This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down, when one of them said, “But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will be able to tell us aught about it?” “Why,” said the bailiff, who had advised the stone being carried up again, “this is very easily managed. One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a hole in the middle], and run down with it.” This was agreed to, and one of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man, and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that “if any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice.” But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after drinking water enough--more, indeed, than was good for him--died; and he is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain! The earliest known edition of the history of the Schildburgers was printed in 1597, but the story itself is no doubt older. It will be seen at once that it involves a satire upon the municipal towns of the middle ages. ITALIAN WIT AND HUMOR Of Italian wit and humor up to and through the Sixteenth Century there is little to be said. Translators who have given us in English the early literature of Italy have been so concerned with the serious poetry and prose that they neglected the lighter veins. If, indeed, there were any worth while. The outstanding name of the Fourteenth Century is that of Giovanni Boccaccio. But though the Decameron, a collection of one hundred stories, is a mirror of the humorous taste of that time, the stories are for the most part, long, dull and prosy. They relate the intrigues of lovers in a freely licentious way, but both humorous description and witty repartee are consciously lacking. One of the most amusing of the decent tales is here given, also a sonnet of Boccaccio’s translated by Rossetti. _OF THREE GIRLS AND THEIR TALK_