carriage. "The
famous Doctor Martin is dead! Oh, what a great and good man he was!
Alas, who can take his place!"

He was buried with great pomp and all the world mourned his death.

His son, whose name was Josef, was a stupid fellow. One day as he was
going to church, his godmother met him.

"Well, Josef," she asked, "how are you getting on?"

"Oh, pretty well, thank you. I can live along for a while on what my
father saved. When that's gone, I don't know what I'll do."

"Tut! Tut!" said Death. "That's no way to talk. If you only knew it, I'm
your godmother who held you at your christening. I helped your father to
wealth and fame and now I'll help you. I tell you what I'll do: I'll
apprentice you to a successful doctor and I'll see to it that soon
you'll know more than he knows."

Death rubbed some salve over Josef's ears and led him to a doctor.

"I wish you to take this youth as an apprentice," she said. "He's a
likely lad and will do you credit. Teach him all you know."

The doctor accepted Josef as an apprentice and when he went out into the
fields to gather herbs and simples, he took the youth with him.

Now the magic salve with which Godmother Death had anointed Josef
enabled him to hear and understand the whisperings of the herbs. Each
one as he picked it, whispered to him its secret properties.

"I cure a fever," one whispered.

"And I a rash."

"And I a boil."

The doctor was amazed at his apprentice's knowledge of herbs.

"You know them better than I do," he said. "You never make a mistake. It
is I should be apprentice, not you. Let us go into partnership. I will
work under you and together we will make wonderful cures."

And so, owing to his godmother's gift, Josef became a great physician of
whom it was said that there was no illness for which he could not find a
remedial herb.

He lived long and happily until at last his candle burned down and
Death, his kind godmother, took him.

THE DEVIL'S GIFTS

THE STORY OF A MAN WHOM THE DEVIL BEFRIENDED

[Illustration]

THE DEVIL'S GIFTS

There were once two men, a shoemaker and a farmer, who had been
close friends in youth. The shoemaker married and had many children
to whom the farmer stood godfather. For this reason the two men
called each other "Godfather." When they met it was "Godfather,
this," and "Godfather, that." The shoemaker was an industrious
little man and yet with so many mouths to fill he remained poor. The
far