[The night before last I had taken him down into the work-shop, and told the men to stop their clatter for awhile, and hear something to do them good—none of your Latin mumbling, but a godly history in their mother-tongue. And then did my friend tell them the Legend of Saint Dorothea, with such a simple tenderness that my rough fellows stood like statues till he had done. I saw a tear run down Hans’ sooty face, making a white channel over his cheek. He would have it afterwards that some dust had blown into his eye.] ‘My good friend,’ said Hermann, ‘I am a dozen years at least older than you; let me counsel you not to set light by your gift, and let it lie unused. Had I that same scrivening art at my service, I should write me a book setting forth what I heard and observed while it was fresh in my mind. I know many good men who would hold such a book, written by a God-fearing man, as great treasure. They would keep it with care and hand it down to those who came after them, so that the writer thereof should be thought on when his hand was cold. I have it in my thoughts to dictate one day or other to some cunning scribe, some of the legends I so love. Haply they may not be the worse for their passage through the mind of a plain man with a loving heart, who has carried them about with him whithersoever he went, lived in them and grown one with them. But you can do much more if you list. I know, moreover, that you, Adolf, are not the man to turn away from your father’s old friends because the great ones despise and daily vex them.’ This evening I do herewith begin to act on the resolution his words awakened. I am but a layman, and so is he, but for that matter I have hearkened to teachers who tell me that the layman may be nearer to heaven than the clerk, and that all such outer differences are of small account in the eye of God. * * * * *