A Secretary of State, a Peace-Treaty writer, a Notary, any such incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how far he is beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look at my Fixlein) lays himself heartily over the paper,--injects the venous system of his sermon-preparation with colored ink,--has a Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concordance on the left; is there digging out a marrowy sentence, here clipping off a song-blossom, with both to garnish his homiletic pastry;--sketches out the finest plan of operations, not, like a man of the world, to subdue the heart of one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and of their husbands to boot; draws every peasant passing by his window into some niche of his discourse, to co-operate with the result;--and, finally, scoops out the butter of the smooth, soft hymn-book, and therewith exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to feed five thousand men.---- At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the desk, he can rise with heart free from guilt; and, amid twittering sparrows and finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parsonage, look toward the west, till there is nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the clouds. And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening prayer-bell, _slowly_ descends the stair to his cooking mother, there must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever has been done or baked, or served up in the lower regions, is not right and good.... A bound, after supper, into the Castle; a look into a pure loving eye; a word without falseness to a bride without falseness; and then under the coverlet, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but Paradise, a sermon, and evening prayer.... I swear, with this I will satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his Heaven, and is seeking a new one among us here below! Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death will soon dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is gathering into his heart? I see not how. At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed being, after such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance, could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty-one-thousand prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself.