an entire book! Would you believe it? Fortunately he got his fingers whacked right heartily with the academical rattan. ‘Göthe’! what do you think of it? Of course it is idiotic in German to write the diphthongs _ä_, _ö_, _ü_ as if they were _æ_, _œ_, _ue_--I’ll admit that, and I dare say Goethe himself would to-day save himself the trouble of putting in the extra _e_, but the orthography of G-o-e-t-h-e has once been established, and in the interest of order I would advise none but anarchists and rebels to be so godless as to leave out the _e_. The law of order is supreme, in great and in the greatest, in small and in the smallest.” He stopped exhausted and gasped for breath. “On earth and in the heavens,” I added at haphazard. “In the heavens? Not that I know of!” he said, drawing down the corners of his mouth. At the same time he touched his lifted cane, allowing the candle-snuffers to protrude for a moment, as if he were about to snuff out all anarchic stars in the firmament. “Do you know, in the so-called heavens there is not much order? The disorderly conduct of the comets should have been interfered with long ago. And then this transit of Venus, what do you say to that? Do you call that order? Venus should go in a decent and orderly manner above or below the sun, but certainly not straight before his Majesty’s very nose. Why, it is like snapping his fingers at the sun; it’s disrespectful, it’s opposed to all decorum, to all order.” So saying he darted away from me--we had meanwhile reached the hotel “Hof Ragaz,” and entering the right wing had walked upstairs--and like a whirlwind he pounced upon a table standing in the hall, about which evidently there was something not in order. “There it is again!” he muttered, slowly passing the tip of his fore-finger over the top of the table until upon the dusty surface the word “Dust” appeared in large type capitals. “Hang those women!” grumbled the owner of the magic staff. “Will you believe me when I tell you that yesterday I wrote the same cry of warning upon the top of this table? All in vain!” And setting down his elaborately-constructed cane with well-tempered force upon the first step of the staircase leading to the third storey, he continued: “Tell me, dear sir, did you ever in the course of your experience meet with a person of the feminine sex, be it child, girl, or matron, who could ever be prevailed upon by means of exhortation, kindness, severity, diplomacy, or force to fully shut the latch of a door, or turn down the bolt of a window-sash?” “No, to tell the truth, I have never met a feminine person of that description.”