One day a couple of street boys lay grubbing in the gutter, where they sometimes found old nails, farthings, and similar treasures.  It was dirty work, but they took great delight in it.

“Oh!” cried one, who had pricked himself with the Darning-Needle.  “There’s a fellow for you.”

“I’m not a fellow, I’m a young lady,” said the Darning-Needle.

But nobody listened to her.  The sealing wax had come off, and she had turned black; but black makes one look slender, and she thought herself finer even than before.

“Here comes an eggshell sailing along,” said the boys; and they stuck the Darning-Needle fast into the eggshell.

“White walls, and black myself! that looks well,” remarked the Darning-Needle.  “Now one can see me.  I only hope I shall not be seasick!” But she was not seasick at all.  “One is proof against seasickness if one has a steel stomach and does not forget that one is a little more than an ordinary person!  The finer one is, the more one can bear.”

“Crack!” went the eggshell, for a hand-barrow went over her.

“How it crushes one!” said the Darning-Needle.  “I’m getting seasick now —­I’m quite sick.”

But she was not really sick, though the hand-barrow had run over her; she lay there at full length, and there she may lie.

THE POTATO

By Thomas Moore

 I’m a careless potato, and care not a pin
     How into existence I came;
 If they planted me drill-wise, or dibbled me in,
     To me ’tis exactly the same. 
 The bean and the pea may more loftily tower,
     But I care not a button for them;
 Defiance I nod with my beautiful flower
     When the earth is hoed up to my stem.

THE QUEEN OF THE UNDER-WORLD

Ceres, goddess of agriculture, had one daughter, named Proserpina, whom she loved more than anything else in earth or sky.  Sometimes Proserpina accompanied her mother as she journeyed over the earth in her dragon-car, making the corn grow; sometimes she traveled about the earth by herself, tending the flowers, which were her special care; but what she liked best was to stray with her companions, the nymphs, on the slopes of Mount AEtna,

                         “I, a maiden, dwelt
 With loved Demeter[FN below] on the sunny plains
 Of our own Sicily.  There, day by day,
 I sported with my playmate goddesses
 In virgin freedom.  Budding age made gay
 Our lightsome feet, and on the flowery slopes
 We wandered daily, gathering flowers to weave
 In careless garlands for our locks, and passed
 The days in innocent gladness.”

[Footnote:  The Greeks and Romans, while they believed in many of the same gods, had different names for them.  The Latin names are the ones most commonly used.  Thus the goddess whom the Romans called Ceres, the Greeks knew as Demeter, while her daughter, Proserpina, was by the Greeks called Persephone.  The poetic quotations used in this story are from the Epic of Hades, by Lewis Morris.]