CHAPTER II.
THE HISTORY OF THE BALL; WITH THE STORY OF THE POOR OLD WIDOW WHO MADE IT.
f I were not of a very lively character," remarked the Ball, "I should feel rather shy at making my first appearance as a story teller. But you know all people of my giddy habits are not much given to serious consideration. We make a bold spring and bound down into the middle of a matter, while all the graver folks are nervously trembling on the very brink. And so, instead of beginning at the very first chapter of my story, and telling you that I first grew on an animal's back as skin, and was then turned into leather, I will skip the dry part of my history, and begin with some of my later impressions."
"Now," said the Humming-top, gravely, "I think I must rather protest against this summary way of disposing of some of the most interestin facts respecting your origin. I should like to know a little more about you, my dear friend. Pray indulge us with all the particulars of your early years: your first recollections."
"I had thought," said the Ball, modestly, "that all these minute facts could hardly be very interesting, and I have a great fear of tiring out your attention, and of being called prosy," added he, slily.
"That is impossible," answered the Humming-top, in a pompous manner; "let me beg of you to relieve our curiosity. I am sure I may speak for all the rest of our friends," said he, with a very solemn bow to each member of the party. The Toys, only too ready to enjoy the least variation of their long retired life, eagerly agreed, and the Ball resumed his story:—
"I am afraid I am not very clever at giving accurate descriptions of things in which I don't take much interest, and as you may suppose my real life only begun when all my several portions were collected together. I am composed, as you see, of several sections, each of the same size and shape, but all varying in colour and material. This quarter of me is composed of two portions of a pale, tawny leather; and this grew on the back of a fine robust young lamb, who frisked away his brief life on a sunny pasture in Denmark. He formed one of the members of a huge flock of sheep, belonging to a well-to-do farmer, whose riches in herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were accumulating for the dowry of his only child Mari. She was the best dowered maiden for fifty miles round, and though young in her teens, made the yellowest butter and firmest cheese for three villages round. Her father was a thrifty, enterprising man, who was especially successful in rearing fine lambs; thereby giving his old bachelor brother the tanner, plenty of employment in dressing the hides and fleeces, thus keeping "two mills going at once," as he said. The old tanner had a trade secret of his own for curing the skins in some peculiar way with the bark of the willows that grew so plentifully on the borders of the stream that ran through his tan yards. No one's hides sold so readily as old Johann Nilson's, or fetched so good a price in the market. They were entirely reserved for making gloves, and exported to England for that purpose.
"The next two sections of my figure are, as you see, of a bright scarlet colour; and, like those two on the opposite side, which are of a rich dark blue, are made of morocco leather. This is made from the skin of Spanish goats, carefully tanned with oak bark, and then dyed on the grain side. The crimson portion owes its hue to being steeped in a bath with the little cochineal insect; and the blue to indigo. It is then curried and glazed till it becomes as shining and smooth as you see it.