The umbrella makers and the overshoes manufacturers were happy at the start, but it was not long before the smile froze upon even their lips. People do not know what importance fair weather has for them until they are for once compelled to do without it. The gay became melancholy. The melancholy became mad and hanged themselves in long rows or assembled to hold prayer-meetings. Soon no one worked any more, and the need became great. Crime increased in a dizzying scale; the prisons were overcrowded, the madhouses afforded room for only the clever. The number of the living decreased, and their dwellings stood deserted. They instituted capital punishment for suicide; nothing did any good. Mankind, who for so many generations had dreamed and poetized about an eternal spring, now went to meet their last days through an eternal autumn. Day by day the destruction went on. Countrysides were laid waste, cities fell in ruins. Dogs gathered in the squares and howled; but in the alleys an old lame man went about from house to house with a sack on his back and collected souls. And every evening he limped home with his sack full. But one evening he did not limp home. He went instead to the gate of heaven and straight on to the good God’s throne. There he stood still, bowed, and said: “Lord, Thou hast aged in these latter days. We have both of us aged, and it is for that reason we are so dull. Ah! Lord, that was bad advice I gave Thee. The sins that interest me need a bit of sunlight once in a while in order to flourish. Look here! you’ve made me into a miserable rubbish-gatherer.” With these words he flung his dirty sack so violently against the steps of the throne that the cord broke and the souls fluttered out. They were not black, but gray. “That’s the last of the human souls,” said the Devil. “I give them to Thee, Lord. But beware of using them, if Thou intendest to create a new world!” * * * * * The wind whistles in the window chinks, the rain purls in the rain-spouts, and the story is done. He who has not understood it may console himself with the thought that it will be fair weather tomorrow. THE DRAWING IN INDIA INK One day in April many years ago, in the time when I still wondered about the meaning of life, I went into a little cigar booth on a back street to buy a cigar. I selected a dark and angular El Zelo, stuffed it into my case, paid for it, and made ready to go. But at that moment it occurred to me to show the young girl who stood in the booth, and of whom I used often to buy my cigars, a little sketch in India ink, which I happened to have lying in a portfolio. I had got it from a young artist, and to my thinking it was very fine. “Look here,” said I, handing it to her. “What do you think of that?” She took it in her hand with interested curiosity and looked at it very long and closely. She turned it in various directions, and her face took on an expression of strained mental activity.