"If such a thing should be necessary," he said, "the press might very well get leave of absence on private affairs, until _we_ get through the smoothing-press, oiling-press, and napkin-press of destiny, and come out all smooth and beautiful ourselves, and can stick the napkins into our button-holes on their return." His first intention had even been to reverse the order of the funeral procession, and put the press in the van of it as _avant-courier_ of the napkins, and in that event he would only have had to invert his syllogism (as well as his procession) in this way: "I don't see what we can do with the napkins, or how we're to press them and keep them smooth, till we get the press home again." I am most firmly convinced that the majority of people would have done as Lenette did with reference to my trade-consul Siebenkæs, and his Hanseatic confederation with everybody who dealt in anything--that is, clasped her hands above her head, and said, "Oh! the thoughtless, silly creature! he'll soon be a beggar at this rate: the beautiful furniture!" Firmian's constant answer was-- "You would have me kneel down and howl, and tear my coat in lamentation, like a Jew--my coat, which is torn already and pull my hair out by the roots--that hair, which terror frequently causes to fall off in a single night. Isn't it enough if _you_ do the howling? Are you not my appointed _præfica_ and keening-woman? Wife, I swear to you, and that as solemnly as if I were standing on pig's bristles,[47] that if it is the will of God, who has given me so light and merry a heart--if it be His will that I am to go about the town with eight thousand holes in my coat, and without a sole to either shoe or stocking that I am to go on always getting poorer and poorer" (here his eyes grew moist in spite of him, and his voice faltered), "may the devil take me and lash me to death with the tuft of his tail if I leave off laughing and singing; and anybody who pities me, I tell him to his face, is an ass. Good heavens! the apostles, and Diogenes, and Epictetus, and Socrates, had seldom a whole coat to their backs--never such a thing as a shirt--and shall a creature such as I let a hair of him turn grey for such a reason, in miserable PROVINCIALISTIC times such as these?"