t and berries not only good to
eat, but also pleasant to look upon," and the children's pleasure would be
all the greater.

Accordingly, on Easter Sunday, after the church service, all the little
ones of about the age of her own met together in a garden; and, when their
kind hostess had talked to them a while, she led them into a small
neighboring wood. There she told them to make nests of moss, and advised
each to mark well his or her own. All then returned to the garden, where a
feast of milk-soup with eggs and egg-cakes had been prepared. Afterward
they went back to the wood, and found to their great joy in each nest five
beautiful colored eggs, and on one of these a short rhyme was written.

[Illustration: AN EASTER LOAD.]

The surprise and delight of the little ones when they discovered a nest of
the gayly colored treasures, was very great, and one of them exclaimed:

"How wonderful the hens must be that can lay such pretty eggs! How I
should like to see them!"

[Illustration: THE OLD SERVANT BRINGS A COOP FULL OF CHICKENS.]

"Oh! no hens could lay such beautiful eggs," answered a little girl. "I
think it must have been the little hare that sprang out of the juniper
bush when I wanted to build my nest there."

Then all the children laughed together, and said, "The hares lay the
colored eggs. Yes, yes! the dear little hares lay the beautiful eggs!" And
they kept repeating it till they began really to believe it.

Not long afterward the war ended, and Duke Arno von Lindenburg took his
wife and children back to their own palace; but, before leaving, the
Duchess set apart a sum of money to be expended in giving the village
children every Easter a feast of eggs. She instituted the custom also in
her own duchy, and by degrees it spread over the whole country, the eggs
being considered a symbol of redemption or deliverance from sin. The
custom has found its way even to America, but nowhere out of the
_Vaterland_ are the eggs laid by the timid hare.

To this day children living in the country go to the woods just before
Easter, and return with their arms full of twigs and moss, out of which
they build nests and houses, each child carefully marking his own with his
name. They are then hidden behind stones and bushes in the garden, or, if
the weather be cold, in corners, or under furniture in the house. And on
Easter morning what an excitement there is to see what the good little
hare has brought! Not only real eggs