The old lady laughed heartily as she looked down on the garden at Gürlitz. "Well," she cried, scattering her golden laughter over plants and bushes, "one sees queer things sometimes in this stupid old world! A neat white figure used to stand there, which by my help enabled those poor hungry children of men to know the exact time to eat their dinner, and now a fat, awkward looking fellow has taken its place, he has green-checked trousers on, and there is a pipe in his mouth. Nothing is done so foolishly anywhere else as in the world!" And with that she laughed merrily over the new squire, Mr. Pomuchelskopp, who was standing like a sun-dial, dressed in a yellow nankin-coat, and green-checked trousers, in the same place where the graceful heathen god Apollo used to be, except that while the god had a lyre in his hand, he was provided with a short pipe. The sun's face clouded over now and then when she saw her old friend, who, for so many years, had noted her doings faithfully, lying neglected among the rankgrass and nettles.--And then she began to laugh again. Pomuchelskopp laughed too. There was no smile to be seen on his face, but when stretching himself up as high as his short stature would allow, he gazed around him, his heart rejoiced and cried: "It is all mine! All mine!" He did not see the sun-beams which gilded the earth, these made no impression on him; but the sun-beam within him, which was caused by nothing better than pounds, shillings, and pence, lighted up his heart, though it did not show in his face. Before an expression of amusement could be seen there something very humorous must take place, and matter to call it forth was not wanting. His two youngest children, Tony and Phil, had come out into the garden, and Phil had made himself a rod of docken and nettle-stalks, with which he beat the statue of the fallen god, and that made father Pomuchelskopp laugh most heartily, and Tony ran into the kitchen and got a bit of charcoal, and was just going to give him a moustache, when his father stopped him, and said: "Tony, don't do that, you may spoil it, and perhaps we may sell it, Tony. But you may thrash it as much as you like."--And so they beat the statue with their stinging rods, and father Pomuchelskopp laughed till he shook in his green-checked trousers.