ng for a
sluggard. Sleep will, in the course of his year, play a prominent
part; so will the glass.

"Do you know what dwells in glasses?" he asked. "There dwell in them
health, glee, and folly. Within them dwell, also, vexations and bitter
calamity. When I count up the glasses I can tell the gradations in the
glass for different people. The first glass, you see, is the glass of
health; in it grow health-giving plants. Stick to that one glass, and
at the end of the year you can sit peacefully in the leafy bowers of
health.

"If you take the second glass a little bird will fly out of it,
chirping in innocent gladness, and men will laugh and sing with it,
'Life is pleasant. Away with care, away with fear!'

"From the third glass springs forth a little winged creature--a little
angel he cannot well be called, for he has Nix blood and a Nix mind.
He does not come to tease, but to amuse. He places himself behind your
ear, and whispers some humorous idea; he lays himself close to your
heart and warms it, so that you become very merry, and fancy yourself
the cleverest among a set of great wits.

"In the fourth glass is neither plant, bird, nor little figure: it is
the boundary line of sense, and beyond that line let no one go.

"If you take the fifth glass you will weep over yourself--you will be
foolishly happy, or become stupidly noisy. From this glass will spring
Prince Carnival, flippant and crack-brained. He will entice you to
accompany him; you will forget your respectability, if you have any;
you will forget more than you ought or dare forget. All is pleasure,
gaiety, excitement; the maskers carry you off with them; the
daughters of the Evil One, in silks and flowers, come with flowing
hair and voluptuous charms. Escape them if you can.

"The sixth glass! In that sits Satan himself--a well-dressed,
conversable, lively, fascinating little man--who never contradicts
you, allows that you are always in the right--in fact, seems quite to
adopt all your opinions. He comes with a lantern to convey you home to
his own habitation. There is an old legend about a saint who was to
choose one of the seven mortal sins, and he chose, as he thought, the
least--drunkenness; but in that state he perpetrated all the other six
sins. The human nature and the devilish nature mingle. This is the
sixth glass; and after that all the germs of evil thrive in us, every
one of them spreading with a rapidity and vigour that cause them to be