leather, I will skip the dry part of my
history, and begin with some of my later impressions."

"Now," said the Humming-top, gravely, "I think I must rather protest
against this summary way of disposing of some of the most interesting
facts respecting your origin. I should like to know a little more about
you, my dear friend. Pray indulge us with all the particulars of your
early years: your first recollections."

"I had thought," said the Ball, modestly, "that all these minute facts
could hardly be very interesting, and I have a great fear of tiring out
your attention, and of being called _prosy_," added he, slily.

"That is impossible," answered the Humming-top, in a pompous manner;
"let me beg of you to relieve our curiosity. I am sure I may speak for
all the rest of our friends," said he, with a very solemn bow to each
member of the party. The Toys, only too ready to enjoy the least
variation of their long retired life, eagerly agreed, and the Ball
resumed his story:--

"I am afraid I am not very clever at giving accurate descriptions of
things in which I don't take much interest, and as you may suppose my
real life only begun when all my several portions were collected
together. I am composed, as you see, of several sections, each of the
same size and shape, but all varying in colour and material. This
quarter of me is composed of two portions of a pale, tawny leather; and
this grew on the back of a fine robust young lamb, who frisked away his
brief life on a sunny pasture in Denmark. He formed one of the members
of a huge flock of sheep, belonging to a well-to-do farmer, whose riches
in herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were accumulating for the dowry
of his only child Mari. She was the best dowered maiden for fifty miles
round, and though young in her teens, made the yellowest butter and
firmest cheese for three villages round. Her father was a thrifty,
enterprising man, who was especially successful in rearing fine lambs;
thereby giving his old bachelor brother the tanner, plenty of employment
in dressing the hides and fleeces, thus keeping "two mills going at
once," as he said. The old tanner had a trade secret of his own for
curing the skins in some peculiar way with the bark of the willows that
grew so plentifully on the borders of the stream that ran through his
tan yards. No one's hides sold so readily as old Johann Nilson's, or
fetched so good a price in the market. They were entirely reserved for
ma