to bathe, I took my little daughter with me, & made her sit behind a screen, & while bathing, I used to call out an English word which she wrote down & then another & another, till I had taught her all the sounds of the English in several succeeding lessons." I was quite taken with the good natured talkativeness of the old man, & the fondness with which he dwelt on his knowledge of English. The same daughter of Wolf made, when she was but 14, an abridgement of Walker, in order to become sure of the pronunciation of each word; a vast undertaking for a girl, & so young a girl, rivalled only by the zeal which induced Schlözer to copy a Russian dictionary of some hundred octavo pages, at a time when it was impossible to purchase one.

December 22. I dined today with the late minister, the Baron von Humboldt. I admire his genius. I am astonished at his erudition. In my company were Professor Bekker and Dr. Schleiermacher. He conversed with them on Greek literature, and was as much at home in the Greek poets as they were, nay better. The Baron is well versed even [in] the poets of the latest ages, and is perfectly acquainted with Tryphiodorus, Nonnus and the like. In his manner too I found him very kind and obliging. He understands the art of talking and converses with ease, dignity and spirit. In his house everything is neat and elegant; yet nothing of waste or prodigality is to be seen. Noble economy governs in his family.

A family letter must be given in part to record the young New Englander's impression of the unfamiliar German Christmas.

BERLIN, December 31, 1820.

Christmas is kept in Germany as a most sacred and cheerful festival. On the eve preceding it, the general custom prevails of making presents to one another. All parents, be they poor or rich, have a Christmas gift for each of their children. The circumstances attending the evening donations are exceedingly moving. Mad. de Savigny had invited me to spend the evening at her house; and this gave me a chance of seeing the whole of this beautiful domestic scene. A little evergreen tree, the top or branch of fir, is always placed in the centre of the room, and hung full of little wax candles. This is done in every house -in the houses of the rich with great pro

fusion of lights. The tree is generally loaded with sweetmeats and gilt apples which glitter charmingly among the candles. The children are long beforehand full of the joy that awaits them at Christmas, and are perfectly happy at receiving these pleasing tokens of parental affection. No festival is looked forward to with such longing expectation, & none celebrated with such sincerity of joy. On reaching the house of Baron Savigny, I found the children assembled in the antechamber, and awaiting with uncertain expectation, the presents destined for them. The Parents were busy in arranging the tables, kindling the lights, and preparing all things in the saloon. At length the signal was given. The Baron rang the merry bell, and the folding doors were thrown open. A bright blaze of light burst upon our eyes. In the centre of a large table a large branch of fir, and two smaller ones on the right and left were fill'd with little tapers, the splendor of which inspired gladness in the hearts of children and men. A Geranium, on each side the large fir, with its perpetual freshness and fragrance, was another emblem of immortality. We all hastened into the apartment. First came the infant son; he found his presents spread on a table so low that he could reach them. The other children followed & rejoiced loudly at finding the very books, clothes, play things they had been long wishing for. The Parents had their good things too which their elder relations had sent them. I, too, found a plate loaded with good things for me-apples, almonds and sweetmeats. At length curiosity was satisfied, each had found his own treasures, and examined those of his neighbors. The tapers on the "Christ's tree" were extinguished, and the halls lit up as usual, and while the younger part of the company still continued amusing themselves with their newly acquired playthings, the older ones withdrew to the tea-table, and began an interesting conversation on the wise and good men whom Germany has produced in later years. Young Miss de Savigny gave us tea and inspired us with good nature by her own amiable cheerfulness. She seemed to be about as old as Lucretia. Baron Savigny himself is one of the most distinguished men in the world. He is universally acknowledged to be the first lawyer on the continent, his erudition is immense, his manners plain

and agreeable. His sister-in-law, Mrs. de Arnheim, entertained us with her wit and cultivated understanding, while Mad. de Savigny tempered all things by her gentleness and good nature.

ment to the peculiar tenets of the Church of England. Our dialogue continued for a long time, and we seemed to forget that dancing was going on all the while in the adjoining chamber. At last we were interrupted, & I joined the younger part of the

Jan. 2, 1821. The Germans celebrate the last evening in the year. Sylvester evening the members of each family collect together, unless in large companies, & pass the time in the merriest manner possible. Mme. Schleiermacher assured me that 'tis the pleasantest & gayest night in the whole year. They always remain together till the midnight hour has struck, & the new year has fairly entered. Then they bid it welcome, & continue their mirth till nature calls for repose.

I spent the evening at the Countess America Bernstorff's,* a lady whose virtues I so much admire. On entering, I found Sir George Roset there & family. We had a charming evening, all were so pleasant & willing to be happy. First a little discourse with the Countess, then a little dance, then a few words with the Count, whom I now for the first time saw, entertained me at first. Bye-&-bye I entered without knowing it into a most lively conversation with Sir George Rose on the state of religion & theological science in Germany. He had paid great attention to the subject. In our conclusions we united: namely, that the Germans united the most foolish credulity with the most audacious scepticism. Sir Geo. spoke to me of his own habits in his family. He assured [me] that after breakfast he assembles his household & the Chaplain reads the short prayers. Then he himself reads to them a chapter from the Old & a chapter from the New Testament. These he explains, too; & if any points need a learned commentary, he calls on the Chaplain for his exposition. "For", said he, "I think it the highest duty & it ought to be the greatest delight of parents to teach religion to their children. None but the parents should give a child its first ideas of God & of christianity." I was much delighted with Sir George's zeal & religious spirit, tho' grieved at his too strict attach*Daughter of Gen. Riedesel, commander of Brunswick troops in the American Revolution. She was born, 1780, in New York; hence the name America.

†British Minister at Berlin.

a walz. I felt a desire to dance & ventured

to do so. I got through the walz for the first time in my life in a correct & easy manner. Then followed the Cotillon, which is a very long but very amusing dance. This too I ventured to dance for the first time. All things went off pleasantly, & all seemed happy. The dance ended; the doors were thrown open, & behold the tables spread for supper. A frugal but excellent & even elegant repast crowned the pleasures of the evening.

To Dr. Kirkland.

BERLIN, February 1, 1821. The privy counsellor, Wolf, is a genius of the first order; one of the few great men whom it has been my lot to meet with in Germany. Hated by his countrymen, he consoles himself with the consciousness of being the most learned man on the Continent. He has a fondness for the ancient languages, & is alive to the beauties of their literature. Indeed he lives in antiquity, & is in many respects a Roman & no Christian. His merits in illustrating ancient manners & authors, above all the Homeric songs, are universally [paper torn]. He is great in translating too; & where hundreds have contended for the prize, Wolf has excelled them all in turning the old bards into German. Voss had translated Homer in hexameters, giving line for line; Wolf made fragments of a version where he has given syllable for syllable, foot for foot, yea cesura for cesura. The whole herd of translators are defied & dared to attempt the like. Wolf's Latin style is purer than that of any living scholar; and his version of "The Clouds" in the measure of the original proves that no philologian can manage German so artfully as he. Therefore when I see Wolf, I know not which most to admire his high and uncommon mental powers or his vast erudition. But Wolf has neither dignity of character, nor purity of morals. He is stubbornly vain, childish, & licencious. He loves

sweetmeats like an infant, & knows better almost than anybody else in Berlin where the best cake is to be had, & at what o'clock it comes warm from the oven. He is now the laziest man, whom I have ever seen; rising after daylight,,& going to bed at nine. Even this does not content him; but in the evening he is to be found stretched out on his sopha in a dull, stupid, sleepy lethargy. He is more fond of talking about prostitutes, confectioners, cakes and good eating than of instructing by conversing seriously. Two hours before dinner are spent in walking to

get an appetite; sometimes three. Two hours again pass away at dinner. Who can study immediately after eating a great deal? As soon as the stomach is somewhat relieved 'tis time to go to bed. So passes the old age of a man, who might be one of the most honoured in the world. He makes often very excellent observations, but they are rather recollections of what he once thought, than new ideas, & he talks of his learning, as of something, that was, & the identity of which he no longer feels with his present self.

VERYBODY in the housein all the world it seemed was sleeping, but the Vandalia Miler sat up in bed, staring with dry, wide-open eyes at the wall. The dormer room, tucked up under the roof, was stuffy and close and smelled of heat and wall-paper and rag-carpet. Through the little window, from the trees and grass outside, came the steady whirring of the treetoads and crickets. Suddenly the stillness was broken and the campus clock tolled two. As the harsh note grated on his nerves his heart gave a thump and he threw himself back and buried his face in the hot pillow. It seemed as though he must shut out the world and forget. But he couldn't forget, and you can shut out the world with a pillow-only so long as you can hold your breath. He slipped over the edge of the bed-that ridiculous, high, hot feather-bed --and with his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, blinked at the little windows and the patch of moonlight on the floor where the Other Man lay sleeping. And as he watched him, snoring there comfortably in his sleep, his own secret returned again and bit into him, as it had returned so many times that day and night, and all the disappointment and bitterness and despair

of it. And he felt that life had tricked him, cut him off in the flower of his youth and put him on the outside, and he was an outcast with his hand raised against the world.

When they had arrived that night, with a lot of the other teams that had come down for the interscholastics, and had been assigned to that one remaining vacant room, the Other Man had told him to go ahead and take the bed, because, as he explained, a miler needed all the sleep he could get, whereas a bit of wakefulness the night before the games only served to put an edge on a sprinter's nerves. "It'll make me start quicker," said he, spreading a blanket on the floor. That was just like the luck of the Other Man-to give up something and after all to get it back again. And the Vandalia Miler blinked at him, and thought and thought, and wondered whether the Other Man would make the 'varsity in his freshman year. For the Other Man was going away to college and the Vandalia Miler couldn't go. That was his secret, which had been his for only a day, and which he was somehow too proud to tell. That was why he believed that he was an outcast, a pariah-why a shivery abyss yawned between these two old friends, though you might have thought that it was but a yard or two of rag carpet that sepa

rated him, sitting there on the edge of the bed, from the Other Man, sleeping in his blanket on the floor. They had grown up in Vandalia, in that little prairie town, from the beginning; gone swimming together and skated and rung door-bells, gone through the grammar-school and into the high-school, and then, when most of the town boys were dropping out to go to work and the ones who were going to college went away to prep. school, they had decided to stick by the ship. They would stick by their town as long as they could, but when they had to leave they were going, not to one of the State universities, not to Chicago, but down into the distant and glittering East. One didn't go down East to college from the Vandalia High-School. They were about the only men left in the class after their sophomore year; the rest were girls-the girls they had grown up with and written notes to and divided their apples and candy with, back in the kid days. Once there had been a cane-rush-somebody had read about one in a book—and two legs and an arm were broken and one boy nearly killed. The girls were ordered to keep out. They jumped in, carried water, bandaged black eyes with their handkerchiefs, freshman girls untied the freshmen as fast as the

sophomores tied them up-that's the sort of girls they were. And he and the Other Man were the only men in the class and going down East to college afterward. Probably you do not understand just what that meant. You may know, perhaps, some little high church prep. school, built on the top of a hill like a robber baron's castle, where there are just about enough men to make up the teams if each man plays on all of them, and the man who is captain of the eleven is generally captain of the nine and the track team and leads the banjo club. If you were chosen captain of the eleven in your freshman year, you would, of course, be a much greater man than the President. But you wouldn't have a lot of good-fellow girls to watch you and to tell you so. And the Vandalia Miler had both-he and the Other Man.

They pounded out the only decent eleven the school had ever had and a nine and a paper, and all the rest of it, and divided everything-just as though it was a Trust. One of them would write the editorials calling down the faculty and the other would preside at the mass meetings; he would lead the mandolin club, with about six yards of satin ribbon which one of the girls had given him tied to his mandolin to show that he

was leader, and the Other Man would lead the glee club and sing all the tenor solos. And at last, in their senior year, they got up a track team. It was the last chance they had—after June the deluge. They sent to Chicago for real running clothes and spiked shoes-it had been sneakers and trousers cut off at the knees before that in Vandalia -and taught the school a brand new cheer. The merchants put up the money to send the team down to Pardeeville, and the night before they left there was a mass-meeting and a dance and speeches. The Vandalia Miler, blinking at the torn mosquito-bar that covered the little window, smiled grimly as he thought of that speech-of that droll school orator of theirs, older than the rest of them, with his high forehead and Henry Clay scalp lock, and his arms outspread and his voice in his boots: "With every heart in Vandalia beating for you, every eye turned down the prairie toward the South, you go-to run for Vandalia, to win for Vandalia, and if not to win, to fight to the last ditch for the purple 'V' upon your breasts!" And he and the Other Man had gone home together on air, and told each other how they were going to make the team when they got down to college and show those effete Easterners what it meant to meet a real man and—and there was a light in the library window when he got home, past midnight though it was, and his father was in there locked up with his lawyer. Something had happened. It wouldn't be announced for a day or two yet, but everything had gone to smash, and it meant that the Vandalia Miler must stay behind and go to work in the hardware store. That's where they had arrived at last, though his father would have had him go on just as he had planned. He didn't sleep much that night, and he had gone down to the train the next day as late as he could and slipped on when nobody would see him, while the girls were singing and waving flags from the station platform and the rest of the men were leaning out of the windows and laughing and waving their hats. And here he was where he had longed to be-sent down on the team to run for his school and his town, and it all seemed like something in a pantomime, outside of him and far away, unreal and part of a horrid dream. But he had to run. It came back just as it did every minute or two, like a quick pain.

He went hot all over. Those others, who were going to fight it out with him, were all sleeping now, just like the Other Man. He must hang on to himself-get some sleep. He gritted his teeth, squeezed his fists, and told himself that after all they were kids and he was now a real man. There are a number of things-he would begin very sternly-more important than going to college, and a 'varsity initial won't help you much before a judge and jury or patch up anybody's broken bones or tell how the market's going, but-and here he slipped and raced away again—but no more will a Victoria Cross nor a rag from the captured colors. And just as long-just as long as there are men in the world with hearts under their coats and blood in their veins there'll be somebody to work the last gun. and to head the forlorn hope and fling a life away for a smile or a cheer or a bit of ribbon. And it doesn't make any difference whether he's got on a cuirassier's breast-plate or football canvas, a running suit or khaki. And when the others are ready to go and the band begins to play, it isn't any fun to be left behind and- He got sorrier and sorrier for himself, which is a very, very bad thing for a very young man to do, until at last he flung himself back on the bed, and with his head full of charging cavalry, photographs of 'varsity teams, batteries galloping into action, and lonely outcasts left behind, he finally dropped asleep, just as the night was graying and the birds were beginning to chirp in the trees outside. For just a minute he forgot, and then somebody shook him and he saw the Other Man was standing over him, fresh as paint.

"Gee, man!" he laughed; "you look dead as a smelt! Don't mean to say you stayed awake with all that bed to range about in!”

"Oh, no," said the Vandalia Miler; "I slept all right."

He ran very well in spite of everything. Had he had a bit more experience in racing, he would have tried sooner to get within striking distance of the leaders. As it was, coming round the upper turn into the stretch, he sprinted past the fifth and fourth men and lost his feet and fell, completely run out, just as he was being beaten for third place about seven feet short of the tape. It was one of those races of which the spectator always may remark that if the man had had