FullReads

Thus the old couple lived in their palace a great, great while, and grew
older and older, and very old indeed. At length, however, there came a
summer morning when Philemon and Baucis failed to make their appearance,
as on other mornings, with one hospitable smile overspreading both their
pleasant faces, to invite the guests of overnight to breakfast. The
guests searched everywhere, from top to bottom of the spacious palace,
and all to no purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they
espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could
remember to have seen there the day before. Yet there they stood, with
their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage
overshadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an oak, and the
other a linden-tree. Their boughs it was strange and beautiful to see–
were intertwined together, and embraced one another, so that each tree
seemed to live in the other tree’s bosom, much more than in its own.

While the guests were marvelling how these trees, that must have
required at least a century to grow, could have come to be so tall and
venerable in a single night, a breeze sprang up, and set their
intermingled boughs astir. And then there was a deep, broad murmur in
the air, as if the two mysterious trees were speaking.

“I am old Philemon!” murmured the oak.

“I am old Baucis!” murmured the linden-tree.

But, as the breeze grew stronger, the trees both spoke at once,–
“Philemon! Baucis! Baucis! Philemon!”–as if one were both and both
were one, and talking together in the depths of their mutual heart. It
was plain enough to perceive that the good old couple had renewed their
age, and were now to spend a quiet and delightful hundred years or so,
Philemon as an oak, and Baucis as a linden-tree. And oh, what a
hospitable shade did they fling around them! Whenever a wayfarer paused
beneath it, he heard a pleasant whisper of the leaves above his head,
and wondered how the sound should so much resemble words like these:–

“Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, welcome!”

And some kind soul, that knew what would have pleased old Baucis and old
Philemon best, built a circular seat around both their trunks, where,
for a great while afterwards, the weary, and the hungry, and the thirsty
used to repose themselves, and quaff milk abundantly out of the
miraculous pitcher.

And I wish, for all our sakes, that we had the pitcher here now!

THE HILLSIDE.

AFTER THE STORY.

“How much did the pitcher hold?” asked Sweet Fern.

“It did not hold quite a quart,” answered the student; “but you might
keep pouring milk out of it, till you should fill a hogshead, if you
pleased. The truth is, it would run on forever, and not be dry even at
midsummer,–which is more than can be said of yonder rill, that goes
babbling down the hillside.”

“And what has become of the pitcher now?” inquired the little boy.

“It was broken, I am sorry to say, about twenty-five thousand years
ago,” replied Cousin Eustace. “The people mended it as well as they
could; but, though it would hold milk pretty well, it was never
afterwards known to fill itself of its own accord. So, you see, it was
no better than any other cracked earthen pitcher.”

“What a pity!” cried all the children at once.

The respectable dog Ben had accompanied the party, as did likewise a
half-grown Newfoundland puppy, who went by the name of Bruin, because
he was just as black as a bear. Ben, being elderly, and of very
circumspect habits, was respectfully requested, by Cousin Eustace, to
stay behind with the four little children, in order to keep them out of
mischief. As for black Bruin, who was himself nothing but a child, the
student thought it best to take him along, lest, in his rude play with
the other children, he should trip them up, and send them rolling and
tumbling down the bill. Advising Cowslip, Sweet Fern, Dandelion, and
Squashblossom to sit pretty still, in the spot where he left them, the
student, with Primrose and the elder children, began to ascend, and were
soon out of sight among the trees.