From Wilhelm Street, where Chodowiecki lived, to the tilt-yard, was not far, and Goethe soon reached the old, antiquated house where the poetess lived. After many questionings and inquiries at the lower stories and more splendid apartments of the house, he found the abode of the poetess, and climbed up the steep stairs to the slanting attic-room. The dim light of a small window permitted Goethe to read upon a gray piece of paper, pasted upon the door, ‘Anna Louisa Karsch, German poetess.’ He knocked modestly at the door at first, then louder, and as the voices within never ceased for a moment their animated conversation, he opened it, and entered the obscure room. “I will do it, sir,” said the little woman sitting in the window-niche near a table to a young man standing near her. “I will do it, though I must tell you album writing is very common. But you must promise me to return here, and let me see what Herr Rammler writes, and tell me what he says about me. These are my conditions.” “Frau Karschin, I promise you, upon the word of honor of a German youth, who can never lower himself to break his word.” “Very well! then I will write.” There was perfect silence. The youth watched the little, dry hand which guided the pen, with a devotional mien, and Goethe with eager curiosity, who, unobserved, stood like a suppliant at the door of the obscure little room, the shabby furniture of which betrayed the narrow circumstances of the German poetess. It harmonized with the occupant, a little, bony, meagre figure, wearing a tight-fitting blue-flowered chintz dress. Upon the gray hair, which, parted in the middle, encircled the low forehead, was a cap, which had lost its whiteness and was, therefore, more in harmony with the ruff about her yellow, thin neck. Her sharp, angular features were redeemed by large, dark eyes, flashing with marvellous brilliancy from under the thick, gray eyebrows, and with quick, penetrating glances she sometimes turned them to the ceiling thoughtfully as she wrote. “There, sir, is my poem,” said she, laying down the pen. “Listen: ‘Govern your will; If it hinders duty, It fetters virtue; Then envy beguiles Into fault-finding.’” “Oh, how beautiful, cried the young man, enraptured. “I thank you a thousand times for those glorious words, and they shall henceforth be the guiding star of my existence.” “Go to Professor Rammler, and: then return and show me what he writes, for I am convinced--. Oh, Heavens! there is a stranger,” she cried, as she discovered Goethe, who had remained standing by the door. “Yes, a stranger,” said Goethe, smiling, and approaching, as the happy possessor of the album withdrew--“a stranger would not leave Berlin without visiting the German poetess.” “And without verses in your album; is it not so? I have become the fashion, and if I could only live by immortalizing myself in your albums, I should be free from care. Now I have divined it--you wish an autograph?”