,
and the little ones cry just as papa and mamma used to cry thirty
years ago; but I shorten them, for the youngsters don't like a long
palaver; what they want is something mournful, but quick."

THE PIGS.

Charles Dickens once told us about a pig, and since that time we are
in a good humour if we only hear one grunt. St. Antony took the pig
under his protection; and when we think of the prodigal son we always
associate with him the idea of feeding swine; and it was in front of a
pig-sty that a certain carriage stopped in Sweden, about which I am
going to talk. The farmer had his pig-sty built out towards the high
road, close by his house, and it was a wonderful pig-sty. It was an
old state carriage. The seats had been taken out and the wheels taken
off, and so the body of the old coach lay on the ground, and four pigs
were shut up inside it. I wonder if these were the first that had ever
been there? That point could not certainly be determined; but that it
had been a real state coach everything bore witness, even to the
damask rag that hung down from the roof; everything spoke of better
days.

"Humph! humph!" said the occupants, and the coach creaked and groaned;
for it had come to a mournful end. "The beautiful has departed," it
sighed--or at least it might have done so.

We came back in autumn. The coach was there still, but the pigs were
gone. They were playing the grand lords out in the woods. Blossoms
and leaves were gone from all the trees, and storm and rain ruled, and
gave them neither peace nor rest; and the birds of passage had flown.
"The beautiful has departed! This was the glorious green wood, but the
song of the birds and the warm sunshine are gone! gone!" Thus said the
mournful voice that creaked in the lofty branches of the trees, and it
sounded like a deep-drawn sigh, a sigh from the bosom of the wild rose
tree, and of him who sat there; it was the rose king. Do you know him?
He is all beard, the finest reddish-green beard; he is easily
recognized. Go up to the wild rose bushes, and when in autumn all the
flowers have faded from them, and only the wild hips remain, you will
often find under them a great red-green moss flower; and that is the
rose king. A little green leaf grows up out of his head, and that's
his feather. He is the only man of his kind on the rose bush; and he
it was who sighed.

[Illustration: THE PIGS AT HOME IN THE OLD STATE COACH.]

"Gone! gone! The beautiful is gone