He sat still a long while; then he went back again to the sitting-room, past the kitchen, where the fire was burning cheerily. He seated himself at the table and waited for his morning porridge. On the table lay an open book; his children had been reading it the previous evening: involuntarily taking it up, he began to read. Suddenly he started, rubbed his eyes, and then read again. How comes this verse here just at this moment? He kept his hand upon the book, and so easily had he caught the words, that he repeated them to himself softly with his lips, and nodded several times, as much as to say: “That’s true!” And he said aloud: “It’s all there together: short and sweet!” and he was still staring at it, when his wife brought in the smoking porridge. Taking off his cap, he folded his hands and said aloud:
“Accept God’s gifts with resignation,
Content to lack what thou hast not:
In every lot there’s consolation;
There’s trouble, too, in every lot!”
The wife looked at her husband with amazement. What a strange expression was upon his face! And as he sat down and began to eat, she said: “What is the meaning of that grace? What has to you? Where did you find it?”
“It the best of all graces, the very best,—real God’s word. Yes, and all your life you’ve never made such nice porridge before. You must have put something special in it!”
“I don’t know what you mean. Stop! There’s the book lying there—ah! that’s it—and it’s by Gellert, of Leipzig.”
“What! Gellert, of Leipzig! Men with ideas like that don’t live now; there may have been such, a thousand years ago, in holy lands, not among us; those are the words of a saint of old.”
“And I tell you they are by Gellert, of Leipzig, of whom your brother has told us; in fact, he was his tutor, and haven’t you heard how pious and good he is?”
“I wouldn’t have believed that such men still lived, and so near us, too, as Leipzig.”
“Well, but those who lived a thousand years ago were also once living creatures: and over Leipzig is just the same heaven, and the same sun shines, and the same God rules, as over all other cities.”
“Oh! yes, my brother has an apt pupil in you!”