sign, if he was going to Florida. I glanced at
it. Florida? Yes, to be sure; oh, yes, Florida. I spoke to the
officer, and it was in the Jutland dialect. I tried again, with no
better luck. I saw him looking at me queerly, as if he thought it was
not quite right with me, either, and then I recovered myself, and got
back to the office and to America; but it was an effort. One does not
skip across thirty years and two oceans, at my age, so easily as that.

And then the dull look came back into Frands's eyes, and he nodded
stolidly. Yes, he would go to Florida. The papers were made out, and
off he went, after giving me a hearty hand-shake that warranted he
would come out right when he became accustomed to the new country; but
he took something with him which it hurt me to part with.

Frands is long since in Florida, growing up with the country, and
little Yette is a young woman. So long ago was it that the current
which sucked her under cast her up again, that there lives not in the
whole street any one who can recall her loss. I tried to find one only
the other day, but all the old people were dead or had moved away, and
of the young, who were very anxious to help me, scarcely one was born
at that time. But still the maelstrom drags down its victims; and far
away lies my Danish heath under the gray October sky, hidden behind
the seas.

PAOLO'S AWAKENING

Paolo sat cross-legged on his bench, stitching away for dear life. He
pursed his lips and screwed up his mouth into all sorts of odd shapes
with the effort, for it was an effort. He was only eight, and you
would scarcely have imagined him over six, as he sat there sewing like
a real little tailor; only Paolo knew but one seam, and that a hard
one. Yet he held the needle and felt the edge with it in quite a
grown-up way, and pulled the thread just as far as his short arm would
reach. His mother sat on a stool by the window, where she could help
him when he got into a snarl,--as he did once in a while, in spite of
all he could do,--or when the needle had to be threaded. Then she
dropped her own sewing, and, patting him on the head, said he was a
good boy.

Paolo felt very proud and big then, that he was able to help his
mother, and he worked even more carefully and faithfully than before,
so that the boss should find no fault. The shouts of the boys in the
block, playing duck-on-a-rock down in the street, came in through the
open window, and he laughed as he