uch loses all. Don't ride a free horse to
death.

THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE

There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a ditch, close by
the sea-side. The fisherman used to go out all day long a-fishing; and
one day, as he sat on the shore with his rod, looking at the shining
water and watching his line, all on a sudden his float was dragged away
deep under the sea: and in drawing it up he pulled a great fish out of
the water. The fish said to him, "Pray let me live: I am not a real
fish; I am an enchanted prince. Put me in the water again, and let me
go."

"Oh!" said the man, "you need not make so many words about the matter. I
wish to have nothing to do with a fish that can talk; so swim away as
soon as you please." Then he put him back into the water, and the fish
darted straight down to the bottom and left a long streak of blood
behind him.

When the fisherman went home to his wife in the ditch, he told her how
he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted
prince, and that on hearing it speak he had let it go again.

"Did you not ask it for anything?" said the wife.

"No," said the man, "what should I ask for?"

"Ah!" said the wife, "we live very wretchedly here in this nasty
stinking ditch. Do go back, and tell the fish we want a little cottage."

The fisherman did not much like the business; however he went to the
sea, and when he came there the water looked all yellow and green. And
he stood at the water's edge, and said,

"O man of the sea!
Come listen to me,
For Alice my wife,
The plague of my life,
Hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!"

Then the fish came swimming to him, and said, "Well, what does she
want?"

"Ah!" answered the fisherman, "my wife says that when I had caught you,
I ought to have asked you for something before I let you go again. She
does not like living any longer in the ditch, and wants a little
cottage."

"Go home, then," said the fish. "She is in the cottage already."

So the man went home and saw his wife standing at the door of a cottage.
"Come in, come in," said she; "is not this much better than the ditch?"
And there was a parlor, and a bed-chamber, and a kitchen; and behind the
cottage there was a little garden with all sorts of flowers and fruits,
and a court-yard full of ducks and chickens.

"Ah!" said the fisherman, "how happily we shall live!"

"We will try to do s