atered--and some one must water them--there must
be somebody there. The door opposite was also opened late in the
evening, but it was dark within, at least in the front room; further
in there was heard the sound of music. The learned foreigner thought
it quite marvellous, but now--it might be that he only imagined
it--for he found everything marvellous out there, in the warm lands,
if there had only been no sun. The stranger's landlord said that he
didn't know who had taken the house opposite, one saw no person about,
and as to the music, it appeared to him to be extremely tiresome. "It
is as if some one sat there, and practised a piece that he could not
master--always the same piece. 'I shall master it!' says he; but yet
he cannot master it, however long he plays."

------

* The word _mahogany_ can be understood, in Danish, as having two
meanings. In general, it means the reddish-brown wood itself; but in
jest, it signifies "excessively fine," which arose from an anecdote of
Nyboder, in Copenhagen, (the seamen's quarter.) A sailor's wife, who
was always proud and fine, in her way, came to her neighbor, and
complained that she had got a splinter in her finger. "What of?" asked
the neighbor's wife. "It is a mahogany splinter;" said the other.
"Mahogany! it cannot be less with you!" exclaimed the woman;--and
thence the proverb, "It is so mahogany!"--(that is, so excessively
fine)--is derived.

------

One night the stranger awoke--he slept with the doors of the balcony
open--the curtain before it was raised by the wind, and he thought
that a strange lustre came from the opposite neighbor's house; all the
flowers shone like flames, in the most beautiful colors, and in the
midst of the flowers stood a slender, graceful maiden,--it was as if
she also shone; the light really hurt his eyes. He now opened them
quite wide--yes, he was quite awake; with one spring he was on the
floor; he crept gently behind the curtain but the maiden was gone; the
flowers shone no longer, but there they stood, fresh and blooming as
ever; the door was ajar, and, far within, the music sounded so soft
and delightful, one could really melt away in sweet thoughts from it.
Yet it was like a piece of enchantment. And who lived there? Where was
the actual entrance? The whole of the ground-floor was a row of shops,
and there people could not always be running through.

One evening the stranger sat out on the balcony. The light burnt in
the room be