To the son these leaves, sewed together, were a dear legacy and a touching sign that even among the lowly there is an eternal striving upward out of the depths and darkness to the heights, to the light, to beauty. The harmless, formless outpourings of shoemaker Unwirrsch's soul were naturally devoted to the phenomena of nature, to the home, his handicraft, and certain great facts of history, chiefly the deeds and heroes of the War of Liberation which had just thundered by. They testified to thought that, in all these directions, was sometimes charmingly simple-hearted, sometimes lofty. There was a little humor mixed up in it, but it was the pathetic that was most prominent and, indeed, most often brought forth the familiar smile. The worthy Master Anton had experienced so much thunder and lightning, so many hailstorms, fires and floods, had seen so many Frenchmen, Rhenish Confederates, Prussians, Austrians and Russians marching past his house that it was no wonder if now and then he, too, tried his hand a little at lightning and thunder and smiting dead. This did not cause any enmity between him and his neighbors, for he remained what he was, a "good fellow," and when he died he was mourned not alone by his wife, his brother-in-law Grünebaum and Auntie Schlotterbeck; no, all Kröppel Street knew and said that a good man had passed away and that it was a pity. He had waited long and yearningly for the birth of a son. He often pictured to himself what he could and would make of him. He transferred all his earnest striving for knowledge to him; the son should and must attain to what his father could not. The thousand insurmountable obstacles which life had thrown in the way of Master Anton should not halt the career of the future Unwirrsch. He should find his course clear, and no door of wisdom or of education should be closed to him by life's labors and hardships. Thus did Anton dream, and one year after another of his married life passed. A daughter was born, but she died soon after; and then for a long time there came nothing, and then--then at last came Johannes Jakob Nikolaus Unwirrsch, whose entrance into the world has already given us the material for a number of the foregoing pages and whose later sufferings, joys, adventures, and travels--in short, whose destinies will form the greater part of this book. We saw the brother-in-law and uncle, Grünebaum, lose his slipper, we saw and heard the tumult of the women, made the acquaintance of Mrs. Tiebus and Auntie Schlotterbeck;--we saw, finally, the two brothers-in-law sitting in the storeroom and saw the dusk creeping in after the eventful sunset. Master Anton lived one more year after the birth of his son and then died of pneumonia. Fate treated him as she does many another: she gave him his share of joy in his hopes, and refused him their fulfillment, which, indeed, never can catch up with fleet-winged hope itself.