Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times ready for a chat. {317}What are we to make of these strange beings, the servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are told is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain privileges that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not themselves masters and those who think themselves to be masters are in reality servants? They generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless they keep out of sight, thus shunning all public return for their benevolent services. What are we to make of such servants? Martin Luther answers in his “Table Talk.” [Illustration: 337] “For many years,” he says, “a servant had a familiar spirit who sat down by her on the hearth, where she had made a little place for him, and they talked to each other during the long winter evenings. One day she asked Heinzchen (Chim, Heinzchen, and Kurt Chimgen are the pet names by which German and Alsatian cooks generally call their Ko-bolds) to let her see him in his natural shape. At first Heinzchen refused. {318}but at last, as she insisted, he told her to go down into the cellar, where he would show himself to her.” “She took a candle,” he goes on to say, “and went into the cellar, where the Kobold appeared to her in the likeness of a child of hers who had died some years before.” Whether he vanished then, leaving her in amazement and terror, or whether he resumed the shape in which she had been accustomed to see him, we are not told. It is a grim story upon which we do not care to dwell, for we prefer to remember the Kobold as a cheerful household companion. It is pleasant to think of those quaint little creatures, whose world is the kitchen, and to imagine the joy they feel in sharing the busy, bustling life that goes on there daily. Be sure they know every nook and corner about,--every stew-pan and ladle, and are learned in the steamy scents and fragrant savors which are the atmosphere of their home. At night when the fires are out, and the family is asleep, they have a life of their own. They are on the best possible terms with the cat, which they permit to share their food, and with which they no doubt waltz when in a gamesome mood. Happy Kobolds. According to general belief the Kobolds belong as much to the race of men as to the world of spirits; they retain the size and shape of infants, and that knife which so often is noticed in the form {319}of a caudal appendage, is nothing less than the instrument with which they have been put to death.