By so much he overtops his younger brother Kurt, in a literal sense; and Kurt has definitively abandoned the idea of rivalling his senior, who has in so marked a degree the high slender stature of the Zehrens, and will evidently be even taller than his tall father. But Kurt has no cause to complain: he has the deep chest, the long powerful arms, and, under thick curly hair, the broad brow, of the workman. He is very modest and unpretending; but his look is singularly fixed and piercing, and his lips firmly compressed when he is pondering over a mathematical problem, or trying to learn some dexterous manipulation at the lathe, in which he always speedily succeeds. Kurt and I are great friends, and as nearly inseparable as possible; and yet to tell the honest truth, the twelve-year-old Oscar is my darling. He has the large luminous brown eyes of the Zehrens, which I used so to admire in my friend Arthur when he was a boy; he has Arthur's slender figure and graceful manners--I often seem to see in him Arthur again, as he looked fourteen years before. That ought not, really, to be any recommendation to me; but when he comes bounding to me, throwing back his long locks, and with joy and life sparkling in his great eyes, I cannot help spreading my arms to him. Often I ask myself if it really is this likeness which makes Oscar still keep his place as his sister's favorite. Paula, it is true, still says, as she used to say, that there is nothing of the sort; that Oscar is the youngest, and therefore needs her most, and the fact that he happens to have so decided a talent for painting and drawing, and so is peculiarly her pupil, is a mere chance, for which she is not responsible. Just so Paula spoke six years ago: I distinctly remember that summer afternoon when she made that large chalk-drawing of me under the plane-trees--as distinctly as if it had been but yesterday. And when I look at Paula, I cannot believe that I have known her for six years, and that she will be twenty next month. Then she looked older than she really was, while now she looks just as much younger. She is perhaps a very little taller, and her figure is fuller and more womanly, but in her sweet face is so much childlike innocence, and even her movements have still the bashfulness, sometimes almost awkwardness, of a very young girl. But when any one looks into her eyes, he cannot venture to take her for any other than she really is. These eyes do not blaze with bold fire; their glances are not shy or languishing like those of a boarding-school girl fresh from a secret reading of her favorite gilt-edged poet--they are luminous with a calm, steady, vestal fire, unmindful of the world, and yet compassing the world, as the artist's eye must beam.