In a little shop in Beckerstrasse, in Hamburg, a young man, with pale cheeks and light brown hair and narrowed eyes, was seated before a little table heaped with bills, invoices, and dunning letters. Some of these reminders of indebtedness, were unfolded before him, others were on a spindle, and still others were unopened. Why open letters when one knows their contents? With hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets, his legs extended under the table, the pale young man looked forlorn. He seemed at once reckless and bewildered, sorrowful and carefree. There was mist in his eyes. The postman had just handed him a letter from his father. Not a line from his mother. “How did it all happen?”—was the import of his father’s letter. How did it all happen? Figures had always been the bane of Albert’s existence and to answer this question one must deal with figures. A bitter smile suddenly appeared on his sensitive lips, and his eyes narrowed still more—mere fine lines of indefinable color. How did it all happen? A memory from his school days flitted across his brain and his smile was bitter no longer. “When you grow up,” his mathematics teacher had told him, “you’ll have to have some one else to count your money for you, or you won’t have any.” And striking him with a lead-edged ruler the teacher had made the announcement emphatic. The young man threw his head back and laughed as he remembered the incident. Soon he forgot his father’s letter and that vexing question, forgot the bills and invoices, and his mind lingered upon his early school days. He had always hated those school days, but now there was a yearning in his heart for the teachers and text-books and for—yes, even for the lead-edged ruler and gnarled stick. What if some stupid monk had struck him with a ruler or cane? Those were happy days, when one was not worried about paying bills and about letters that demanded how it had happened! He sighed deeply and stretched his arms yawningly upward. “Those were happy days,” he repeated to himself. His eyes dropped upon his father’s letters before him. He became irritable and vexed. He had thrashed it out with his uncle and now his father had started all over again. “What will become of you, Albert?” his father had added. “You are already in your twenty-second year and have failed in everything—in everything. You have not only brought ruin upon yourself but also upon your poor old father. For I am getting old, Albert, and instead of my supporting you, you should take care of me. And at my age I am now obliged to leave here and start over again at some other town. I can read between the lines of your uncle’s letter that your conduct in other respects has not been irreproachable.” He pushed the letter away from himself. He was growing angry with his father, with his mother, with his uncle. Why had they pressed business upon him? They had known he had no taste for business. What right had they now to complain?