d, who only wished for peace and
quietness, but she must be brought out and they dragged her, and they
pulled her, and they devoured her!

"It is quite amusing!" said the wizard.

"Yes; but what do you think it is?" asked Creep-and-Crawl. "Can you
find it out!"

"It is very easy to see," said the other, "it is some great city, they
all resemble each other. A great city it is, that's sure!"

"It is ditch-water!" said Creep-and-Crawl.

------------

THE HAPPY FAMILY.

Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one
holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it
over one's head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella,
for it is so immensely large. The burdock never grows alone, but where
there grows one there always grow several: it is a great delight, and
all this delightfulness is snails' food. The great white snails which
persons of quality in former times made fricassees of, ate, and said,
"Hem, hem! how delicious!" for they thought it tasted so
delicate--lived on dock leaves, and therefore burdock seeds were sown.

Now, there was an old manor-house, where they no longer ate snails,
they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew
and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the
mastery over them--it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there
stood an apple and a plumb-tree, or else one never would have thought
that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last
venerable old snails.

They themselves knew not how old they were, but they could remember
very well that there had been many more; that they were of a family
from foreign lands, and that for them and theirs the whole forest was
planted. They had never been outside it, but they knew that there was
still something more in the world, which was called the manor-house,
and that there they were boiled, and then they became black, and were
then placed on a silver dish; but what happened further they knew not;
or, in fact, what it was to be boiled, and to lie on a silver dish,
they could not possibly imagine; but it was said to be delightful, and
particularly genteel. Neither the chafers, the toads, nor the
earth-worms, whom they asked about it could give them any
information,--none of them had been boiled or laid on a silver dish.

The old white snails were the first persons of distinction in the
world, that they knew; the forest wa