The last evening of the year had arrived. It found the two friends Hoffmann and Freisleben in the room of the latter, where the friends were accustomed gladly to assemble. "Shall I light the lamp?" asked Freisleben. "No! let us sit in the dark. When the eye does not distract itself with outward objects, it then turns with delight to those images which memory brings before the mind." So the two sate; and they thought over all which this year had given and taken away; on all, after which they had striven, and which they had achieved; and on much, after which they had desired to strive and accomplish. Each was lost in this internal review, and the silence was only broken by one of the friends being so powerfully seized with the recollection of the past, that he must communicate his feeling to the other. "So then," said Freisleben, "another year of this beautiful university life is over! and when I call to mind that this year is a quarter, or a fifth of the whole, the words of a German writer are irresistibly forced upon me:--'The world may easily roll on, as it has hitherto done, yet for a million years; and in that period, five thousand years would be exactly proportionate to a quarter of a year in the life of a man of fifty,--scarcely a twelfth of our university life!' What have I done in the last quarter of a year? Eaten, drunken, electrified, made a calendar, laughed over the tricks of a kitten, and so are five thousand years of this little world run out, in which I move!" Hoffmann.--Away with this calculation! To embellish the life of our friends, and to enjoy ourselves that life cheerily, that is the business of existence. Freisleben.--The time spent at the university is certainly the most lovely time of our life; but even in that I am amazed to-day how one can be so merry, when one recollects how much more of unpleasant than pleasant the year has brought. Hoffmann.--There I differ. Past pain is pleasant in memory, and past pleasure is pleasure both future and present Thus, it is only present and future pain that troubles us; a strong presumption of a sensible preponderance of enjoyment in the world, which is augmented by this circumstance, that we are constantly endeavouring to create enjoyment, whose fruition we can, in many cases, foretell with tolerable certainty, while, on the contrary, future pain can be much seldomer prognosticated exactly. "Yes, to be sure! That is now clear, and I understand it," said Von Kronen, who had caught the end of this demonstration, "but that on which I have been reflecting is not yet clear to me. Perhaps you gentlemen who to-day are in so philosophical a mood can enlighten me upon it." Freisleben.--What will come of it then? Von Kronen.--The phenomenon is one of the most mysterious in nature. Yet-- Hoffmann.--Only out with it! Von Kronen.--Tell me then how it comes to pass that cats have holes in their skins exactly where their eyes are? Hoffmann.--Thou whimsical herring!