icer just because He is
there?"

His prayer: "God bless my father and mother and Ernestine. God keep my
father and mother and Ernestine. And keep my mother with me day and
night, dressed and undressed! God keep together all that love each
other."

When he is a man I am going to tell him, and say: "But I have built my
house, not wrecked it, I have been yours, not love's."

He tells me such stories as this: "Once upon a time there was such a
loving angel came down. And they ran a string through his stomach and
hung him on the wall. He never whined a bit."

The people in this country, which is called free, are nearly all bound.
Those who lack money as we do cannot go where they please, or live as
they would live. Is that freedom?

* * * * *

On a cool autumn night, when the fire crackles, the ten children of the
settlement, fighting or agreeing, come running from their houses like
hens. We sit on the floor in front of the hearth, and I suffer the
often-repeated martyrdom of the "Fire Pig." This tale, invented once as
fast as I could talk, I have been doomed to repeat until I dread the
shades of evening.

The children bunch their heads together; their lips part, as soon as I
begin to say:

Do you see that glowing spot in the heart of the coals? That is the
house of the Fire Pig. One day the Fire Pig found he had no more corn,
and he was very hungry. So he jumped out of his house and ran down the
road till he came to a farmer's field.

"Good morning, Mr. Farmer," said the little pig. "Have you any corn for
me to-day?"

"Why, who are you?" said the farmer.

"I'm a little Fire Pig."

"No, I haven't any corn for a Fire Pig."

The pig ran on till he came to another farmer's field.

"Good morning, Mr. Farmer, have you any corn for me to-day?"

"Who are you?" said the farmer.

"Oh, I'm the little Fire Pig."

"I don't know," said the farmer. "I would give you a great bagful if you
could kill the snake which comes every night and steals my cattle."

The pig thought, "How can I kill that snake?" but he was so hungry he
knew he should starve without corn, so he said he would try. The farmer
told him to go down in the field, where the snake came gliding at night
with its head reared high in air. The pig went down in the meadow, and
the first creature he saw was a sheep.

"Baa!" said the sheep. That was its way of saying "How do you do?" "Who
are you?"

"I'm the little Fire Pig.