“After the benediction was pronounced, every one present, according to the beautiful custom here, went to the grave and threw into it a handful of dirt, thus assisting at the burial. Slowly, and in scattered groups the crowd dispersed to their various homes.
“How insignificant all the metaphysical controversies of the age, the vain teachings of man, appeared to us as we stood at the grave-side of Neander. His was a far higher and holier faith, from which, like the Evangelist, he never wavered. In his life, in his death, the belief to which he had been converted, his watchword remained unchanged: ‘It is the Lord!’ His body has been consigned to the grave, but the sunset glory of his example still illumines our sky, and will forever light us onward to the path he trod.”
THE DISASTERS OF A MAN WHO WOULDN’T TRUST HIS WIFE.
A TALE OF A TAILOR.
BY WM. HOWITT.
There are a multitude of places in this wide world, that we never heard of since the day of creation, and that never would become known to a soul beyond their own ten miles of circumference, except to those universal discoverers, the tax-gatherers, were it not that some sparks of genius may suddenly kindle there, and carry their fame through all countries and all generations. This has been the case many times, and will be the case again. We are now destined to hear the sound of names that our fathers never dreamed of; and there are other spots, now basking in God’s blessed sunshine, of which the world knows and cares nothing, that shall, to our children, become places of worship, and pilgrimage. Something of this sort of glory was cast upon the little town of Rapps, in Bohemia, by the hero whose name stands conspicuously in this article, and whose pleasant adventures I flatter myself that I am destined to diffuse still further. HANS NADELTREIBER was the son of Mr. Strauss Nadeltreiber, who had, as well as his ancestors before him, for six generations, practiced, in the same little place, that most gentlemanly of all professions, a tailor—seeing that it was before all others, and was used and sanctioned by our father Adam.
Now Hans, from boyhood up, was a remarkable person. His father had known his share of troubles, and having two sons, both older than Hans, naturally looked in his old age to reap some comfort and assistance from their united labors. But the two elder sons successively had fled from the shop-board. One had gone for a soldier, and was shot; the other had learned the craft of a weaver, but being too fond of his pot, had broken his neck by falling into a quarry, as he went home one night from a carousal. Hans was left the sole staff for the old man to lean upon; and truly a worthy son he proved himself. He was as gentle as a dove, and as tender as a lamb. A cross word from his father, when he had made a cross stitch, would almost break his heart; but half a word of kindness revived him again—and he seldom went long without it; for the old man, though rendered rather testy and crabbed in his temper, by his many troubles and disappointments, was naturally of a loving, compassionate disposition, and, moreover, regarded Hans as the apple of his eye.
Hans was of a remarkably light, slender, active make, full of life and mettle. This moment he was on the board, stitching away with as much velocity as if he were working for a funeral or a wedding, at an hour’s notice; the next, he was dispatching his dinner at the same rate; and the third beheld him running, leaping, and playing, among his companions, as blithe as a young kid. If he had a fault, it was being too fond of his fiddle. This was his everlasting delight. One would have thought that his elbow had labor enough, with jerking his needle some thirty thousand times a day; but it was in him a sort of universal joint—it never seemed to know what weariness was. His fiddle stood always on the board in a corner by him, and no sooner had he ceased to brandish his needle, than he began to brandish his fiddlestick. If ever he could be said to be lazy, it was when his father was gone out to measure, or try on; and his fiddle being too strong a temptation for him, he would seize upon it, and labor at it with all his might, till he spied his father turning his next corner homeward. Nevertheless, with this trifling exception, he was a pattern of filial duty; and now the time was come that his father must die—his mother was dead long before; and he was left alone in the world with his riddle. The whole house, board, trade—what there was of it—all was his. When he came to take stock, and make an inventory—in his head—of what he was worth, it was by no means such as to endanger his entrance into heaven at the proper time. Naturally enough, he thought of the Scripture simile of the rich man, and the camel getting through the eye of a needle; but it did not frighten him. His father never had much beforehand, when he had the whole place to himself; and now, behold! another knight of the steel-bar had come from—nobody knew where—a place often talked of, yet still a terra incognita; had taken a great house opposite, hoisted a tremendous sign, and threatened to carry away every shred of Hans’s business.
In the depth of his trouble, he took to his fiddle, from his fiddle to his bed, and in his bed he had a dream—I thought we had done with these dreams!—in which he was assured, that could he once save the sum of fifty dollars, it would be the seed of a fortune; that he should flourish far beyond the scale of old Strauss; should drive his antagonist, in utter despair, from the ground; and should, in short, arrive eventually at no less a dignity than—Bürgermeister of Rapps!