ear," he says, "I do think
trousers are the most awkwardest kind of clothes that ever were. I can't
think who could have invented such things. It takes me the best part of
an hour to get into mine every morning, and I get so hot! How do you
manage yours?" So the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and showed him how
to put them on; and he was very much obliged to him, and said he never
should have thought of doing it that way.

So that was another big silly.

Then the gentleman went on his travels again; and he came to a village,
and outside the village there was a pond, and round the pond was a crowd
of people. And they had got rakes, and brooms, and pitchforks, reaching
into the pond; and the gentleman asked what was the matter.

"Why," they said, "matter enough! Moon's tumbled into the pond, and we
can't rake her out anyhow!"

So the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and told them to look up into the
sky, and that it was only the shadow in the water. But they wouldn't
listen to him, and abused him shamefully, and he got away as quick as he
could.

So there was a whole lot of sillies bigger than the three sillies at
home. So the gentleman turned back home again and married the farmer's
daughter, and if they didn't live happy for ever after, that's nothing
to do with you or me.

155

There seemed to be a feeling common among the
folk that simple-minded persons were in the
special care of Providence. Hence, sometimes
the achievement of success beyond the power of
wiser and cleverer individuals. "Lazy Jack"
comes from the Halliwell collection. "The
humor lies in the contrast between what Jack
did and what anybody 'with sense' knows he
ought to have done." A parallel story is the
Grimms' "Hans in Luck." A most striking and
popular Americanization of it is Sara Cone
Bryant's "The Story of Epaminondas and His
Auntie" in her _Stories to Tell to Children_.

LAZY JACK

Once upon a time there was a boy whose name was Jack, and he lived with
his mother on a dreary common. They were very poor, and the old woman
got her living by spinning, but Jack was so lazy that he would do
nothing but bask in the sun in the hot weather and sit by the corner of
the hearth in the winter time. His mother could not persuade him to do
anything for her and was obliged at last to tell him that if he did not
begin to work for his porr