h which it opened.

The mother, by a little kind manoeuvring, generally induced the
father to sup and take his evening pipe with a neighbour, for the
tradesman was one of those whose presence is rather a "wet blanket"
upon all innocent folly and fun. Then she good-naturedly took herself
off to household matters, and the children were left in undisturbed
possession of the stove, round which they gathered with the book, and
the game commenced. Each in turn read whichever poem he preferred; and
the reader for the time being, was wrapt in a huge hood and cloak,
kept for the purpose, and was called the "Maerchen-Frau," or Story
Woman. Sometimes the song had a chorus, which all the children sang to
whichever suited best of the thousand airs that are always floating
in German brains. Sometimes, if the ballad was a favourite one, the
others would take part in any verses that contained a dialogue. This
was generally the case with some verses in the pet ballad of
Bluebeard, at that exciting point where Sister Anne is looking from
the castle window. First the Maerchen-Frau read in a sonorous voice--

"Schwester Aennchen, siehst du nichts?"
(Sister Anne, do you see nothing?)

Then the others replied for Anne--

"Staeubchen fliegen, Graeschen wehen."
(A little dust flies, a little grass waves.)

Again the Maerchen-Frau--

"Aennchen, laesst sich sonst nichts sehen?"
(Little Anne, is there nothing else to be seen?)

And the unsatisfactory reply--

"Schwesterchen, sonst seh' ich nichts!"
(Little sister, I see nothing else!)

After this the Maerchen-Frau finished the ballad alone, and the
conclusion was received with shouts of applause and laughter, that
would have considerably astonished the good father, could he have
heard them, and that did sometimes oblige the mother to call order
from the loft above, just for propriety's sake; for, in truth, the
good woman loved to hear them, and often hummed in with a chorus to
herself as she turned over the clothes among which she was busy.

At last, however, after having been for years the crowning enjoyment
of St. Nicholas's Day, the credit of the Maerchen-Frau was doomed to
fade. The last reading had been rather a failure, not because the old
ballad-book was supplanted by a new one, or because the children had
outgrown its histories; perhaps--though they did not acknowledge
it--Friedrich was in some degree to blame.

His increasing knowledge, the