mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the
most intense human interest; for the true significance of the
whole picture is contained in the father's address to his
child,

"Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
In durren Blattern sauselt der Wind."

The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version
of Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the
good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by
reason of the direful host of rats which infested their town.
One day came a strange man in a bunting-suit, and offered for
five hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The
people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and piped,
and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackened
the face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and
followed the piper until he piped them to the river Weser,
where they alls jumped in and were drowned. But as soon as the
torment was gone, the townsfolk refused to pay the piper on
the ground that he was evidently a wizard. He went away,
vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, and
putting his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat
all the little, plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children
came merrily running after him, their parents standing aghast,
not knowing what to do, while he led them up a hill in the
neighbourhood. A door opened in the mountain-side, through
which he led them in, and they never were seen again; save one
lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before the
door shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he