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In Grimm's story, in which the child laughs, a host of elves comes suddenly bringing back the true and carrying away the false one; and in many of the German and Northern tales the changeling disappears in one way or other immediately after its exclamation.
And so for a long time he lay, listening. Was there another person in the room? Mr. Grimm's ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him a pall without one rift of light.
"I don't want no better luck than Tom and Huck had," said I. "But I believe it will be different, for you're different from Tom, Mitch. For one thing, you've read different things: The Arabian Nights, and Grimm's Stories, and there's your father who's a preacher and all your sisters and your mother who's so good natured and fat. These things will count too.
Why By Jove! I believe I see what you mean. Say, it's lucky you found this. I'll turn detective for awhile now. I wonder how this got into Grimm's room." "Rolled under door, I guess," replied Budge, speaking more rationally as he threw away his cud of gum. "From hall, maybe." "That's it!" exclaimed Jack. "I see it now. Thanks Budge. I hope I succeed. I'm much obliged to you."
"Well," continued Oxenden, calmly resuming, and taking no notice of these interruptions, "I can give you word after word that More has mentioned which corresponds to a kindred Hebrew word in accordance with 'Grimm's Law. For instance, Kosekin 'Op, Hebrew 'Oph; Kosekin 'Athon, Hebrew 'Adon; Kosekin 'Salon, Hebrew 'Shalom. They are more like Hebrew than Arabic, just as Anglo-Saxon words are more like Latin or Greek than Sanscrit."
He glanced at the postmark, and saw it was stamped "Chicago." "Wonder how he got out there," he mused. "Well, I'm glad he's far away," and he gave little more thought to the matter of the bully, a nephew of Professor Grimm's, whose vain attempt to cast disgrace on Jack, in the matter of painting a pipe on the professor's portrait, had rebounded on his own head.
Just then the kind heart of Wilhelm Grimm's wife brought her to me with some delicious fruit syrup made by her own hands. When I told her what I was doing and expressed a wish to have a guide in my science, she promised to tell "the men" at home, and within a few days after his sister-in-law's visit Jacob was sitting with me.
God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping. But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy. Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy.
There was only one pair of eyes in the room that I feared in the least, and that was Grimm's, who sat in profile to me, farthest away. I instantly put Dollmann's back between Grimm and me, and then made my scrutiny. As I made it, I could feel a cold sweat distilling on my forehead and tickling my spine; not from fear or excitement, but from pure ignominy.
Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut and dried for us to go by. There is no uniform psychological principle which determines that the three-headed snake in one story shall become a three-headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology which decides that a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a Norwegian Troll or a Keltic Druid.
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