"That was all very interesting to hear," said our aunt.

She deserved to live as long as the theatre stood, but she could
not last so long; and she did not die in the theatre, but
respectably in her bed. Her last words were, moreover, not without
meaning. She asked,

"What will the play be to-morrow?"

At her death she left about five hundred dollars. We presume
this from the interest, which came to twenty dollars. This our aunt
had destined as a legacy for a worthy old spinster who had no friends;
it was to be devoted to a yearly subscription for a place in the
second tier, on the left side, for the Saturday evening, "for on
that evening two pieces were always given," it said in the will; and
the only condition laid upon the person who enjoyed the legacy was,
that she should think, every Saturday evening, of our aunt, who was
lying in her grave.

This was our aunt's religion.

THE GARDEN OF PARADISE

There was once a king's son who had a larger and more beautiful
collection of books than any one else in the world, and full of
splendid copper-plate engravings. He could read and obtain information
respecting every people of every land; but not a word could he find to
explain the situation of the garden of paradise, and this was just
what he most wished to know. His grandmother had told him when he
was quite a little boy, just old enough to go to school, that each
flower in the garden of paradise was a sweet cake, that the pistils
were full of rich wine, that on one flower history was written, on
another geography or tables; so those who wished to learn their
lessons had only to eat some of the cakes, and the more they ate,
the more history, geography, or tables they knew. He believed it all
then; but as he grew older, and learnt more and more, he became wise
enough to understand that the splendor of the garden of paradise
must be very different to all this. "Oh, why did Eve pluck the fruit
from the tree of knowledge? why did Adam eat the forbidden fruit?"
thought the king's son: "if I had been there it would never have
happened, and there would have been no sin in the world." The garden
of paradise occupied all his thoughts till he reached his
seventeenth year.

One day he was walking alone in the wood, which was his greatest
pleasure, when evening came on. The clouds gathered, and the rain
poured down as if the sky had been a waterspout; and it was as dark as
the bottom of a well at midnight; sometimes h