That nature has transformed to
silver; serving the poor man as his needed coin.
In sadness waned the moon, for caught between the horns of a dilemma
she had no wealth left to endow the infant with. Intemperate habits
had the goddess always, was often full and now reduced to her last
quarter, but that was waning fast and her man's shadow also growing
less. Her semi-transparent stone, alas! had given she long since to
California, but this proudest of all daughters of the seas did not
appreciate the kindly gift. She cast it on the white sands of her
beaches where it is gathered by the thankful tourist who shouts
exultantly, delighted with his find:
The moonstone, climate, atmosphere,
The only things free-gratis here-
Eureka!
I have found!
A ROYAL FIASCO.
(HISTORICAL ANECDOTES.)
A village on the coast of northern Germany, where the Elbe flows into
the North Sea, was my birthplace, its parsonage, my childhood's home.
Two great earth-dikes which sheltered our village from fierce
southwesterly gales were the only barrier standing between untold
thousands of lives and watery graves, for the coasts of Holland and
northern Germany are below the level of high tides.
It is known that through inundations caused by breaks in these
levees, occurring as late as the tenth and eleventh centuries of our
era more than three hundred thousand persons with all their domestic
cattle were drowned over night.
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