a new mind with the new time. This night it is a
horrible pit to devour up lives, and to-morrow, perhaps, it may be a
glassy mirror--even as in the old time that we have buried. Sleep
sweetly, if thou canst sleep!

Now it is morning.

The new time flings sunshine into the room. The wind still keeps
up mightily. A wreck is announced--as in the old time.

During the night, down yonder by Lokken, the little fishing
village with the red-tiled roofs--we can see it up here from the
window--a ship has come ashore. It has struck, and is fast embedded in
the sand; but the rocket apparatus has thrown a rope on board, and
formed a bridge from the wreck to the mainland; and all on board are
saved, and reach the land, and are wrapped in warm blankets; and
to-day they are invited to the farm at the convent of Borglum. In
comfortable rooms they encounter hospitality and friendly faces.
They are addressed in the language of their country, and the piano
sounds for them with melodies of their native land; and before these
have died away, the chord has been struck, the wire of thought that
reaches to the land of the sufferers announces that they are
rescued. Then their anxieties are dispelled; and at even they join
in the dance at the feast given in the great hall at Borglum.
Waltzes and Styrian dances are given, and Danish popular songs, and
melodies of foreign lands in these modern times.

Blessed be thou, new time! Speak thou of summer and of purer
gales! Send thy sunbeams gleaming into our hearts and thoughts! On thy
glowing canvas let them be painted--the dark legends of the rough hard
times that are past!

THE BOTTLE NECK

Close to the corner of a street, among other abodes of poverty,
stood an exceedingly tall, narrow house, which had been so knocked
about by time that it seemed out of joint in every direction. This
house was inhabited by poor people, but the deepest poverty was
apparent in the garret lodging in the gable. In front of the little
window, an old bent bird-cage hung in the sunshine, which had not even
a proper water-glass, but instead of it the broken neck of a bottle,
turned upside down, and a cork stuck in to make it hold the water with
which it was filled. An old maid stood at the window; she had hung
chickweed over the cage, and the little linnet which it contained
hopped from perch to perch and sang and twittered merrily.

"Yes, it's all very well for you to sing," said the bottle neck: