broke through the hedge, and got browzing on the grass plots of his garden, which threw Rubezahl into such a fury, that he spread a panic-terror through the flock, and the sheep madly rushing about, and precipitating themselves over the rocks, the greater part of them perished. And so the poor fellow’s means of subsistence being thus taken from him, he pined away and died.
A physician of Schmiedeberg, who used to go botanizing on the Giant Mountains, had also the honour of sometimes chatting with the Gnome, who attired now as a wood cutter, now as a traveller, listened with interest to the history of the wonderful cures which the Schmeideberg Æsculapius boasted of having performed, the most trifling details of which he set forth in the most pompous and pragmatical manner. At times Rubezahl went so far in his complaisance as to carry the doctor’s basket of herbs a good bit of the way home for him, having first rendered it doubly heavy and valuable by pointing out, and teaching him the healing properties of, many a herb of which he knew not the whereabout, nor even the existence. The doctor, who thought he must needs know more of the matter than a wood cutter could possibly know, one day took his instructions amiss, and with some ill humour, said: “Cobbler! stick to thy last. What! shall a wood cutter pretend to teach a physician botany? But come, now, thou to whom all plants,
