rally
immediately after the New Year. He had then always something to say
that the peculiar period suggested to his thoughts.

I shall relate what passed during two of my visits, and give his own
words as nearly as I can.

THE FIRST VISIT.

Among the books I had last lent Ole was one about pebbles, and it
pleased him extremely.

"Yes, sure enough they are veterans from old days, these pebbles,"
said he; "and yet we pass them carelessly by. I have myself often done
so in the fields and on the beach, where they lie in crowds. We tread
them under foot in some of our pathways, these fragments from the
remains of antiquity. I have myself done that; but now I hold all
these pebble-formed pavements in high respect. Thanks for that book;
it has driven old ideas and habits of thinking aside, and has replaced
them by other ideas, and made me eager to read something more of the
same kind. The romance of the earth is the most astonishing of all
romances. What a pity that one cannot read the first portion of
it--that it is composed in a language we have not learned! One must
read it in the layers of the ground, in the strata of the rocks, in
all the periods of the earth. It was not until the sixth part that the
living and acting persons, Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve, were introduced,
though some will have it they came immediately. That, however, is all
one to me. It is a most eventful tale, and we are all in it. We go on
digging and groping, but always find ourselves where we were; yet the
globe is ever whirling round, and without the waters of the world
overwhelming us. The crust we tread on holds together--we do not fall
through it; and this is a history of a million of years, with constant
advancement. Thanks for the book about the pebbles. They could tell
many a strange tale if they were able.

"Is it not pleasant once and away to become like a Nix, when one is
perched so high as I am, and then to remember that we all are but
minute ants upon the earth's ant-hill, although some of us are
distinguished ants, some are laborious, and some are indolent ants?
One seems to be so excessively young by the side of these million
years old, reverend pebbles. I was reading the book on New Year's
eve, and was so wrapped up in it that I forgot my accustomed amusement
on that night, looking at 'the wild host to Amager,' of which you may
have heard.

"The witches' journey on broomsticks is well known--that takes place
on St. John's night, a