The people of the Old Town were like itself, simple and honest and good. None of them ever plumed themselves with stolen feathers. There was a bell-ringer at the Domkirke whom we boys dubbed Venus because of her exceeding ugliness. She was certainly the most hideous and withal the most good-natured girl I ever met. She accepted the name meekly as a part of her office, something pertaining to the job, and her smile reached from ear to ear when we hailed her by it in the street. Then there was a change. Her employer died, and she lost her place. When next we met her and called her Venus, she protested soberly: “I ain’t Venus no more now, for I ain’t by the kirk.” She ought logically to have descended from her ecclesiastical position to civil employment as the town bell-woman, but I am not sure she did. All public advertising was done in the Old Town through the medium of either the bell-woman or the drummer-man, the two official town-criers. There was a newspaper, to be sure,--indeed, it had been there for a hundred years and more, “privileged by the King,”--but I think it came out only every other day. At all events, all matters of real human interest were promulgated through these two functionaries. They divided their duties fairly. She did the crying of fish and meat in the market, and such like, or if any one had lost anything. He, having been once a soldier, did the honors on ceremonial occasions, as when a fat steer, or a horse, was to be killed at the butcher’s, good horse-meat being neither unwelcome on the poor man’s table, nor unpalatable either. Then he led the procession through the town, proclaiming between rolls of his drum the virtues of the victim that stalked after, adorned with ribbons and flowers. The steer never took any interest in the proceedings. Perhaps a bovine tradition told it what was coming. But the horse took it all as a compliment, and walked in the procession with pride, as if he were a person of consequence. [Illustration: “DID THE HONORS ON CEREMONIAL OCCASIONS.”]