one suit on the top of another, for "things in actual wear are exempt from duty." But thickness excepted, he made about the same figure in the street next day. He walked straight or stiff with his arms perpendicular, shook hands with a sudden jerk, and bowed as if without joints to be at once stiff again; he had become politeness itself, but everything was done without uttering a word, and quickly, with a certain shyness. He did not sign his name Olsen any more, but Ohlsen, which led the wits of the town to ask, "How far did Peter Ohlsen get in Hamburg?" Answer: "As far as the first letter." He even went so far as to think of calling himself Pedro, but he had to brook so much annoyance for the h's sake, that he gave it up and signed himself P. Ohlsen. He extended the business, and though only twenty-two, he married a red-handed shop girl, for his father had just become a widower, and it was safer to have a wife than a housekeeper. That day year he got a son, who that day week was named Pedro. When worthy Peer Olsen became a grandfather, he felt an inward calling to grow old. Therefore he left the business to his son, sat outside upon a bench, and smoked twist tobacco from a short pipe; and when one day he began to grow tired of sitting there, he wished he might soon die, and even as all his wishes had quietly been fulfilled, so also was this. If the son Peter had inherited exclusively the one feature of his father's character, aptitude for business, the grandson Pedro seemed to have inherited the other exclusively--talent for music. He was very slow in learning to read, but quick in learning to sing, and he played the flute so exquisitely that one might easily perceive he was of a refined and susceptible nature. But this was only a trouble to the father, as if the boy should be brought up to his own busy exactness. Then, when he forgot anything, he was not scolded nor thrashed as the father had been, but he was pinched. It was done very quietly, and with a kindness one might almost call polite, but it was done on every possible occasion. Every night when she undressed him, the mother counted the blue and yellow marks, and kissed them, but she offered no resistance, for she was pinched herself. For every tear in his clothes, (the father's Hamburg suits made up again,) for every blot on his copy-book she was to blame. So it was constantly: "Don't do that, Pedro!" "Take care, Pedro!" "Remember, Pedro!" He was afraid of his father, and his mother wearied him. He did not suffer much from his companions, as he cried directly, and begged them not to spoil his clothes, so they called him, "Withered stick!" and took no more notice of him. He was like a weak featherless duckling, limping after the rest, and waddling to one side with the little bit he could catch for himself, nobody shared with him, and therefore he shared with nobody.