[Footnote A: I confess my inability to translate this word: it may
mean "flinders."--TRANSLATOR.]




LXXIX.


"I should like to climb up you, if you don't mind," cried an ivy to a
young oak.

"Oh, certainly; come along," was the cheerful assent.

So she started up, and finding she could grow faster than he, she
wound round and round him until she had passed up all the line she
had. The oak, however, continued to grow, and as she could not
disengage her coils, she was just lifted out by the root. So that ends
the oak-and-ivy business, and removes a powerful temptation from the
path of the young writer.




LXXX.


A merchant of Cairo gave a grand feast. In the midst of the revelry,
the great doors of the dining-hall were pushed open from the outside,