Our father is the wisest man in Eisenach. The mother thinks, perhaps, in the world. Of this, however, our grandmother has doubts. She has seen other places besides Eisenach, which is perhaps the reason. He certainly is the wisest man I ever saw. He talks about more things that I cannot understand than any one else I know. He is also a great inventor. He thought of the plan of printing books before any one else, and had almost completed the invention before any press was set up. And he always believed there was another world on the other side of the great sea, long before the Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered America. The only misfortune has been that some one else has always stepped in just before he had completed his inventions, when nothing but some little insignificant detail was wanting to make everything perfect, and carried off all the credit and profit. It is this which has kept us from becoming rich,—this and the children. But the father's temper is so placid and even, nothing ever sours it. And this is what makes us all admire and love him so much, even more than his great abilities. He seems to rejoice in these successes of other people just as much as if he had quite succeeded in making them himself. If the mother laments a little over the fame that might have been his, he smiles and says,—
"Never mind, little mother. It will be all the same a hundred years hence. Let us not grudge any one his reward. The world has the benefit if we have not."
Then if the mother sighs a little over the scanty larder and wardrobe, he replies,—
"Cheer up, little mother, there are more Americas yet to be discovered, and more inventions to be made. In fact," he adds, with that deep far seeing look of his, "something else has just occurred to me, which, when I have brought it to perfection, will throw all the discoveries of this and every other age into the shade."
And he kisses the mother and departs into his printing-room. And the mother looks wonderingly after him, and says,—
"We must not disturb the father, children, with our little cares. He has great things in his mind, which we shall all reap the harvest of some day."
So, she goes to patch some little garment once more, and to try to make one day's dinner expand into enough for two.
What the father's great discovery is at present, Fritz and I do not quite know. But we think it has something to do, either with the planets and the stars, or with that wonderful stone the philosophers have been so long occupied about. In either case, it is sure to make us enormously rich all at once; and, meantime, we may well be content to eke out our living as best we can.