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to court, I am to be excluded. There is always greater difficulty in getting into your house than anybody's else."

King Katzekopf stammered forth an apology, assured his kinswoman that he was delighted to see her, that he had just been speaking of sending her an invitation, and that he had given general orders that she should be admitted at all times.

"No such thing!" cried the little lady, angrily. "You use me abominably. You know. I always make it a rule to come through the keyhole, and there it is that you always try to stop me. Either I find a plate of metal over the opening, or else the key is left in the lock, and so my ruff gets crumpled to pieces. But the insult you have exposed me to to-day is intolerable: blocking up the passages with scraps of dirty paper, squeezed together by fingers of some greasy yeoman of the guard. Oh, it's atrocious!" And the Lady Abracadabra shook her quilted petticoat as if she never should be clean again.

The king looked at his ministers, and the ministers looked at the king; but neither seemed to know how to excuse themselves. At length, the president of the council trembling exceedingly (for he expected to be changed into a tadpole, or some such reptile), ventured to assure the lady that he was the person in fault; for that, finding that the door-keeper had got into the habit of applying his ear to the keyhole of the councilchamber, and fearing lest state secrets should thus get wind prematurely, he had himself obstructed the passage in the manner already described.

"The varlet! the knave!" exclaimed the fairy, as she heard of the door-keeper's delinquency; "I've a great mind to hang him up by his ears to the vane of the church steeple. Go look for him, my lord, and tell him from me, that if ever he puts his ear to a keyhole again, I'll blow mushroom spawn into his brains, and cause his ears to vegetate, instead of to listen."

Fairies, as all the world knows, are hasty and capricious; but it is only a very few who are spiteful and malignant. And to this class the Lady Abracadabra had never belonged. If she was angry one moment, she was pacified the next, and she much more frequently used her supernatural powers in acts of kindness than to gratify her freaks of mischief.

It was so on the present occasion. After the little ebullition just recorded, she speedily recovered her equanimity. Her eyes no longer sparkled with passion, and so agreeable an expression came over her countenance, that nobody thought about her wrinkles, or the unbecomingness of her yellow petticoat.

"I was taking an airing on Mount Caucasus a quarter of an hour ago," said she, "when one of our people told me of your good fortune; so here I came wing-speed to congratulate you, and to see if I could not find some lucky gifts for my great-greatnephew."

King Katzekopf thanked her for her condescension, and immediately proposed to escort her to the royal nursery.

"Ha! ha ha!" cried the Lady Abracadabra, almost choking with laughter at the absurdity of the suggestion. "You don't suppose I came to talk to you before I had seen the baby, do you? Why, I've been sitting by his cradle these ten minutes!"

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"You have?" exclaimed the king, in astonishment. Ay, marry, " said the lady, "and have pulled the chair from under the Baroness Yellowlily, and, he ! he ! he! have given her such a bump. She was going to feed the child with pap that would have scalded it ; but it will be cool enough, I warrant me, now, before she has done rubbing her bruised elbows. Well, nephew, and so you're going to have a grand christening, are you? Who are to be sponsors besides myself?"

It had never entered into King Katzekopf's imagination to ask the Lady Abracadabra to be godmother to the young prince. And now she had taken it as

a matter of course, and it would never do to affront her! Was there ever such a distress? And what would Queen Ninnilinda say, and what would the Archduchess of Klopsteinhesseschloffengrozen say, when, after a direct invitation, she found an old fairy was to be substituted in her place?

The king was so nervous and frightened that he did not know what to answer. He could only stammer out something about final arrangements being as yet undetermined.

"Well, but, at any rate, I suppose you have settled the child's name," continued the Lady Abracadabra, approaching the council-table. "Hoity toity! what is this?" she added, snatching up one of his majesty's memoranda : "Conrad-Adalbert-Willibald-LewisHildebrand - Victor-Sigismund - Belvidere - NarcissusAdonis Katzekopf? I never heard such a string of silly, conceited names in my life. I sha'n't allow it, I can tell you that," and she stamped on the floor till her diamond buckles glanced like lightning. "If I am to have anything to do with the child, I shall give him what name I think proper. Stay; I've watched him for ten minutes, and can read his whole character, and a more wilful little brat I never saw. You shall call him Eigenwillig [self-willed]. There! that's to be his name; Eigenwillig, and nothing else!"

And then, not waiting for a reply, the Lady Abracadabra gathered her yellow satin habiliments round her, threw out her arms, brought them together above her head, sprung from the floor, shrunk up to nothing in a moment, and darted through the keyhole of the council-chamber door.

[From "THE HOPE OF THE KATZEKOPFS," by permission of MR. MASTERS.]

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THE STORY OF A DISABLED SOLDIER.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH,

observation is more common, and at the same time more true, than that one half of the world are ignorant of how the other half lives. I accidentally met, some days ago, a poor fellow, whom I knew when a boy, dressed in a sailor's jacket, and begging at one of the outlets of the town, with a wooden leg. I knew him to have been honest and industrious when in the country, and was curious to learn what had reduced him to his present situation. Wherefore, after having given him what I thought proper, I desired to know the history of his life and misfortunes, and the manner in which he was reduced to his present distress. The disabled soldier, for such he was, though dressed in a sailor's habit, scratching his head, and leaning on his crutch, put himself in an attitude to comply with my request, and gave me his history as follows:

"As for my misfortunes, master, I can't pretend to have gone through any more than other folks; for, except the loss of my limb, and my being obliged to beg, I don't know any reason, thank Heaven, that I have to complain: there is Bill Tibbs, of our regiment, he has lost both his legs, and an eye to boot; but, thank Heaven, it is not so bad with me yet.

"I was born in Shropshire; my father was a labourer, and died when I was five years old; so I was put upon the parish. As he had been a wandering sort of a man, the parishioners were not able to tell to what parish I belonged, or where I was born, so they sent me to another parish, and that parish sent me to a third. I thought in my heart, they kept sending me about so long, that they would not let me be born in any parish at all; but at last, however,

they fixed me. I had some disposition to be a scholar, and was resolved, at least, to know my letters; but the master of the workhouse put me to business as soon as I was able to handle a mallet; and here I lived an easy kind of life for five years. I only wrought ten hours in the day, and had my meat and drink provided for my labour. It is true, I was not suffered to stir out of the house, for fear, as they said, I should run away; but what of that, I had the liberty of the whole house, and the yard before the door, and that was enough for me. I was then bound out to a farmer, where I was up both early and late; but I ate and drank well, and liked my business well enough, till he died, when I was obliged to provide for myself; so I was resolved to go and seek my fortune.

"In this manner I went from town to town, worked when I could get employment, and starved when I could get none: when happening one day to go through a field belonging to a justice of peace, I spied a hare crossing the path just before me, and I believe the devil put it in my head to fling my stick at it—well, what will you have on't? I killed the hare, and was bringing it away, when the justice himself met me; he called me a poacher and a villain ; and, collaring me, desired I would give an account of myself. I fell upon my knees, begged his worship's pardon, and began to give a full account of all that I knew of my breed, seed, and generation; but, though I gave a very true account, the justice said I could give no account; so I was indicted at sessions, found guilty of being poor, and sent up to London to Newgate, in order to be transported as a vagabond.

"People may say this and that of being in jail, but, for my part, I found Newgate as agreeable a place as ever I was in in all my life. I had plenty to eat and drink, and did no work at all. This kind of life was too good to last for ever; so I was taken out of prison, after five months, put on board a ship, and

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