ged to catch hold of a post and save himself from this
fate, and a crowd began to gather around his head. His body was quite
out of sight underneath, and only the huge head was to be seen.

As everybody stood staring at the wonderful sight, a fly lit on the
boy's cheek. He could not reach it himself, for his arms would not reach
a tenth part of the way to his chin; so he asked one of the bystanders
to kill the troublesome insect. The boy's voice was so smothered by the
egg-shell that it was long before he could make himself understood; but
at last the man got an idea of what was wanted, and aimed a severe blow
at the fly. The insect flew away unharmed, but the boy started so
suddenly that he bit the egg-shell in two, and his head collapsed to its
natural size. So there was a little boy in the middle of the place,
holding on by a post, and a crowd of people looking at him from a
distance.

"What a disappointment!" said the boy's mother. "He was fast becoming
remarkable! But then, what a sum his hats would have cost! After all, it
is best as it is."

"And besides," added a neighbor, "how could you have got at him to
punish him?"

"To be sure!" answered the mother.

* * * * *

"This is better than the first, because it is shorter," said the king;
and the man with a crooked nose began the story of

THE CROOKED-NOSED PHILOSOPHER.

"There was once a man," he said, "with a nose so long that it reached
half way round his head, and thus the point was continually behind him.
This not unnaturally caused him a great deal of trouble, but in the end
was the means of his good fortune, as you shall hear. For once, as he
sat reading, he felt something on the end of his nose, and turning round
his head he saw a fly sitting on the point of it."

"Saw a fly on the point!" interrupted King Jollimon. "What do you take
me for, that you thus try to impose such stories on me? Can a man see
what is behind him?"

"Certainly, if he turns round," answered the traveler, quite unmoved.

"If he turns round!" repeated the king, in a rage, "can one see the back
of his head? I have turned round, but I never could see my back."

"That is because your majesty always looks away from it," replied the
other. "If you would turn round and look toward the back of your head,
you would undoubtedly see it."

"Do you presume to dispute with me?" screamed his majesty, getting very
red in the face. He felt sure he was r