proclaims them farther than did
the bell now down in the Hollow in Odensee river, where the merman
dwells--it proclaims all out into the great vault of heaven, far, far
away, even into eternity, up to where the glorious bells of paradise
peal in tones unknown to mortal ears.

_Soup made of a Sausage-stick._

I.

"We had a capital dinner yesterday," said an aged female mouse to one
who had not been at the feast. "I sat only twenty-one from the old
King of the Mice: that was not being badly placed. Shall I tell you
what we had for dinner? It was all very well arranged. We had mouldy
bread, the skin of bacon, tallow candles, and sausages. Twice we
returned to the charge: it was as good as if we had had two dinners.
There was nothing but good-humour and pleasant chit-chat, as in an
agreeable family circle. Not a mite was left except the sausage-stick.
The conversation happened to fall upon the possibility of making soup
of a sausage-stick. All said they had heard of it, but no one had ever
tasted that soup, or knew how to prepare it. A health was proposed to
the inventor, who, it was remarked, deserved to be superintendent of
the poor. Was not that witty? And the old King of the Mice arose and
declared that the one among the young mice who could prepare the soup
in question most palatably should be his queen, and he would grant
them a year and a day for the trial."

"Well, that was not a bad idea," said the other mouse. "But how is the
soup made?"

"Ay, how is it made? That was