i28 THE UGLY DUCKLING. full of happiness and peace: it seemed as if a sunshine spread over her features; and she smiled again, and then the people said she was dead. She was laid in the black coffin; and there she lay shrouded in the white linen folds, looking beautiful and mild, though her eyes were closed ; but every wrinkle had vanished, and there was a smile around her mouth; her hair was silver-white and vene- rable ; and we did not feel at all afraid to look at the corpse of her who had been the dear good Grandmother. And the hymn- book was placed under her head, for she had wished it so, and the rose was still in the old book; and then they buried Grand- mother. ~ On the grave, close by the churchyard wall, they planted a rose tree ; and it was full of roses ; and the nightingale flew sing- ing over the flowers and over the grave. In the church the finest psalms sounded from the organ—the psalms that were written in the old book under the dead one’s head. The moon shone down upon the grave, but the dead one was not there. Every child could go safely, even at night, and pluck a rose there by the churchyard wall. A dead person knows more than all we living ones. The dead know what a terror would come upon us, if the strange thing were to happen that they appeared among us: the dead are better than we all; the dead return no more. The earth has been heaped over the coffin, and it is earth that lies in the coffin ; and the leaves of the hymn-book are dust, and the rose, with all its recollections, has returned to dust likewise. But above there bloom fresh roses; the nightingale sings and the organ sounds, and the remembrance lives of the old_Grand- mother with the mild eyes that always looked young. yes can never die? Ours will once behold Grandmother again, young and beautiful, as when for the first time she kissed the fresh red rose that is now dust in the grave. THE UGLY DUCKLING. T was glorious out in the country, It was summer, and the corn-fields were yellow, and the oats were green ; the hay had been put up in stacks in the green meadows, and the stork went about on his long red legs, and chattered Egyptian, for this was the language he had learned from his good mother. All around the fields and meadows were great forests, and in the midst of these forests lay deep lakes, Yes, it was