“Hold on, driver!” bellowed my friend Otto, who, taking me to be deaf, considered it necessary to address me in his loudest tones. Then he turned to Emma. “Come, sweetheart,” he said, “we will have a glass of beer.” He helped her get down. “Wait till we come back,” he said to me. At the gate stood a waiter: “Fetch a glass of beer for the driver,” he added, and before I had time to enter protest he had stepped into the garden, arm-in-arm with his lady-love. Fully an hour and a half did my friend Otto see best to keep me waiting at the door, while he was amusing himself in the garden with his adored. I occupied myself with writing my obituary in spirit, and tears of emotion over my sad fate trickled down my beard. “By the fickleness of a heartless woman”--thus read the last page of my obituary--“and the depravity of a man whom he took to be his friend, was this poet’s heart broken, and this glorious possibility of immeasurable promise for Germany was nipped in the bud.” _Ernst von Wildenbruch._ _BON-MOTS._ EVERYBODY is a genius, at least once in his life. The only difference is that the so called geniuses have their good ideas thicker. This shows how wise it is to put everything on paper. IT always grieves me when a man of talent dies, for earth has more need of him than heaven. THIS book had the effect which all good books have: it made the dull duller, the wise wiser, and the other millions remained unchanged. ONE of the greatest discoveries which human reason has made in modern times is, in my opinion, the art of judging books without having read them. HE had a couple of warts on his nose in a position which made them likely to be mistaken for the heads of nails, by means of which that feature might have been fastened to his face. IT is no art to say a thing in few words when you have something to say, like Tacitus. But when you have nothing to say, and write a big book, that’s what I call merit. HE combined the qualities of the greatest men in history: he carried his head on one side like Alexander the Great, he was always scratching his head like Cæsar, he could drink coffee like Leibnitz, and when he was comfortable in his easy-chair he would forget to eat and drink like Newton, and like him it was often necessary to wake him. “OUR forests are growing thinner, the supply of wood is declining, what shall we do?” Oh, when our forests are used up there is surely nothing to hinder our burning books until there is a new supply. OF all commodities in the market there is none more remarkable than books. Printed by persons who do not understand them; sold by people who do not understand them; bound, reviewed, and read by people who do not understand them; and, best of all, written by people who do not understand them. HE was a most meritorious boy: before he was six years old he could say the Lord’s Prayer backwards.