"Not worth reading?" said Albert; "we'll see that directly. Poets have no clear idea of their productions. Think for a moment that I had written these verses and felt impelled to read them to you? Listen! 'She loves me.' The beginning is as original as truthful. But you must admit that so old a subject cannot well be treated in a novel manner in our day. Albert read the two sonnets which he found in the paper clearly and intelligently, almost with a certain air of feeling. Oswald was grateful to him. He had been afraid the impudent fellow would have profaned his poems, which he only valued, after all, as true expressions of what he had really felt. He was glad to get off so cheap. "Do you never make verses?" he asked, taking the paper, and adding it to some others, which seemed likewise to contain poetry. "I?" said Mr. Timm, refreshing himself heartily from his glass, "Heaven save me! I am much too practical. Practical and poetical views of the world agree like cat and dog. When the little kitten Poetry mews in her tenderest tones, the dog Prose begins to bark furiously and the little enthusiast is silenced. Why would you, for instance, die instantly, 'if Fate should deny you such wondrous bliss?' That is as unpractical as it can be. Why should you poets anyways insist upon purposely spoiling all the little pleasure that is left us on this melancholy planet? But, to be sure, I talk as the blind man talks of colors. Perhaps you are, after all, better off in your home in the clouds than we on this dark earth, where one has to suffer much of corns and other earthly sensations which are unknown to you airy dwellers on high. I have often wished I had a decided talent for one or the other arts: poetry, music, operations on corns, painting, grimacing, sculpture, prestidigitation--anything, any notion, which might console me when the waves of life wash over my head. I remember I once saw a badger at a fair, who showed me what a blessing such a talent is in misfortune. All the other brutes, without talents, were running about like mad in their cages, or roared from hunger and rage, or at best resigned themselves to their fate in despair. But Master Badger, true to his artistic instinct, worked indefatigably at the imaginary den in his cage, scratching, scratching, all the time scratching, from morn till evening. This evidently made him forget hunger and cold, even his captivity; he found perfect happiness in the exercise of his talent, even under such desperately unfavorable circumstances. I wish I were a badger!--That Cognac is really capital! You ought to take a glass too, doctor, to drive away those clouds on your Apollo brow. When I was a boy people looked upon me as a marvel because I could imitate everything, precisely as the magpie whistles what others play. That boy will be a great genius, said the foolish people, whenever I astounded them by some _tour de force_ of my memory, which retained good things and bad things equally well.