he man; "and my hands are as warm as possible this
cold November day."

"Well," said Mr. Vinegar, "I should like to have them."

"What will you give?" said the man; "as you are a friend, I don't much
mind letting you have them for those bagpipes."

"Done!" cried Mr. Vinegar. He put on the gloves, and felt perfectly
happy as he trudged homewards.

At last he grew very tired, when he saw a man coming towards him with a
good stout stick in his hand. "Oh," said Mr. Vinegar, "that I but had
that stick! I should then be the happiest man alive." He accosted the
man: "Friend! what a rare good stick you have got."

"Yes," said the man; "I have used it for many a long mile, and a good
friend it has been; but if you have a fancy for it, as you are a friend,
I don't mind giving it to you for that pair of gloves." Mr. Vinegar's
hands were so warm, and his legs so tired, that he gladly exchanged.

As he drew near to the wood where he had left his wife, he heard a
parrot on a tree calling out his name: "Mr. Vinegar, you foolish man,
you blockhead, you simpleton; you went to the fair and laid out all your
money in buying a cow. Not content with that, you changed it for
bagpipes, on which you could not play and which were not worth one-tenth
of the money. You fool, you--you had no sooner got the bagpipes than you
changed them for the gloves, which were not worth one-quarter of the
money; and when you had got the gloves, you changed them for a poor
miserable stick; and now for your forty guineas, cow, bagpipes, and
gloves, you have nothing to show but that poor miserable stick, which
you might have cut in any hedge." On this the bird laughed immoderately,
and Mr. Vinegar, falling into a violent rage, threw the stick at its
head. The stick lodged in the tree, and he returned to his wife without
money, cow, bagpipes, gloves, or stick, and she instantly gave him such
a sound cudgelling that she almost broke every bone in his skin.

157

One of the greatest favorites among nursery
tales is the story of that Jack who showed "an
inquiring mind, a great courage and
enterprise," and who climbed the ladder of
fortune when he mounted his bean-stalk. The
traditional versions of this story are nearly
all crude and unsatisfactory, as are those of
many of the English tales. Joseph Jacobs made a
remarkably fine literary version in his
_English Fairy Tales_ fr