But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the
same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him,
that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still 35
florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money, wherewith he
might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so
large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this means;
every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment
he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at random,
two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His
purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took
possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too,
when, on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these
funds from his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For
the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish
Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy,
having offered it as bounty-money and luckpenny to the patron, this
false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church door, would
certainly have vexed him; but now, if he had missed the knocker, he had
the luckpenny again, and could be merry.
I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock of his
Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a day, that I
must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the twenty-third of
Trinity-term, when he preached a vacation sermon in his dear native
village, with a brief transitory notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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