When I was in Germany, several years ago, I spent a few weeks of the summer-time in a small town among the Thuringian Mountains. This is a range on the borders of Saxony, something like our Green Mountains in height and form, but much darker in color, on account of the thick forests of fir which cover them. I had visited this region several times before, and knew not only the roads but most of the footpaths, and had made some acquaintance with the people; so I felt quite at home among them, and was fond of taking long walks up to the ruins of castles on the peaks, or down into the wild, rocky dells between them.

The people are mostly poor, and very laborious; yet all their labor barely produces enough to keep them from want. There is not much farming land, as you may suppose. The men cut wood, the women spin flax and bleach linen, and the children gather berries, tend cattle on the high mountain pastures, or act as guides to the summer travellers. A great many find employment in the manufacture of toys, of which there are several establishments in this region, producing annually many thousands of crying and speaking dolls, bleating lambs, barking dogs, and roaring lions.

Behind the town where I lived, there was a spur of the mountains, crowned by the walls of a castle built by one of the dukes who ruled over that part of Saxony eight or nine hundred years ago. Beyond this ruin, the mountain rose more gradually, until it reached the highest ridge, about three miles distant. In many places the forest had been cut away, leaving open tracts where the sweet mountain grass grew thick and strong, and where there were always masses of heather, harebells, foxgloves, and wild pinks. Every morning all the cattle of the town were driven up to these pastures, each animal with a bell hanging to its neck, and the sound of so many hundred bells tinkling all at once made a chime which could be heard at a long distance.

One of my favorite walks was to mount to the ruined castle, and pass beyond it to the flowery pasture-slopes, from which I had a wide view of the level country to the north and the mountain-ridges on both sides. Here it was very pleasant to sit on a rock, in the sunny afternoon, and listen to the continual sound of bells which filled the air. Sometimes one of the herd-boys would sing, or shout to the others across the intervening glens, while the village girls, with baskets of bark, hunted for berries along the edges of the forests. Although so high on the mountain, the landscape was never lonely.

One day, during my ramble, I came upon two smaller herds of cattle, each tended by a single boy. They were near each other, but not on the same pasture, for there was a deep hollow, or dell, between. Nevertheless they could plainly see each other, and even talk whenever they liked, by shouting a little. As I came out of a thicket upon the clearing, on one side of the hollow, the herd-boy tending the cattle nearest to me was sitting among the grass, and singing with all his might the German song commencing,

His back was towards me, but I noticed that his elbows were moving very rapidly. Curious to learn what he was doing, I slipped quietly around some bushes to a point where I could see him distinctly, and found that he was knitting a woollen stocking. Presently he lifted his head, looked across to the opposite pasture and cried out, “Hans! the cows!”

I looked also, and saw another boy of about the same age start up and run after his cattle, the last one of which was entering the forests. Then the boy near me gave a glance at his own cattle, which were quietly grazing on the slope, a little below him, and went on with his knitting. As I approached, he heard my steps and turned towards me, a little startled at first; but he was probably accustomed to seeing strangers, for I soon prevailed upon him to tell me his name and age. He was called Otto, and was twelve years old; his father was a wood-cutter, and his mother spun and bleached linen.

“And how much”, I asked him, “do you get for taking care of the cattle?”

“I am to have five thalers” (about four dollars), he answered, “for the whole summer; but it doesn’t go to me—it’s for father. But then I make a good many groschen by knitting, and that’s for my winter clothes. Last year I could buy a coat, and this year I want to get enough for trousers and new shoes. Since the cattle know me so well, I have only to talk and they mind me; and that, you see, gives me plenty of time to knit.”

“I see,” I said; “it’s a very good arrangement. I suppose the cattle over on the other pasture don’t know their boy? He has not got them all out of the woods yet.”

“Yes, they know him,” said Otto, “and that’s the reason they slip away. But the cattle mind some persons better than others; I’ve seen that much.”

Here he stopped talking, and commenced knitting again. I watched him awhile, as he rapidly and evenly rattled off the stitches. He evidently wanted to make the most of his time. Then I again looked across the hollow, where Hans—the other boy—had at last collected his cows. He stood on the top of a rock, flinging stones down the steep slope. When he had no more, he stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled loudly, to draw Otto’s attention; but the latter pretended not to hear. Then I left them; for the shadow of the mountain behind me was beginning to creep up the other side of the valley.

A few days afterwards I went up to the pasture again, and came, by chance, to the head of the little dell dividing the two herds. I had been wandering in the fir-forest, and reached the place unexpectedly. There was a pleasant view from the spot, and I seated myself in the shade, to rest and enjoy it. The first object which attracted my attention was Otto, knitting as usual, beside his herd of cows. Then I turned to the other side to discover what Hans was doing. His cattle, this time, were not straying; but neither did he appear to be minding them in the least. He was walking backwards and forwards on the mountainside, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Sometimes, where the top of a rock projected from the soil, he would lean over it, and look along it from one end to the other, as if he were trying to measure its size; then he would walk on, pull a blue flower, and then a yellow one, look at them sharply, and throw them away. “What is he after?” I said to myself. “Has he lost something, and is he trying to find it? or are his thoughts so busy with something else that he doesn’t really know what he is about?”

I watched him for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time he seemed to get tired, for he gave up looking about and sat down in the grass. The cattle were no doubt acquainted with his ways—(It is astonishing how much intelligence they have!)—and they immediately began to move towards the forest, and would soon have wandered away, if I had not headed them off and driven them back. Then I followed them, much to the surprise of Hans, who had been aroused by the noise of their bells as they ran from me.

“You don’t keep a very good watch, my boy!” I said.

As he made no answer, I asked, “Have you lost anything?”

“No,” he then said.

“What have you been hunting so long?”

He looked confused, turned away his head, and muttered, “Nothing.”

This made me sure he had been hunting something, and I felt a little curiosity to know what it was. But although I asked him again, and offered to help him hunt it, he would tell me nothing. He had a restless and rather unhappy look, quite different from the bright, cheerful eyes and pleasant countenance of Otto.

His father, he said, worked in a mill below the town, and got good wages; so he was allowed half the pay for tending the cattle during the summer.

“What will you do with the money?” I asked.

“Oh, I’ll soon spend it,” he said. “I could spend a hundred times that much, if I had it.”

“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “No doubt it’s all the better that you haven’t it.”

He did not seem to like this remark, and was afterwards disinclined to talk; so I left him and went over to Otto, who was as busy and cheerful as ever.

“Otto,” said I, “do you know what Hans is hunting all over the pasture? Has he lost anything?”

“No,” Otto answered; “he has not lost anything, and I don’t believe he will find anything, either. Because, even if it is all true, they say you never come across it when you look for it, but it just shows itself all at once, when you’re not expecting.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

Otto looked at me a moment, and seemed to hesitate. He appeared also to be a little surprised; but probably he reflected that I was a stranger, and could not be expected to know everything, for he finally asked, “Don’t you know, sir, what the shepherd found, somewhere about here, a great many hundred years ago?”

“No,” I answered.

“Not the key-flower?”

Then I did know what he meant, and understood the whole matter in a moment. But I wanted to know what Otto had heard of the story, and therefore said to him, “I wish you would tell me.”

“Well,” he began, “some say it was true, and some that it wasn’t. At any rate, it was a long, long while ago, and there’s no telling how much to believe. My grandmother told me; but then she didn’t know the man; she only heard about him from her grandmother. He was a shepherd, and used to tend his sheep on the mountain,—or maybe it was cows, I’m not sure,—in some place where there were a great many kobolds and fairies. And so it went on from year to year. He was a poor man, but very cheerful, and always singing and making merry; but sometimes he would wish to have a little more money, so that he need not be obliged to go up to the pastures in the cold foggy weather. That wasn’t much wonder, sir, for it’s cold enough up here, some days.

“It was in summer, and the flowers were all in blossom, and he was walking along after his sheep, when all at once he saw a wonderful sky-blue flower of a kind he had never seen before in all his life. Some people say it was sky-blue, and some that it was golden-yellow; I don’t know which is right. Well, however it was, there was the wonderful flower, as large as your hand, growing in the grass. The shepherd stooped down and broke the stem; but just as he was lifting up the flower to examine it, he saw that there was a door in the side of the mountain. Now he had been over the ground a hundred times before, and had never seen anything of the kind. Yet it was a real door, and it was open, and there was a passage into the earth. He looked into it for a long time, and at last plucked up heart and in he went. After forty or fifty steps, he found himself in a large hall, full of chests of gold and diamonds. There was an old kobold, with a white beard, sitting in a chair beside a large table in the middle of the hall. The shepherd was at first frightened, but the kobold looked at him with a friendly face, and said, ‘Take what you want, and don’t forget the best!’

“So the shepherd laid the flower on the table, and went to work and filled his pockets with the gold and diamonds. When he had as much as he could carry, the kobold said again, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ ‘That I won’t,’ the shepherd thought to himself, and took more gold and the biggest diamonds he could find, and filled his hat, so that he could scarcely stagger under the load. He was leaving the hall, when the kobold cried out, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ But he couldn’t carry any more, and went on, never minding. When he reached the door in the mountainside, he heard the voice again, for the last time, ‘Don’t forget the best!’

“The next minute he was out on the pasture. When he looked around, the door had disappeared: his pockets and hat grew light all at once, and instead of gold and diamonds he found nothing but dry leaves and pebbles. He was as poor as ever, and all because he had forgotten the best. Now, sir, do you know what the best was? Why, it was the flower, which he had left on the table in the kobold’s hall. That was the key-flower. When you find it and pull it, the door is opened to all the treasures under ground. If the shepherd had kept it, the gold and diamonds would have stayed so; and, besides, the door would have been always opened to him, and he could then help himself whenever he wanted.”

Otto had told the story very correctly, just as I had heard it told by some of the people before. “Did you ever look for the key-flower?” I asked him.

He grew a little red in the face, then laughed, and answered: “Oh, that was the first summer I tended the cattle, and I soon got tired of it. But I guess the flower doesn’t grow any more, now.”

“How long has Hans been looking for it?”

“He looks every day,” said Otto, “when he gets tired doing nothing. But I shouldn’t wonder if he was thinking about it all the time, or he’d look after his cattle better than he does.”

As I walked down the mountain that afternoon I thought a great deal about these two herd-boys and the story of the key-flower. Up to this time the story had only seemed to me to be a curious and beautiful fairy-tale; but now I began to think it might mean something more. Here was Hans, neglecting his cows, and making himself restless and unhappy, in the hope of some day finding the key-flower; while Otto, who remembered that it can’t be found by hunting for it, was attentive to his task, always earning a little, and always contented.

Therefore, the next time I walked up to the pastures, I went straight to Hans. “Have you found the key-flower yet?” I asked.

There was a curious expression upon his face. He appeared to be partly ashamed of what he must now and then have suspected to be a folly, and partly anxious to know if I could tell him where the flower grew.

“See here, Hans,” said I, seating myself upon a rock. “Don’t you know that those who hunt for it never find it. Of course you have not found it, and you never will, in this way. But even if you should, you are so anxious for the gold and diamonds that you would be sure to forget the best, just as the shepherd did, and would find nothing but leaves and pebbles in your pockets.”

“Oh, no!” he exclaimed; “that’s just what I wouldn’t do.”

“Why, don’t you forget your work every day?” I asked. “You are forgetting the best all the time,—I mean the best that you have at present. Now, I believe there is a key-flower growing on these very mountains; and, what is more, Otto has found it!”

He looked at me in astonishment.

“Don’t you see,” I continued, “how happy and contented he is all the day long? He does not work as hard at his knitting as you do in hunting for the flower; and although you get half your summer’s wages, and he nothing, he will be richer than you in the fall. He will have a small piece of gold, and it won’t change into a leaf. Besides, when a boy is contented and happy he has gold and diamonds. Would you rather be rich and miserable, or poor and happy?”

This was a subject upon which Hans had evidently not reflected. He looked puzzled. He was so accustomed to think that money embraced everything else that was desirable, that he could not imagine it possible for a rich man to be miserable. But I told him of some rich men whom I knew, and of others of whom I had heard, and at last bade him think of the prosperous brewer in the town below, who had so much trouble in his family, and who walked the streets with his head hanging down.

I saw that Hans was not a bad boy; he was simply restless, impatient, and perhaps a little inclined to envy those in better circumstances. This lonely life on the mountains was not good for a boy of his nature, and I knew it would be difficult for him to change his habits of thinking and wishing. But, after a long talk, he promised me he would try, and that was as much as I expected.

Now, you may want to know whether he did try; and I am sorry that I cannot tell you. I left the place soon afterwards, and have never been there since. Let us all hope, however, that he found the real key-flower.