“To which the lady, smiling, replied, ‘Well, I have already in my house plenty of humble servants, and indeed only too many to sweep the rooms and wash the dishes, and there is really no place for another. . . .’ “And the young man turned aside with sickness in his heart. His wooing for that holiday was o’er.” This may be matched with the story of a bashful New England lover of the olden time, for there are none such now-a-days:— “I don’t know how I ever got courage to do it; but one evening I went courting Miss Almira Chapin. “And when she came in, I sat for half-an-hour, and dared not say a word. At last I made a desperate dash and got out, ‘Things are looking very green out of doors, Miss Almira.’ “And she answered, ‘Seems to me they’re looking a great deal greener _in_ doors this evening.’ “That extinguished me, and I retreated. And when I was outside I burst into tears.” LA FORTUNA A LEGEND OF THE VIA DE’ CERCHI “One day Good Luck came to my home, I begged of her to stay. ‘There’s no one loves you more than I, Oh, rest with me for aye,’ ‘It may not be; it may not be, I rest with no one long,’ said she.” —“_Witch Ballads_,” by C. G. LELAND. The manner in which many of the gods in exile still live in Italy is very fully illustrated by the following story: “It is a hard thing sometimes now-a-days for a family to pass for noble if they are poor, or only poor relations. But it was easy in the old time, Signore Carlo, easy as drinking good Chianti. A signore had only to put his shield with something carved on it over his window, and he was all right. He was noble _senza dubbio_. “Now the nobles had their own noble stories as to what these noble pictures in stone meant, but the ignoble people often had another story just as good. Coarse woollen cloth wears as well as silk. Now you may see on an old palazzo in the Via de’ Cerchi, and indeed in several other places, a shield with three rings. But people call them three wheels. And this is the story about the three wheels.” LA FORTUNA. “There was a man, _tanto buono_, as good as could be, who lived in squalid misery. He had a wife and two children, one blind and another _storpia_ or crippled, and so ugly, both—_non si dice_—beyond telling! “This poor man in despair often wept, and then he would repeat: “‘The wheel of Fortune turns, they say, But for me it turns the other way; I work with good-will, but do what I may, I have only bad luck from day to day.’ “‘Yes, little to eat and less to wear, and two poor girls, one blind and one lame. People say that Fortune is blind herself, and cannot walk, but she does not bless those who are like her, that is sure!’ And so he wailed and wept, till it was time to go forth to seek work to gain their daily bread. And a hard time he had of it.