“So at last there was a rustling sound above, as a window softly opened, and a great basket came vibrating down below; and the damsel, well assured, got into it like a hen into her nest, while the lusty friar above began to draw like an artist. “Now the _Beato frate_ Dyonisio, knowing all that passed round about by virtue of his holy omniscience, determined to make manifest to the monks that things not adapted to piety led them into the path of eternal punishment. “Therefore, just as the basket-full of girl touched the window of the convent, it happened by the virtue of the holy Dyonisio that the rope broke and the damsel came with a _capi tombola_ somerset or first-class tumble into the street; but as she, poor soul, had only sinned for a supper, which she greatly needed and seldom got, she was quit for a good fright, since no other harm happened to her. “But it was far otherwise with the wicked monk, who had only come into that holy monastery to stir up sin; for he, leaning too far over at the instant, fell with an awful howl to the ground, where he roared so with pain that all the other monks came running to see what was the matter. And they found him indeed, more dead than alive, terribly bruised, yet in greater agony of mind than of body, saying that Satan had tempted him, and that he would fain confess to the Beato Dyonisio, who alone could save him. “Then the good monk tended him, and so exhorted him that he left his evil ways and became a worthy servant of God, and the devil ceased to tempt him. And in due time Brother Dyonisio died, and as a saint they interred him in the crypt under the convent, and the morning after his burial a beautiful flower was found growing from his tomb, and so they sainted him. “The fall of the girl was a scandal and cause of laughter for all Florence, so that from that day the monks never ventured more to draw up damsels in baskets.” * * * * * This story is so widely spread in many forms, that the reader can hardly have failed to have heard it; in fact, there are few colleges where it has not happened that a basket has not been used for such smuggling. One of the most amusing instances is of a damsel in New Haven, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was very forgetful. One day she said to a friend, “You have no idea how wicked some girls are. The other morning early—I mean late at night—I was going by the college when I saw a girl being drawn up in a basket by some students, when all at once the rope broke—_and down I came_.” In Germany, as in the East, the tale is told of a wooer who is drawn up half-way in a basket and then let remain for everybody to behold. In Uhland’s Old Ballads there is one to this effect of Heinrich Corrade der Schreiber im Korbe. Tales on this theme at least need not be regarded as strictly traditional.