aring its appointed light. During such a
pleasant time it forgot the twenty years up in the loft, and it is
good to be able to forget.

Close by it passed a couple arm-in-arm, like the happy pair in the
wood, the mate and the furrier's daughter. It seemed to the bottle as
if it were living that time over again. Guests and visitors of
different ages wandered up and down, gazing upon the illuminations;
and among these was an old maid, without relations, but not without
friends. Probably her thoughts were occupied, as were those of the
bottle; for she was thinking of the green woods, and of a young couple
just betrothed. These _souvenirs_ affected her much, for she had been
a party in them--a prominent party. This was in her happier hours; and
one never forgets these, even when one becomes a very old maid. But
she did not recognise the bottle, and it did not recognise her. So it
is we wear out of each other's knowledge in this world, until people
meet again as these two did.

The bottle passed from the public gardens to the wine merchant's; it
was there again filled with wine, and sold to an aeronaut, who was to
go up in a balloon the following Sunday. There was a multitude of
people to witness the ascent, there was a regimental band, and there
were many preparations going on. The bottle saw all this from a
basket, in which it lay with a living rabbit, who was very much
frightened when it saw it was to go up in the parachute. The bottle
did not know where it was to go; it beheld the balloon extending
wider and wider, and becoming so large that it could not be larger;
then lifting itself up higher and higher, and rolling restlessly until
the ropes that held it were cut, when it arose majestically into the
air, with the aeronaut, the basket, the bottle, and the rabbit; then
the music played loudly, and the assembled crowd shouted, "Hurra!
hurra!"

"It is droll to go aloft," thought the bottle; "it is a novel sort of
a voyage. Up yonder one cannot run away."

Many thousand human beings gazed up at the balloon, and the old maid
gazed among the rest. She stood by her open garret window, where a
cage hung with a little linnet, which at that time had no water-glass,
but had to content itself with a cup. Just within the window stood a
myrtle tree, that was moved a little aside, that it might not come in
the way while the old maid was leaning out to look at the balloon. And
she could perceive the aeronaut in it; she saw him le