he youngest
child, a boy with great serious eyes, mounted up on a chair behind the
window-curtains, and looked out into the yard, where the moon was
pouring its radiance over the old stone--the old stone that had always
appeared to him so tame and flat, but which lay there now like a great
leaf out of a book of chronicles. All that the boy had heard about old
Preben and his wife seemed concentrated in the stone; and he gazed at
it, and looked at the pure bright moon and up into the clear air, and
it seemed as though the countenance of the Creator was beaming over
His world.

"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" was repeated in the room.

But in that moment an invisible angel kissed the boy's forehead, and
whispered to him:

"Preserve the seed-corn that has been entrusted to thee, that it may
bear fruit. Guard it well! Through thee, my child, the obliterated
inscription on the old tombstone shall be chronicled in golden letters
to future generations! The old pair shall wander again arm-in-arm
through the streets, and smile, and sit with their fresh healthy faces
under the lime tree on the bench by the steep stairs, and nod at rich
and poor. The seed-corn of this hour shall ripen in the course of time
to a blooming poem. The beautiful and the good shall not be forgotten;
it shall live on in legend and in song."

THE OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP.

There is a street in Copenhagen that has this strange name--"Hysken
Straede." Whence comes this name, and what is its meaning? It is said
to be German; but injustice has been done to the Germans in this
matter, for it would have to be "Haeuschen," and not "Hysken." For here
stood, once upon a time, and indeed for a great many years, a few
little houses, which were principally nothing more than wooden booths,
just as we see now in the market-places at fair-time. They were,
perhaps, a little larger, and had windows; but the panes consisted of
horn or bladder, for glass was then too expensive to be used in every
house. But then we are speaking of a long time ago--so long since,
that grandfather and great-grandfather, when they talked about them,
used to speak of them as "the old times"--in fact, it is several
centuries ago.

The rich merchants in Bremen and Lubeck carried on trade with
Copenhagen. They did not reside in the town themselves, but sent their
clerks, who lived in the wooden booths in the Haeuschen Street, and
sold beer and spices. The German beer was go