As a poor assistant to a country clergyman with a narrow income and meagre table, morally becoming mouldy in the company of the scolding housekeeper, of the willingly fuddled clergyman, of a foolish young gentleman and the daughters of the house, who, with high shoulders and turned-in toes, went from morning to night paying visits, I felt a peculiarly strange emotion of tenderness and joy as one of my acquaintance informed me by writing, that my uncle, the Merchant P---in Stockholm, to me personally unknown, now lay dying, and in a paroxysm of kindred affection had inquired after his good-for-nothing nephew. With a flat, meagre little bundle, and a million of rich hopes, the grateful nephew now allowed himself to be shaken up hill and down hill, upon an uncommonly uncomfortable and stiff-necked peasant cart, and arrived, head-over-heels, in the capital. In the inn where I alighted, I ordered for myself a little--only a very little breakfast,--a trifle--a bit of bread-and-butter--a few eggs. The landlord and a fat gentleman walked up and down the saloon and chatted. "Nay, that I must say," said the fat gentleman, "this Merchant P--, who died the day before yesterday, he was a fine fellow." "Yes, yes," thought I; "aha, aha, a fellow, who had heaps of money! Hear you, my friend" (to the waiter), "could not you get me a bit of venison, or some other solid dish? Hear you, a cup of bouillon would not be amiss. Look after it, but quick!" "Yes," said mine host now, "it is strong! Thirty thousand dollars, and they banko! Nobody in the whole world could have dreamed of it--thirty thousand!" "Thirty thousand!" repeated I, in my exultant soul, "thirty thousand! Hear you, waiter! Make haste, give me here thirty then--; and give me here banko--no give me here a glass of wine, I mean;" and from head to heart there sang in me, amid the trumpet-beat of every pulse in alternating echoes, "Thirty thousand! Thirty thousand!" "Yes," continued the fat gentlemen, "and would you believe that in the mass of debts there are nine hundred dollars for credit and five thousand dollars for champagne. And now all his creditors stand there prettily and open their mouths; all the thing in the house are hardly worth two farthings; and out of the house they find, as the only indemnification--a calash!" "Aha, that is something quite different! Hear you, youth, waiter! Eh, come you here! take that meat, and the bouillon, and the wine away again; and hear you, observe well, that I have not eaten a morsel of all this. How could I, indeed; I, that ever since I opened my eyes this morning have done nothing else but eat (a horrible untruth!), and it just now occurs to me that it would therefore be unnecessary to pay money for such a superfluous feast." "But you have actually ordered it," replied the waiter, in a state of excitement.