I confess that, in spite of this letter, whose simple, amiable style recalled to me every feature of the writer's face, so full of feeling, I took up the bulky manuscript with a certain dread. More than three hundred closely written pages--who could tell with how much theological speculation the simple life-history had been garnished. But the very first pages dispelled the doubt, and the farther I read the more eager was my interest in both contents and narrative. When I laid the last sheets down, I said to myself aloud: Yes, it was indeed worth while.
With this opinion I instantly wrote to the author, begging him not to confine this confession to ourselves, but by its publication edify all who, in our hurried and corrupt age, had preserved minds capable of appreciating simple grandeur of soul and the natural nobility of humanity.
He did not keep me waiting long for his answer.
"Dearest sir and friend," he wrote--"for the friends of our friends are ours, and the warmth with which you speak of my departed friend justifies me in believing that you cherish a kindly feeling toward me also--no, I can not bring myself to regard this account of my most private experiences as a literary production, and appear in it before the cold eyes of the public. Apart from all other considerations, however, the careless, thoroughly untrained literary style appears to me an unconquerable obstacle. Yet, if you would undertake to subject these pages to a thorough revision, provide the splendid kernel which is no merit of mine, with a new and more fitting husk! But, even then, I could not wholly conquer my secret reluctance. I live in complete seclusion; those who know me best, with the exception of one friend of my youth, regard me as a mere commonplace day-laborer in the shape of a pedagogue. The publication of such a work would suddenly render me an 'object of notice,' and nothing is less readily forgiven in a provincial sphere than any departure from the every-day routine of existence.
"But I will say this, my honored friend: If my unpretending story really seems to you so valuable that you desire to save it from a fiery death, keep the volume till I am no more. You will then be at liberty to publish it--of course, with the abridgment necessary where my personal interest has made me unwarrantably garrulous, and the omission of the guide-posts that would point out persons still living, or the descendants of certain families. The names of cities and communities ought also in justice to be suppressed. Nothing appears to me more contemptible than the modern effort to attain, by the disclosure of actual events, a success which mere skillful literary invention could not have hoped to secure.
"For the rest, I am entirely of your opinion that a life like the one described here is well fitted to set an example, and that it seems almost a duty to transmit the memory of so rare and lofty a human character to future generations."
This was the last direct communication I had from the admirable man. I did not venture to make any further effort to shake his resolution, and for two decades his manuscript was carefully treasured in my desk.
Early this year I received a letter, written by an unknown hand, and bearing the postmark of the city in the Mark. The principal of the grammar-school there informed me that his friend, after having enjoyed the best possible health to the last, had been found one morning dead in his bed! He had been buried, according to the directions of his will, in the almshouse church-yard, by the side of the Canoness, amid the sincere grief of the whole community. Among his papers had been found the request that I should be informed of his demise.
So I may doubtless consider myself as his executor in at least bringing the following pages from their concealment. While re-reading them I have made only the most modest use of the authority to erase and alter at pleasure--only here and there a certain inequality of style will show that another hand has interposed to make some obscure passage clearer, or correct some awkward expression. In the main, I have left everything as I found it; for it seems to me that the unassuming series of pictures in this biographical romance, as it may be called, would scarcely have gained greater vivacity and charm by a more careful grouping or more artistic execution, while the impression of simple truthfulness might have been impaired. With little art, clear wit and sense suggest their own delivery; and, I may add, that as the love of a warm and noble heart transfigures even the most insignificant countenance from whose eyes it shines, much more does it illuminate features as expressive and beautiful as those that look forth at us from between the lines of this narrative.