"'Once every year he receives from his own country a valuable bank-bill. Then, with an air of the deepest melancholy, he bids me farewell, calls me his best friend, and sheds tears, which I do also; but with me they are tears of laughter. After having, by his own account, made his will, and provided a fortune for my eldest daughter, he rides away slowly and pensively, so that the first time I believed he certainly was gone for good and all. "'His journey, however, is only four German miles, viz. into the _residenz_, from whence he never fails to return on the third or fourth day, bringing with him two new coffee-brown coats, six new shirts, three wigs, all of the same staring and frightful red, a new grey hat, and other requisites for his wardrobe; finally, to my eldest daughter, though she is now eighteen, a paper of sugar-plums. "'He then thinks no more either of residing in the capital, nor of his homeward journey. His afternoon expenses are paid every night, and his money for breakfast is thrown angrily at my head every morning. "'At other times, however, he is the best-tempered man in the world. He gives presents every holiday to all my children, and in the village has done much real good among the poor; only, he cannot bear the priest, because he learned from the schoolmaster that the former had changed a gold piece that Mr Ewson had put into the box, and given it out in copper pennies! Since that time, he avoids him on all occasions, and never goes to church, and the priest calls him an atheist. "'As before said, however, I have often trouble enough with his temper. On coming home just yesterday, I heard a great noise in the house, and a voice in furious wrath, which I knew to be Ewson's. Accordingly I found him in vehement altercation with the house-maid. He had, as usual with him, thrown away his wig, and was standing bald-pated in his shirt-sleeves before her, and holding a great book under her nose, wherein he obstinately pointed at something with his finger. The maid stuck her hands in her sides, told him he might get somebody else to play his tricks upon, that he was a bad wicked man, who believed in nothing, etc. etc. etc. "'With considerable difficulty I succeeded in parting the disputants, and bringing the matter under arbitration. Mr Ewson had desired the maid to bring him a wafer to seal a letter. The girl never having written or sealed a letter in her life, at first did not in the least understand him. At last it occurred to her that the wafers he spoke of were those used at mass, and thought Mr E. wanted to mock at religion, because the priest had said he was an atheist. She therefore refused to obey him. Hereupon he had recourse to the dictionary, and at last got into such a rage, that he spoke nothing but English, which she imagined was gibberish of the devil's own inspiration. Only my coming in prevented a personal encounter, in which probably Mr Ewson would have come off with the worst.'