orrow in the long walk back on the banks. Thus
from the nature of their occupation they required a costume entirely
different from that worn by the glass-makers on the other side of the
Black Forest. They wore jackets of dark linen, over which green
suspenders of a hand-breadth's width crossed over their broad breasts;
black leather knee breeches, from the pockets of which projected brass
foot-rules like badges of honor; but their joy and pride lay in their
boots, the largest perhaps that ever came into vogue in any part of the
world, as they could be drawn up two spans of the hand above the knee,
so that the raftsmen could wade around in a yard of water without
wetting their feet.

Up to quite a recent period, the inhabitants of this forest believed in
spirits of the wood. But it is somewhat singular that the spirits who,
as the legend ran, dwelt in the Black Forest, took sides in these
prevailing fashions. Thus, it was averred that the Little Glass-Man, a
good little spirit, only three-and-a-half feet high, never appeared
otherwise than in a peaked hat with a wide brim, as well as a jacket
and knee breeches and red stockings; whereas, Dutch-Michel, who haunted
the other part of the forest, was a giant-sized broad-shouldered fellow
in the dress of a raftsman, and several people who had seen him,
asserted that they would not care to pay for the hides that would be
used to make him a pair of boots. "And so tall," said they, "that an
ordinary man would not reach to his neck."

With these spirits of the forest, a young man of this region is
reported to have had a strange experience, which I will relate:

There lived in the Black Forest a widow by the name of Frau Barbara
Munkin; her husband had been a charcoal-burner, and after his death she
brought up her son to the same business. Young Peter Munk, a cunning
fellow of sixteen, was much pleased to sit all the week round on his
smoking piles of wood, just as he had seen his father do; or, all black
and sooty as he was, and a scarecrow to the people, he would go down to
the towns to sell his charcoal. But a charcoal-burner has plenty of
time to think about himself and others; and when Peter Munk sat on his
half-burned piles of wood, the dark trees about him and the deep
stillness of the forest disposed him to tears and filled his heart with
nameless longings. Something troubled him, and he could not well make
out what it was. Finally he discovered what it was that had so p