offence, and to pay his reckoning for him besides, if he should be able to deduce some profitable moral from every story that they might tell him of Number Nip. So one of the company thus began:
“Once upon a time a certain man took his way up the Giant Mountain with the special design of meeting with Number Nip, and begging from the Spirit the gift of a little magical book which should teach him how to rule the weather according as it pleased him, how to transform himself into any shape, how to bewitch his neighbour’s cattle, and, in short, how to perform a great many very strange and surprising tricks. Well, after looking about him for a long time, he at last perceived Number Nip, in the form of a little, old, decrepit man, seated in the mouth of a cave, who gave him such a little book as he described, and the impudent varlet took his way homewards again in great joy. But on the following morning, when he opened the little book, thinking to do some strange cantrip with it, lo and behold, every trace of the wonderful lines and figures which Number Nip had shown him in it the day before had vanished, and instead of a nicely written book, he had nothing but a parcel of worthless green leaves in his hand, with no other trace of figures or writing upon them than the shapeless lines and strokes which the hand of Nature has drawn upon the leaves of every tree and bush and shrub!”
The peasants were highly pleased with this story, and thought the novice in necromancy well-punished for his daring; but at last they asked the student to treat them with the moral of the story, and he, after a little reflection, began to recite the following strophe in a low voice:
“He who famous deeds would do,
First must humbly listen to
School-dame Nature’s teaching, and
Read the books which she has penn’d;—
Sealed these books to vulgar eyes,
Open only to the wise.
