Her choice was usually judicious; she omitted the ghosts and
goblins that would have haunted our dreams; although I was now
and then visited by a nightmare-consciousness of being a
bewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such as
turning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or else
lose my head. But she blended the humorous with the romantic in
her selections, so that we usually dropped to sleep in good
spirits, if not with a laugh.

That old story of the fisherman who had done the "Man of the Sea"
a favor, and was to be rewarded by having his wish granted, she
told in so quaintly realistic a way that I thought it might all
have happened on one of the islands out in Massachusetts Bay.
The fisherman was foolish enough, it seemed, to let his wife do
all his wishing for him; and she, unsatisfied still, though she
had been made first an immensely rich woman, and then a great
queen, at last sent her husband to ask that they two might be
made rulers over the sun, moon, and stars.

As my sister went on with the story, I could see the waves grow
black, and could hear the wind mutter and growl, while the
fisherman called for the first, second, and then reluctantly, for
the third time:--

"O Man of the Sea,
Come listen to me!
For Alice my wife,
The plague of my life,
Has sent me to beg a boon of thee!"