Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/126

 generation. The inhabitants of the surrounding districts, who knew not the spirit’s spirit-name, thence derived a soubriquet for their Gnome neighbour, and have ever since designated him Rubenzahl, or more briefly, Rubezahl (the Turnip-counter). 

OTHER EARTH has at all times been the refuge of disappointed love, the safe and quiet retreat to which those unlucky children of Adam, whose amorous hopes and wishes have been frustrated, have ever made their way by cord, or steel, or poison, or lead, or consumption, or some other disagreeable medium. But spirits can go below without any such preliminary process; and, moreover, enjoy the valuable privilege of re-visiting the upper world at pleasure, whenever their passion has ceased to torment them; whereas poor mortals, who have once taken the downward path, who have once experienced the facilis descensus, find it not only not easy, but impossible, to return. The distressed Gnome had quitted the sublunary world with the determination of never more beholding the light of the sun; but the soothing influence of time, by slow degrees, wore