This was more than Hans could bear. He was perfectly cast down, disheartened, and inconsolable. At first, he thought of running after the fellow; and, as he knew the scamp could not go far without a passport, and as Hans had gone the round of the country himself, in the three years of his _Wandel-Jahre_, as required by the worshipful guild of tailors, he did not doubt but that he should some day pounce upon the scoundrel. But then, in the mean time, who was to keep his trade together? There was the Hippopotamus watching opposite! No! it would not do! and his neighbor, coming in to condole with him, said--"Cheer up, man! there is nothing amiss yet. What signify a few dollars? You will soon get plenty more, with those nimble fingers of yours. You want only somebody to help you to keep them. You must get a wife! Journeymen were thieves from the first generation. You must get married!" "Get married!" thought Hans. He was struck all on a heap at the very mention of it "Get married! What! fine clothes to go a-wooing in, and fine presents to go a-wooing with; and parson's fees, and clerk's fees; and wedding-dinner, and dancing, and drinking; and then, doctor's fees, and nurse's fees, and children without end! That is ruin!" thought Hans--"without end!" The fifty dollars and the Bürgermeistership--they might wait till doomsday. "Well, that is good!" thought Hans, as he took a little more breath. "They first counseled me to get a light--then went house and all in a bonfire; next, I must get a journeyman--then went the money; and now they would have me bring more plagues upon me than Moses brought upon Egypt. Nay, nay!" thought Hans; "you'll not catch me there, neither." Hans all this time was seated upon his shop-board, stitching, at an amazing rate, upon a garment which the rascally Wagner should have finished to order at six o'clock that morning, instead of decamping with his money; and, ever and anon, so far forgetting his loss in what appeared to him the ludicrousness of this advice, as freely to laugh out. All that day, the idea continued to run in his head; the next, it had lost much of its freshness; the third, it appeared not so odd as awful; the fourth, he began to ask himself whether it might be quite so momentous as his imagination had painted it; the fifth, he really thought it was not so bad neither; the sixth, it had so worked round in his head, that it had fairly got on the other side, and appeared clearly to have its advantages--children did not come scampering into the world all at once, like a flock of lambs into a meadow--a wife might help to gather, as well as spend--might possibly bring something of her own--ay! a new idea!--would be a perpetual watch and storekeeper in his absence--might speak a word of comfort, in trouble when even his fiddle was dumb; on the seventh--he was off! Whither?