Last Sunday morning at six o’clock in the evening as I was sailing over the tops of the mountains in my little boat, I met two men on horseback riding on one mare: So I asked them: “Could they tell me whether the little old woman was dead yet who was hanged last Saturday week for drowning herself in a shower of feathers?” They said they could not inform me positively, but if I went to Sir Gammer Vans he could tell me all about it. “But how am I to know the house?” said I. “Ho, ‘tis easy enough,” said they, “for ‘tis a brick house built entirely of flints, standing alone by itself in the middle of sixty or seventy others just like it.” “Oh, nothing in the world is easier,” said I. “Nothing can be easier,” said they: so I went on my way. Now this Sir G. Vans was a giant, and a bottle-maker. And as all giants who are bottle-makers usually pop out of a little thumb-bottle from behind the door, so did Sir G. Vans. “How d’ye do?” says he. “Very well, I thank you,” says I. “Have some breakfast with me?” “With all my heart,” says I. So he gave me a slice of beer, and a cup of cold veal; and there was a little dog under the table that picked up all the crumbs. “Hang him,” says I. “No, don’t hang him,” says he; “for he killed a hare yesterday. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll show you the hare alive in a basket.” So he took me into his garden to show me the curiosities. In one corner there was a fox hatching eagle’s eggs; in another |