374 WHAT THE MOON SAW.

lighted: servants carrying wax candles in massive silver candle-
sticks stood there, and bowed low before an aged woman, who
was being brought downstairs in a litter. The proprietor of the
house stood bareheaded, and respectfully imprinted a kiss on the
hand of the old woman. She was his mother. She nodded in
a friendly manner to him and to the servants, and they carried
her into the dark narrow street, into a little house, that was her
dwelling. Here her children had been born, from hence the
fortune of the family had arisen. If she deserted the despised
street and the little house, fortune would also desert her children.
That was her firm belief.” ~

The Moon told me no more; his visit this evening was far too
short. But I thought of the old woman in the narrow despised
street. It would have cost her but a word, and a brilliant house
would have arisen for her on the banks of the Thames—a word,
and a villa would have been prepared in the Bay of Naples.

“If I deserted the lowly house, where the fortunes of my sons
first began to bloom, fortune would desert them!” It was a
superstition, but a superstition of such a class, that he who knows
the story and has seen this picture, need have only two words.
placed under the picture to make him understand it; and these
two words are: “ A mother.”

TWENTY-FIFTH EVENING.

“Tt was yesterday, in the morning twilight”—these are the
words the Moon told me—“ in the great city no chimney was yet
smoking—and it was just at the chimneys that I was looking.
Suddenly a little head emerged from one of them, and then half
a body, the arms resting on the rim of the chimneypot. ‘Ya-
hip!’ cried a voice. It was the little chimney-sweeper, who had
for the first time in his life crept through a chimney and stuck out
his head at the top. ‘Ya-hip! ya-hip!’ Yes, certainly that was
a very different thing from creeping about in the dark narrow
chimneys! the air blows so fresh, and he could look over the
whole city towards the green wood. The sun was just rising. It
shone round and great, just in his face, that beamed with triumph,
though it was very prettily blacked with soot.

“The whole town can see me now, he exclaimed, ‘and the
moon can see me now, and the sun too. Ya-hip! ya-hip!’? And
he flourished his broom in triumph.”

TWENTY-SIXTH EVENING.

“Last night I looked down upon a town in China,” said the
Moon. “My beams irradiated the naked walls that form the
streets there. Now and then, certainly, a door is seen, but itis ~
locked, for what does the Chinaman care about the outer world?