though now he was sure of getting his heart back again. Not a bit. The youngster throws the heart to a strange-looking woman; a sort of Egyptian fortune-teller,—and she, with a sharp glittering knife, begins to cut the heart into little pieces.”

“Oh, ho! Look at his face,” cried the young flea. “And if he doesn’t shift and twist like a worm on a hook!”

“The woman cuts the heart into small pieces, and the owner[Pg 23] of the heart—how his knees twitch up and down, and how his head rolls upon the pillow, at every touch of the knife—at length sits down in a sort of curious despair to see what will become of his heart. And now, he looks about him—yes, he knows he is in a paper-mill. And strangely enough appears to him a kind of living history of the rise and progress of paper. He sees the flags of Egypt growing in a ditchy nook—and red Egyptians pulling and peeling it. And here flourishes a field of bamboo, and here a Chinaman, with his side-long almond eyes, cuts and shreds the skin from the bark. And the dreamer seeing his heart in bits tossed into a trough, is suddenly smitten with the sense that his heart, the great machine and blood-pump of his life, is to be made into paper. He tries to protest against the injury. He tries to roar out, but not a word will come. He sits straining and gasping, and dumb withal, as a caught fish. And now, he sees the bits of his heart curiously sorted by these hags of women; gloomy and wild as sybils,—for, my son, I know what sort of folk sybils are from the wisdom of my ancestors; our great forefathers having been closely entertained by them.”

[Pg 23]

“Go on, father: I’m impatient to know what they make of the heart,” cried the younger flea.

“The women, with sharp hooks, pick out the little knots and hard bits from the heart, and then souse the sorted stuff into boding water: and then they cut the bits with a turning thing toothed with knives; cut it and shred it; and now what was a fine, firm, full-weight heart, labouring in and through life, in the bosom of this wretched tipsiness below us, is soft and liquid as a dish of batter. Nevertheless, bating a chalky paleness in the fellow’s face, he seems to do as well without his heart as with it.”

“But it can’t last, father; it can’t last. He must have something of a heart to live,” said the young flea.

“Be patient a minute, and you shall learn. Now, one of the hags scoops the batter edgewise into a little frame and shakes it 

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