By virtue of its elevation Raabe's humor has a quiet and certain glance, and is apt to spend its all-embracing sympathy on what is overlooked, what is insignificant, and in all it finds greatness and light hidden and operative. The apparently contradictory attracts him whether it appears to be contradictory in itself or contradictory to what is generally accepted and traditional. He makes friends with originals and oddities; he leads us into the isolation of small German towns, and we feel at home in their sociability and narrowness, in their affection for things and customs of olden times, in their solidity and singularity, in all their local joys and sorrows. Among his many stories we may refer in this connection to: _Der Dräumling_ (1872), _Wunnigel_ (1878), _The Horn of Wanza_ (1880). Even in Germany Raabe became known only slowly. This was due to his quiet character that disdained all striving after effect, to the intentional mixture of various elements in his art which sometimes makes it difficult to grasp the purpose of a work as a whole, to his persistent pursuit of ends that lay outside the ruling interests of his time. When once his countrymen began to come to themselves again, however, he did not lack homage. And so it will probably continue to be. An age whose interests are centered largely in the external side of life will think little of him and pass him by, while one whose gaze is directed rather within will take the pains to understand and appreciate him. May his image never be blotted out entirely! For he belongs to those who feel ever rising within them the question, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" [Illustration: WILHELM RAABE] _WILHELM RAABE_ THE HUNGER PASTOR TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY MURIEL ALMON CHAPTER I It is of hunger that I am going to speak in this good book of mine: what it means, what it desires, what it is able to do. I cannot, to be sure, show how, for the world as a whole, hunger is both Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver in one; it is for history to show that; but I can describe how it works in the individual as destroyer and preserver, and will continue so to work till the end of the world.