ned that the butterfly got no wife at all. He had
been too long choosing, which is always a bad plan. And the
butterfly became what is called an old bachelor.

It was late in the autumn, with rainy and cloudy weather. The cold
wind blew over the bowed backs of the willows, so that they creaked
again. It was not the weather for flying about in summer clothes;
but fortunately the butterfly was not out in it. He had got a
shelter by chance. It was in a room heated by a stove, and as warm
as summer. He could exist here, he said, well enough.

"But it is not enough merely to exist," said he, "I need
freedom, sunshine, and a little flower for a companion."

Then he flew against the window-pane, and was seen and admired
by those in the room, who caught him, and stuck him on a pin, in a box
of curiosities. They could not do more for him.

"Now I am perched on a stalk, like the flowers," said the
butterfly. "It is not very pleasant, certainly; I should imagine it is
something like being married; for here I am stuck fast." And with this
thought he consoled himself a little.

"That seems very poor consolation," said one of the plants in
the room, that grew in a pot.

"Ah," thought the butterfly, "one can't very well trust these
plants in pots; they have too much to do with mankind."

A CHEERFUL TEMPER

From my father I received the best inheritance, namely a "good
temper." "And who was my father?" That has nothing to do with the good
temper; but I will say he was lively, good-looking round, and fat;
he was both in appearance and character a complete contradiction to
his profession. "And pray what was his profession and his standing
in respectable society?" Well, perhaps, if in the beginning of a
book these were written and printed, many, when they read it, would
lay the book down and say, "It seems to me a very miserable title, I
don't like things of this sort." And yet my father was not a
skin-dresser nor an executioner; on the contrary, his employment
placed him at the head of the grandest people of the town, and it
was his place by right. He had to precede the bishop, and even the
princes of the blood; he always went first,--he was a hearse driver!
There, now, the truth is out. And I will own, that when people saw
my father perched up in front of the omnibus of death, dressed in
his long, wide, black cloak, and his black-edged, three-cornered hat
on his head, and then glanced at his round, jocund face, roun