y on the white face of the Snow Man, and
gleamed red upon his bosom.

"I can endure it no longer," said he; "how beautiful it looks when it
stretches out its tongue!"

The night was long; but it did not appear long to the Snow Man, who
stood there lost in his own charming reflections, crackling with the
cold.

In the morning the window-panes of the basement lodging were covered
with ice. They bore the most beautiful ice-flowers that any snow man
could desire; but they concealed the stove. The window-panes would not
thaw; he could not see the stove, which he pictured to himself as a
lovely female being. It crackled and whistled in him and around him;
it was just the kind of frosty weather a snow man must thoroughly
enjoy. But he did not enjoy it; and, indeed, how could he enjoy
himself when he was stove-sick?

"That's a terrible disease for a Snow Man," said the Yard Dog. "I have
suffered from it myself, but I got over it. Away! away!" he barked;
and he added, "the weather is going to change."

And the weather did change; it began to thaw.

The warmth increased, and the Snow Man decreased. He said nothing, and
made no complaint--and that's an infallible sign.

One morning he broke down. And behold, where he had stood, something
like a broomstick remained sticking up out of the ground. It was the
pole round which the boys had built him up.

"Ah! now I can understand why he had such an intense longing," said
the Yard Dog. "Why, there's a shovel for cleaning out the stove
fastened to the pole. The Snow Man had a stove-rake in his body, and
that's what moved within him. Now he has got over that too. Away!
away!"

And soon they had got over the winter.

"Away! away!" barked the hoarse Yard Dog; but the girls in the house
sang:

"Green thyme! from your house come out;
Willow, your woolly fingers stretch out;
Lark and cuckoo cheerfully sing,
For in February is coming the spring.
And with the cuckoo I'll sing too,
Come thou, dear sun, come out, cuckoo!"

And nobody thought any more of the Snow Man.

TWO MAIDENS.

Have you ever seen a maiden? I mean what our paviours call a maiden, a
thing with which they ram down the paving-stones in the roads. A
maiden of this kind is made altogether of wood, broad below, and girt
round with iron rings; at the top she is narrow, and has a stick
passed across through her waist; and this stick forms the arms of the
maiden.

In the shed stood