ff thinking of yourself."

The last was a very difficult thing to do--more than a wise
woman ought to ask.

He received the spectacles and the ear-trumpet, and was posted
in the middle of the potato-field. She put a great potato into his
hand. Sounds came from within it; there came a song with words, the
history of the potato, an every-day story in ten parts, an interesting
story. And ten lines were enough to tell it in.

And what did the potato sing?

She sang of herself and of her family, of the arrival of the
potato in Europe, of the misrepresentation to which she had been
exposed before she was acknowledged, as she is now, to be a greater
treasure than a lump of gold.

"We were distributed, by the King's command, from the
council-houses through the various towns, and proclamation was made of
our great value; but no one believed in it, or even understood how
to plant us. One man dug a hole in the earth and threw in his whole
bushel of potatoes; another put one potato here and another there in
the ground, and expected that each was to come up a perfect tree, from
which he might shake down potatoes. And they certainly grew, and
produced flowers and green watery fruit, but it all withered away.
Nobody thought of what was in the ground--the blessing--the potato.
Yes, we have endured and suffered, that is to say, our forefathers
have; they and we, it is all one."

What a story it was!

"Well, and that will do," said the woman. "Now look at the sloe
bush."

"We have also some near relations in the home of the potatoes, but
higher towards the north than they grew," said the Sloes. "There
were Northmen, from Norway, who steered westward through mist and
storm to an unknown land, where, behind ice and snow, they found
plants and green meadows, and bushes with blue-black grapes--sloe
bushes. The grapes were ripened by the frost just as we are. And
they called the land 'wine-land,' that is, 'Groenland,' or
'Sloeland.'"

"That is quite a romantic story," said the young man.

"Yes, certainly. But now come with me," said the wise woman, and
she led him to the bee-hive.

He looked into it. What life and labor! There were bees standing
in all the passages, waving their wings, so that a wholesome draught
of air might blow through the great manufactory; that was their
business. Then there came in bees from without, who had been born with
little baskets on their feet; they brought flower-dust, which was
poured out, sor