Henceforth we never burned a pare in the dwelling-room again. The lamp shone victoriously from the roof, and on Sunday evenings all the townsfolk often used to come to look upon and admire it. It was known all over the parish that our house was the first, after the parsonage, where the lamp had been used. After we had set the example, the magistrate bought a lamp like ours, but as he had never learned to light it, he was glad to sell it to the innkeeper, and the innkeeper has it still. The poorer farmfolk, however, have not been able to get themselves lamps, but even now they do their long evening's work by the glare of a pare. But when we had had the lamp a short time, father planed the walls of the dwelling-room all smooth and white, and they never got black again, especially after the old stove, which used to smoke, had to make room for another, which discharged its smoke outside and had a cowl. Pekka made a new fireplace in the bath-house out of the stones of the old stove, and the crickets flitted thither with the stones--at least their chirping was never heard any more in the dwelling room. Father didn't care a bit, but we children felt, now and then, during the long winter evenings, a strange sort of yearning after old times, so we very often found our way down to the bath-house to listen to the crickets, and there was Pekka sitting out the long evenings by the light of his pare. THE FLYING MAIL BY M. GOLDSCHMIDT From "The Flying Mail." Translated by Carl Larsen. THE FLYING MAIL BY M. GOLDSCHMIDT I. Fritz Bagger had just been admitted to the bar. He had come home and entered his room, seeking rest. All his mental faculties were now relaxed after their recent exertion, and a long-restrained power was awakened. He had reached a crisis in life: the future lay before him,--the future, the future! What was it to be? He was twenty-four years old, and could turn himself whichever way he pleased, let fancy run to any line of the compass. Out upon the horizon, he saw little rose-colored clouds, and nothing therein but a certain undefined bliss. He put his hands over his eyes, and sought to bring this uncertainty into clear vision; and after a long time had elapsed, he said: "Yes, and so one marries." "Yes, one marries," he continued, after a pause; "but whom?" His thoughts now took a more direct course; but the pictures in his mind's eye had not become plainer. Again the horizon widely around was rose-colored, and between the tinted cloud-layers angel-heads peeped out--not Bible angels, which are neither man nor woman; but angelic girls, whom he didn't know, and who didn't know him. The truth was, he didn't know anybody to whom he could give his heart, but longed, with a certain twenty-four-year power, for her to whom he could offer it,--her who was worthy to receive his whole self-made being, and in exchange give him all that queer imagined bliss, which is or ought to be in the world, as every one so firmly believes.