! It was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at
the old man's, and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and
the rubbish, and had at last laid for many years in the ground.

The young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier, first with a green leaf,
and then with her fine handkerchief--it had such a delightful smell,
that it was to the pewter soldier just as if he had awaked from a
trance.

"Let me see him," said the young man. He laughed, and then shook his
head. "Nay, it cannot be he; but he reminds me of a story about a pewter
soldier which I had when I was a little boy!" And then he told his wife
about the old house, and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that
he sent over to him because he was so very, very lonely; and he told it
as correctly as it had really been, so that the tears came into the eyes
of his young wife, on account of the old house and the old man.

"It may possibly be, however, that it is the same pewter soldier!" said
she. "I will take care of it, and remember all that you have told me;
but you must show me the old man's grave!"

"But I do not know it," said he, "and no one knows it! All his friends
were dead, no one took care of it, and I was then a little boy!"

"How very, very lonely he must have been!" said she.

"Very, very lonely!" said the pewter soldier. "But it is delightful not
to be forgotten!"

"Delightful!" shouted something close by; but no one, except the pewter
soldier, saw that it was a piece of the hog's-leather hangings; it had
lost all its gilding, it looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an
opinion, and it gave it:

"The gilding decays,
But hog's leather stays!"

This the pewter soldier did not believe.

THE HAPPY FAMILY

Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one
holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it over
one's head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella, for
it is so immensely large. The burdock never grows alone, but where there
grows one there always grow several: it is a great delight, and all this
delightfulness is snails' food. The great white snails which persons of
quality in former times made fricassees of, ate, and said, "Hem,
hem! how delicious!" for they thought it tasted so delicate--lived on
dock-leaves, and therefore burdock seeds were sown.

Now, there was an old manor-house, where they no longer ate snails, they
were quite extinct; but the