I was quite alarmed by something that Hansei said to-day. Has doubt entered even these simple hearts? And they do their duty in this world without a firm belief in a future state.
In his funeral sermon, the preacher had said: "Behold the trees! A few weeks ago, they were dead. But with the spring, they return to life." "The pastor oughtn't to have said that," remarked Hansei; "not that way, at any rate. He might convert children by that, but not us. What does he mean by talking about trees in that fashion? The trees that still have life in them will get new leaves in the spring, but the dead ones won't; they'll be cut down and others will be planted in their place."
We all of us have a strange feeling of loneliness--a feeling that something is missing. Uncle Peter is the most inconsolable of all.
"Now I must wander about the world alone; I haven't brother or sister left. She was the pride of our family," he repeats again and again.
Heretofore, he always slept in the garret, with the servants; but now Hansei has placed the old pensioner's room at his disposal. He is quite proud of it, but often complains, saying: "Why did I have to wait so long for all this? How stupid it was of my sister and me. We might have moved in there. Could we have found a prettier place? Oh, how nicely we would have lived there, and you could have gone along with us. Oh, how stupid old age is. We don't see the good nests till the trees are bare and there's nothing more left in them. 'One gets nothing to eat, till there are no teeth to bite it with,' as my sister used to say."
He always uses the words: "As my sister used to say," when he is on the point of making a statement which he does not wish contradicted, and I imagine he really thinks his sister did say it. He inherited her closet and, before opening it, he always knocks at the door.
My little pitchman is a good bee-master. He knows how to take care of bees and he calls them the poor man's pasture cattle.