can and the painted flower vase. For long such a dainty little mortar had been her special desire, and the attentive mechanician was therefore extremely welcome when he appeared one afternoon on her birthday and likewise brought along something to put the mortar to its legitimate use: a boxful of cinnamon, lump sugar, cloves and pepper. The mortar itself he hung, before entering at the door, by one of its handles to his little finger, and with the pestle he started a gay tinkling, just like a bell, so that out of the adventure grew a jolly day of festivity. However, shortly afterwards the false scoundrel fled from the district, and was never heard of more. Besides that, his master even demanded the return of the mortar, since the fugitive had taken it from his shop, but had forgotten to pay for it. But Zues did not deliver up this valuable object. On the contrary, she went to law for its undisputed possession, and in court she defended her claim valiantly, basing her rights on the fact that she had washed, starched and ironed a set of "dickies" for the vanished lover. Those days, the days when she was forced to defend her rights to the mortar in open court, were the most conspicuous and painful of her whole life, since she with her deep feelings felt these things and more particularly her appearance in court for the sake of such delicate affairs much more keenly than others of a lighter disposition would have done. All the same she scored a victory and kept her mortar. If, however, this neat soap gallery proclaimed her exact working tactics and her passion for toil, a row of books, arranged in orderly fashion on the window ledge, did honor to her religious and disciplined mind. These books were of a miscellaneous description, and she read and reread them studiously on Sundays. She still possessed all her school books, never having lost a single one of them. She also still carried in her head all her little stock of scholastic learning acquired at school; she knew the whole catechism by heart, as well as the contents of the grammar, of the arithmetic, of her geography book, of the collection of biblical stories, and of the various readers and spellers. Then she also owned some of the pretty tales by Christoph Schmid and the latter's short novelettes, with handsome verses at the end, at least a half dozen of sundry treasuries of poetry and gatherings of popular fairy tales, a number of almanacs full of specimens of homely wisdom and practical experience, several precise and remarkable prophecies of tremendous events to come, a guide for laying the cards, a book of edification for every day of the year intended for the use of thoughtful virgins, and an old and slightly damaged copy of Schiller's "The Robbers," which she slowly perused again and again, as often as she feared she might begin to forget this stirring drama. And each time she read it, the play appealed to her sentimental heart anew, so that she made constant references to it and