=The Miracle of the Corn-crakes.=--One summer evening the teacher went with Johann through the clover-fields. There they heard a sound, "Crex! crex!" "What is that?" asked the teacher. "The corn-crake, of course." "Have you seen the corn-crake?" "No." "Do you know a man who has seen it?" "No." "How do you know, then, that it is it?" "Everyone says so." "Look! If I throw a stone at it, will it fly up?" "No, for it cannot fly, or flies very badly." "But in autumn, it always flies to Italy! How does that happen?" "I don't know." "What do the zoologists say?" "Nothing." "Do you believe that it flies over the Sound, runs through Germany, and wanders over the Alps or through the St. Gothard Tunnel?" "They say nothing about it." "Well! Brehm calculates there are a pair of larks to every acre of field and meadow; if we reckon that there are a pair of corn-crakes to every two acres, then there are in our country in spring five million corn-crakes. The female lays from seven to twelve eggs during the summer, so that in autumn in our country there are five-and-thirty million corn-crakes. Ought they not to be visible when they fly over the Sound?" "I cannot explain it. A bad flyer cannot fly over the Sound. Is it possible that they go round by the Gulf of Bothnia?" "No, for they have rivers to cross, and one would see their flight like that of the lemmings. Besides, in England there are seventy million corn-crakes every autumn, and they cannot go by land." "Then a miracle happens." "What is a miracle?" "What one cannot explain, but has no right to deny." "Then the flight of the corn-crakes is a miracle; it must take place according to unknown natural laws or be supernatural?" =Corollaries.=--The teacher said: "The bee is a little creature, but gives plenty of honey. The corn-crake is a little bird, but it has shown us that some of the most ordinary natural occurrences cannot be explained by known natural laws, and must therefore be regarded, for the present, as supernatural, and for the rest, be taken on faith. "You have never seen the corn-crake in fields or meadows, but you believe that it is there. If now a sportsman came, who had shot the bird, you would be more quickly convinced that the bird does appear in the district, even though the sportsman were a liar. "But the fact that millions of birds not accustomed to flying cannot fly over great spaces of water or Alpine glaciers, does not explain the autumn flight of the corn-crakes. "Since this cannot be explained on natural grounds, it is supernatural. We must accordingly admit that we believe sometimes on the supernatural, or on miracles. "From this proved thesis you can deduce the corollaries for yourself if you possess the faculty of drawing inferences." =Phantasms which Are Real.=--The teacher asked: "Can one see a phantasm?" "What is a phantasm?"