ith painted butter,
and herring, clerical collars, and coffins, and inscriptions
and announcements into the bargain. A person could walk up and down
for a whole day through the streets, and tire himself out with looking
at the pictures; and then he would know all about what people lived in
the houses, for they had hung out their shields or signs; and, as
grandfather said, it was a very instructive thing, in a great town, to
know at once who the inhabitants were.

And this is what happened with these shields, when grandpapa
came to the town. He told it me himself, and he hadn't "a rogue on his
back," as mother used to tell me he had when he wanted to make me
believe something outrageous, for now he looked quite trustworthy.

The first night after he came to the town had been signalized by
the most terrible gale ever recorded in the newspapers--a gale such as
none of the inhabitants had ever before experienced. The air was
dark with flying tiles; old wood-work crashed and fell; and a
wheelbarrow ran up the streets all alone, only to get out of the
way. There was a groaning in the air, and a howling and a shrieking,
and altogether it was a terrible storm. The water in the canal rose
over the banks, for it did not know where to run. The storm swept over
the town, carrying plenty of chimneys with it, and more than one proud
weathercock on a church tower had to bow, and has never got over it
from that time.

There was a kind of sentry-house, where dwelt the venerable old
superintendent of the fire brigade, who always arrived with the last
engine. The storm would not leave this little sentry-house alone,
but must needs tear it from its fastenings, and roll it down the
street; and, wonderfully enough, it stopped opposite to the door of
the dirty journeyman plasterer, who had saved three lives at the
last fire, but the sentry-house thought nothing of that.

The barber's shield, the great brazen dish, was carried away,
and hurled straight into the embrasure of the councillor of justice;
and the whole neighborhood said this looked almost like malice,
inasmuch as they, and nearly all the friends of the councillor's wife,
used to call that lady "the Razor" for she was so sharp that she
knew more about other people's business than they knew about it
themselves.

A shield with a dried salt fish painted on it flew exactly in
front of the door of a house where dwelt a man who wrote a
newspaper. That was a very poor joke perpetrat