The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and honey; here, in the morning coolness, we are all gathered; we maintain popular conversation, that so the parsoness and the gardeneress may be able to take share in it. The morning service in the church, where often the whole people[62] are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell is sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden; and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table. Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket; and I have only to look and abstract from his what can be of use In my own.--Strange enough! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really did not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very grove-table of which I speak, and writing all this.-- My gossip in the mean time is also laboring for the world. His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe. A man who is making a book will scarcely hang himself; all rich lords'-sons, therefore, should labor for the press; for, in that case, when you awake too early in bed, you have always a _plan_, an aim, and therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off, too, is the author who collects rather than invents,--for the latter with its eating fire calcines the heart; I praise the Antiquary, the Heraldist, Note-maker, Compiler; I esteem the _Title-perch_ (a fish called _Perca-Diagramma_, because of the letters on its scales), and the _Printer_ (a chafer, called _Scarabæus Typographus_, which eats letters in the bark of fir),--neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty letter-eggs.--In regard to the _catalogue raisonné_, which my gossip is now drawing up of German _Errata_, I have several times suggested to him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect, and revised the rule by which it has been computed, that, e. g. for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, &c., are required; and to recount, and see whether, in Political writings and Dedications, the fifty notes of admiration for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter were not far too small an allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was." Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters which were not, like forest-shooters, absent on furlough by reason of the spring, through their platoon firing in the Hornbook. He never did more than his duty, but also never less. It brought a soft, benignant warmth over his heart, to think that he, who had once ducked under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself.