Victor sucked, with the feet of a green-frog, on every flower-leaf of joy,--at children, animals, village-Lupercalia, lessons; but dearest of all to him was Saturday. Then he made excursions through the glad unrest of the village, along by servant-men, hammering at their scythes, not to magnetize, but to sharpen them, and before the shop-door of the schoolmaster, at which his eye, like a Swiss, often stood for half an hour. For he could very well study the state of St. Luna's commerce in the little great-adventure-trade of the schoolmaster, who knew no smaller merchants' exchange than the one in his breeches' pocket. From this East India House he saw at a late hour people procuring the cheap pleasures of Sunday,--the wholesale dealer (the schoolmaster is meant), supported by his negro slaves, made the Sunday morning of St. Luna sweet with his syrup and hot with his coffee; and as well by the tobacco-culture of Germany was this tradesman enabled with spiral cables of pigtail to furnish the heads of the pipes, as through the silk culture the daughter's heads with Sabbath-streamers out of his Auerbach's court.... Our hero all knew. From every kennel a dog came wagging his tail to meet him to whom he had thrown in bread; from every window children screamed after him, whom he had bantered; and many boys, whom he passed, counted themselves happy if they had a cap on,--for then they could take it off before their master. For his first growing up in St. Luna was the history of St. Luna, which must have been drawn from the oral blue-books of the historic persons, and from the Imperial Postilion, the Parson's wife. This last, as a Mrs. Plutarch, always held up two characters, like pieces of cloth, side by side; and her husband read to him according to the best of his science and conscience upon the Church- and Reformation-history of his diocese. Victor devoted himself to this microcosmic world-history from two motives: first, in order--which is the object of professional students with the larger history--to dismiss it again clean from memory; secondly, in order to be as much at home in the village as the constable or the midwife, whence he hoped to derive the advantage of being grieved if a St. Lunite should die, and glad if he had previously married. Now the story strides forward again, from one day to another, as if on the stones of the stream of time.