It's true that I've built myself a new house ...."--"Of logwood," cried the shoemaker.--"Of logwood," shouted a dozen voices.--"No," cried the dyer, "of pine, with oaken posts."--"Of logwood!" was shouted again by the assembly.--"For my part, gentlemen," exclaimed the dyer beating his breast with his blue hand and drawing himself up to his full height, "I'm a Rahnstädt citizen and that's all that I've got to say."--"And it's quite enough," cried a number of voices.--"Then you're a very good thing," said some of the labourers, "down with the slow coach, we know all that he has to say." So John "For my part" had to come down from the speaker's desk. Kurz was the next to address the meeting: "Fellow citizens," he said, "we came here to talk of poverty and the honourable gentleman who spoke last told us about indigo instead. It's enough to bring down a judgment upon him! How can we tradesmen be expected to pay our taxes when every dyer imports his own indigo. Now the honourable gentleman who spoke last does this in order that no one may guess how much logwood he adds to the tub of indigo! He takes care to keep his trumps out of sight."--"You always peep at the cards," cried some one behind him; he stared Bräsig full in the face, and then went on as if nothing had been said to interrupt him: "If he chose he might buy his indigo from me at a much lower price than he can get it in Rostock. But, gentlemen, our subject is poverty. If matters remain as they are we shall soon all be poor."--"He's right there, lad," said Deichert to Jack Bank.--"Fellow citizens," continued Kurz, "I bought myself a carriage and horses to send about the country side with my wares, for I must neglect no possible mode of turning an honest penny in these hard times."--"These small profits don't seem likely to come any more," said Fred Sievert, the driver.--"But," Kurz went on, "they took possession of my carriage last year at Tetterow."--"Because you didn't pay the tax," interrupted Fred Sievert.--Kurz cared nothing for such a small matter as an interruption, for he had once been turned out of the meeting and had come back again at another time, so he went on: "The mayor sent for me and asked me, what van I employed to carry my wares.--'My own van,' I answered.--'Then you do it per se,' he said.--'No,' I said, 'not per sea; Rahnstädt isn't a sea port town; per van.'--'Oh, I was talking Latin,' he said with a laugh."--"Fellow citizens, what is the world coming to when our judges begin to talk Latin? When our horses and carriages are put under arrest? That's the way to become poor! How are we trades-people to carry on business when we make such very small profits on coffee, sugar, tobacco and snuff as we now do?"--"You'd better hold your tongue about your confounded snuff," interposed Deichert, "it gave me such a swelled nose," and he covered his nose with his hand, but did not make much by that action, for everyone laughed when they saw that it stretched out beyond his