Luise rose, saying that she was going to take a walk. Then she asked for a piece of paper, in which she carefully wrapped the remains of the cake, pressed Uncle Joachim's hand, and nodded pleasantly to me. "Wait a bit," cried the old gentleman, in Platt Deutsch--he was very fond of speaking it when in a good humor--"the old witch shall have a birthday present from me too." While speaking, he took from the chest of drawers a small snuffbox, which he had made himself out of birch-bark, and filled it with tobacco. "Here's something for her eyes. She need only try it. When she has used it all up, I'll give her more." I understood that these holiday presents were intended for Mother Lieschen, and would have been only too glad to accompany the young lady. But I did not venture to make the offer, and, after she had gone, remained a few minutes with the old gentleman. I call him so because, at that time, when I was only twenty-three, he really seemed to me very elderly and venerable, but he would have been not a little offended, or else laughed heartily, had he suspected that, while only forty-eight, I had already placed him on the catalogue of ancients. When we were alone, he laid his large hairy hand on my shoulder. "You are still a young man, Herr Weissbrod," he said. "But when you have half a century more on your back, even though you have used your eyes industriously meanwhile, I doubt whether you will have met any human being more pleasing to God than the girl whose birth we celebrate to-day. I am glad that, judging from your poem, some idea of this is beginning to dawn upon you. Only heed this well-meant advice--don't scorch your wings. That's nonsense." I stammered something that sounded like an assurance that I was far from intending such presumption. "That's right, my son," he said, kindly. "Follies, as I declared, are good things in their way. But we mustn't lose hide and hair in committing them, like the bear who put his head into the honey-tree and couldn't pull it out again. Good-evening, Herr Weissbrod. Don't take offense because I don't go to hear your sermons. My old heathen, the rheumatism, can't bear the air of the church." * * * * * How often I afterward recalled the worthy man's words, and could not help sighing mournfully and saying, with a shake of the head, "Good advice is cheap. You were her uncle, dear friend, and, besides, had had your due share of 'follies' in the past, while I, poor student of theology, had yet to learn the first rudiments of passion. "Then you did not consider the unreasonable number of nightingales in the park, which were fairly in league against me; and, what was still more, the voice below, Gluck's 'Armida,' Spontini's 'Vestal,' and all the divine spells of golden hair and brown eyes." But I am lapsing into Wertherism again. At least, I will commit no more follies now, but continue my narrative like an honest chronicler.