have to be content to live on peas and
porridge and wheaten cakes.

This actually was what he had to do and what every one else had to do
when their old provisions were exhausted.

Summer passed and winter followed. Then spring came bringing new and
unforeseen miseries. With the first breath of warm weather all the pests
and insects of the summer before revived, for not one of them had been
killed by the winter cold. And the eggs they had laid all hatched out
until the earth and the air and the water swarmed with living creatures.
Birds and rats and grasshoppers, insects and bugs and vermin of every
kind, covered the fields and ate up every green thing. The meadows
looked as if a fire had swept them clean. The orchards were stripped
bare of every leaf and blossom.

Such hordes of fish and frogs and water creatures filled the lakes and
the rivers that the water was polluted and it was impossible for man to
drink it.

Water and land alike were swarming with living creatures not one of
which could be killed. Even the air was thick with clouds of mosquitoes
and gnats and flies.

Men and women walked about looking like tormented ghosts. They had no
desire to live on but they had to live on for they could not die.

The blacksmith came at last to a realization of all the misery which his
foolish wish was bringing upon the world.

"I see now," he said, "that God Almighty did well when He sent Death to
the world. She has her work to do and I am wrong to hold her prisoner."

So he released Death from the stool and made no outcry when she put her
bony fingers to his throat.

A GULLIBLE WORLD

THE STORY OF A MAN WHO DIDN'T BEAT HIS WIFE

[Illustration]

A GULLIBLE WORLD

There was once a poor farm laborer, so poor that all he owned in the
world was a hen. He told his wife to take this hen to market and sell
it.

"How much shall I ask for it?" the woman wanted to know.

"Ask as much as they'll pay, of course," the laborer said.

So the woman took the hen by the feet and set out. Near the village she
met a farmer.

"Good day," the farmer said. "Where are you going with that hen?"

"I'm going to market to sell it for as much as they'll pay me."

The farmer weighed the hen in his hand, pursed his lips, thought a
moment, and said:

"You better sell it to me. I'll pay you three pennies for it."

"Three pennies? Are you sure that's as much as you'll pay?"

"Yes," the farmer said, "three pennies