all stupid people are; but he was careless. So absent-minded was he,
that sometimes when grinding somebody's wheat he would thoughtlessly
turn into the "hopper" a bag of rye, a lot of old beer-bottles, or a
basket of fish. This made the flour so peculiar, that the people about
there never knew what it was to be well a day in all their lives.
There were so many local diseases in that vicinity, that a doctor from
twenty miles away could not have killed a patient in a week.

Hans meant well; but he had a hobby--a hobby that he did not ride:
that does not express it: it rode him. It spurred him so hard, that
the poor wretch could not pause a minute to see what he was putting
into his mill. This hobby was the purchase of jackasses. He expended
all his income in this diversion, and his mill was fairly sinking
under its weight of mortgages. He had more jackasses than he had hairs
on his head, and, as a rule, they were thinner. He was no mere amateur
collector either, but a sharp discriminating _connoisseur_. He would
buy a fat globular donkey if he could not do better; but a lank shabby
one was the apple of his eye. He rolled such a one, as it were, like a
sweet morsel under his tongue.

Hans's nearest neighbour was a worthless young scamp named Jo Garvey,
who lived mainly by hunting and fishing. Jo was a sharp-witted rascal,
without a single scruple between, himself and fortune. With a tithe of
Hans's industry he might have been almost anything; but his dense
laziness always rose up like a stone wall about him, shutting him in
like a toad in a rock. The exact opposite of Hans in almost every
respect, he was notably similar in one: he had a hobby. Jo's hobby was
the selling of jackasses.

One day, while Hans's upper and nether mill-stones were making it
lively for a mingled grist of corn, potatoes, and young chickens, he
heard Joseph calling outside. Stepping to the door, he saw him holding
three halters to which were appended three donkeys.

"I say, Hans," said he, "here are three fine animals for your stud. I
have brought 'em up from the egg, and I know 'em to be first-class.
But they 're not so big as I expected, and you may have 'em for a sack
of oats each."

Hans was delighted. He had not the least doubt in the world that Joe
had stolen them; but it was a fixed principle with him never to let a
donkey go away and say he was a hard man to deal with. He at once
brought out and delivered the oats. Jo gravely examined