Goethe often bathed at night in the Ilm. One beautiful summer night, when the moon shone full on the poetic swimmer, a countryman on his way to Upper-Weimar, wanted to make a short cut, by climbing over the gate of the castle’s bridge. Goethe saw him and in one of his mad moods, which set Weimar so often in commotion, he uttered the most unearthly yells and shrieks, while jumping up and down in the water. Those terrible sounds coming from a white figure with long, floating black hair, terrified the countryman so much, that he turned and fled as if possessed. Goethe’s Gallantry One evening Wieland was reading aloud to a large company, assembled at the country house of the Dowager Duchess Amelia of Tiefurth. The reigning Duke, who had been out hunting, came in during the reading, found the room too warm and opened one of the windows. Some ladies thinly clad sat close to it. Goethe observing that they suffered, tiptoed to the window and shut it softly. The Duke turning around, saw that some one had resisted his wish. “Who has shut the window, that I opened?” he asked the servants, but not one dared to mention the culprit. Goethe however, stepped forward and with an arch gravity said: “Your Highness has the power of life and death over all your subjects. Upon me let judgment and sentence be pronounced.” The Duke laughed, but the window was not opened again. Goethe or the Devil Of another evening’s reading, Falk von Muller relates: Goethe had come in, unnoticed by anybody, and sat down close to the reader, with his back turned to the audience. After a while he offered to read. At first everything went beautifully; then he began to extemporize and his exuberant spirits getting the better of him, he put everybody out of countenance in one way or another. In a little fable, in doggerel verses, he likened me wittily enough, to a worthy turkey-hen, that sits on a great heap of eggs of her own and other people’s, and hatches them with great patience, but to whom it sometimes happens to have a china egg put under her instead of a real one, a trick at which she takes no offense. “That is either Goethe or the devil,” cried I to Wieland, who sat opposite to me at the table. “Both,” replied he; “he has the devil in him again to-day and he is like a wanton colt, that flings out before and behind, and you do well not to go too near him.” Years after, we often laughed over that evening’s performance. Schiller’s Witty Reply When a youth, Schiller learned to play the harp. A neighbor who did not like him, said to him one day: “Herr Schiller, you play the harp like David, only not as well.” “And you,” Schiller replied, quickly, “talk like Solomon, only not so wisely.” Schiller’s Birthplace In a company the conversation turned to Schiller. One lady confessed she did not know where Schiller was born. “For goodness sake, keep still, don’t let anybody hear you,” said her friend; “have you not read the poem: ‘I, too, was born in Arcadia’?”