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There was written on it in Quigg's bold, round hand: "Good for one roast chicken to bearer." Simmons looked up with a flashing eye. "A dead one!" said he. "Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. "Dot is right! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party." There are no more Christmas stories to write.

They are both narrative and dramatic as well as pure lyric in form, and are simple, powerful, and direct in expression. They treat all phases of German life of the past, from a crude version of the Lay of Hildebrant to the riddles, lullabies, and counting-out rhymes of children. Pictures of the moral and social life of peasant Germany are followed by poems of nature and of the supernatural.

Old Hildebrant is one of these funny Dutchmen you know the kind always getting off bum jokes. He's got about a million riddles and things that he faked from Rogers Brothers' great-grandfather. Bill Watson works there, too. Me and Bill have to stand for them chestnuts day after day. Why do we do it? Well, jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush And then there's Laura. "What?

And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces. "The riddle? Why, it was this: 'What kind of a hen lays the longest? Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest?

Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silver-buckling a raw leather martingale. Bill Watson came in first. "Vell," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile conceit of the joke-maker, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?" "Er why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. "I think so, Mr. Hildebrant the one that lives the longest Is that right?"

"Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "My name is Simmons." Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest shall altogether pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. I am indeed astray if my hand fail in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would follow. Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in at the door of Hildebrant, harness maker.

"Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. "You haf not guessed der answer." Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood. In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco pale, melancholy, hopeless. "Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?" Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye.