"But just look at the people of this country," said he, after another uncomfortable pause. "One loves the copper kettle in which his mother has boiled sausages; another loves his broken pipe, his faded coat, and with these a thousand obsolete customs. Just look at the German emigrants! What a heap of rubbish they take away with them--old birdcages, worm-eaten furniture, and every kind of lumber! I once knew a fellow who took a journey of eight days merely to eat _sauer-kraut_. And when once a poor devil has squatted in an unhealthy district, and lived there a few years, he has spun such a web of sentimentalism about it that you can not stir him, even though he, his wife and children, should die there of fever. Commend me to what you call the insensibility of the Yankee. He works like two Germans, but he is not in love with his cottage or his gear. What he has is worth its equivalent in dollars, and no more. 'How low! how material!' you will say. Now, I like this. It has created a free and powerful state. If America had been peopled by Germans, they would be still drinking chicory instead of coffee, at whatever rate of duty the paternal governments of Europe liked to impose." "And you would require a woman to be thus minded?" asked Sabine. "In the main, yes," rejoined Fink. "Not a German housewife, wrapped up in her table-linen. The larger her stock, the happier she. I believe that they silently rate each other as we do men on 'Change--worth five hundred, worth eight hundred napkins. The American makes as good a wife as the German, but she would laugh at such notions. She has what she wants for present use, and buys more when the old set is worn out. Why should she fix her heart on what is so easily replaced?" "Oh, how dreary you make life!" rejoined Sabine. "Our possessions lose thus their dearest value. If you kill the imagination which lends its varied hues to lifeless things, what remains? Nothing but an egotism to which every thing is sacrificed! He who can thus coldly think may do great deeds perhaps, but his life will never be beautiful nor happy, nor a blessing to others;" and unconsciously she folded her hands and looked sadly at Fink, whose face wore a hard and disdainful expression. The silence was broken by Anton's cheerfully observing, "At all events, Fink's own practice is a striking refutation of his theory." "How so, sir?" asked Fink, looking round.