searched everywhere, from top to bottom of the spacious palace,
and all to no purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they
espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could
remember to have seen there the day before. Yet there they stood, with
their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage
overshadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an oak, and the
other a linden tree. Their boughs--it was strange and beautiful to
see--were intertwined together, and embraced one another, so that each
tree seemed to live in the other tree's bosom much more than in its own.

While the guests were marvelling how these trees, that must have
required at least a century to grow, could have come to be so tall and
venerable in a single night, a breeze sprang up, and set their
intermingled boughs astir. And then there was a deep, broad murmur in
the air, as if the two mysterious trees were speaking.

"I am old Philemon!" murmured the oak.

"I am old Baucis!" murmured the linden tree.

But, as the breeze grew stronger, the trees both spoke at
once--"Philemon! Baucis! Baucis! Philemon!"--as if one were both and
both were one, and talked together in the depths of their mutual heart.
It was plain enough to perceive that the good old couple had renewed
their age, and were now to spend a quiet and delightful hundred years or
so, Philemon as an oak, and Baucis as a linden tree. And oh, what a
hospitable shade did they fling around them. Whenever a wayfarer paused
beneath it, he heard a pleasant whisper of the leaves above his head,
and wondered how the sound should so much resemble words like these:

"Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, welcome!"

And some kind soul, that knew what would have pleased old Baucis and old
Philemon best, built a circular seat around both their trunks, where,
for a great while afterward the weary, and the hungry, and the thirsty
used to repose themselves, and quaff milk abundantly out of the
miraculous pitcher.

And I wish, for all our sakes, that we had the pitcher here now!

CHAPTER VIII

THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN

Long, long ago, when this old world was in its tender infancy, there was
a child, named Epimetheus, who never had either father or mother; and,
that he might not be lonely, another child, fatherless and motherless
like himself, was sent from a far country, to live with him, and be his
playfellow and helpmate. Her name was Pandora.