g
valuable things not often used, but always well cared for. As I said
before, she seemed really to love me, and often said, as she looked at
me, "I hope no harm will come to, my precious old tea-kettle."

Now I come to the painful part of my story, of which, even now, I hate
to think. With all this love and consideration for me, my mistress made
one fatal mistake. She allowed those same boys, who used the curling
tongs to get a bone out of the pig's throat, to take me with them when
they went into the woods to pass a day and night, and have a frolic, as
they called it.

The boys made a huge fire, and put me on it, and I boiled some water
for them, and did my duty well. But, after they had satisfied their
thirst with the good tea I had enabled them to make, they forgot your
humble servant, and left me on the coals.

The water all evaporated, and I was left to the fury of the fire; my
pleasant song turned into a groan, a scream, in fact; my nose could not
stand the fire; it dropped into the ashes; and here I am, the wreck of
what I was, with this ghastly hole in me which you see.

To be sure, the boys were sorry enough for their carelessness; but that
did not mend my nose. I am kept here by my mistress for the same reason
that she keeps the old pitcher and other useless things, as memorials
of happy days past and gone."

The tea-kettle was silent. Without any preface, the spinning wheel
began to whirl and whiz, and whiz and whirl, and grumble and rumble,
and buzz and buzz, and made altogether such a sleepy sound, as she told
her story, which was, I guess, what the sailors call a long yarn, that
she put me into such a sound sleep, that I could no longer hear any
thing distinctly, and lost her story altogether."

"But, dear mother," said Frank, "I hope you woke up so as to hear the
history of the old cloak, and the comical coat, and the wig."

"I will see," she answered, "what more I can remember of those dreamy
times which I passed in my dear mother's attic, the palace of my early
days."

One very rainy Sunday, the noise of the children was too much for the
older and graver part of the family, who wished to read and be quiet;
and my mother advised me to take my book, and go up to my parlor.

I always liked to be there, and to be by myself, with only the society
of my friend the cat who was perfectly docile and obedient to me. I
took Pilgrim's Progress, my favorite book, and was soon very
comfortably seated in m