So goes the song in this manner round; and each one names the actual or feigned name of his lady.
Mr. Traveller.--Where, then, have you found the name of Rapunzel, Von Kronen?
Von Kronen.--Look into Grimms' "Kinder und Haus-Märchen;" there you may read the moving history of Rapunzel, which has so seized upon me that I have without further ado made the poor Rapunzel my beloved.
Enderlin.--I hope that thou correspondest with her. How touchingly must the subscription of the letters sound:--"Thy faithful Rapunzel," or "Thy affectionate Rapunzel."
Pittschaft.--But do procure me the favour of thy Rapunzel writing something in my Stammbook.
Von Kronen.--In thy bore of a Stammbook? But O yes! yes! for she is quite at liberty to write in what she will.
Pittschaft.--And what, I wonder, will she write?
Von Kronen.--Instead of an answer, which perhaps after all may not come, I will give thee an anecdote.
Every body knows how great was at one time the rage in the universities to have Stammbücher. Every student kept one; and all the inmates of the house, the numerous members of the landsmannschaft, the whole body of the teachers and other acquaintances who approached him, each and all found their place in it. A student even came once to Dr. Semmler in Halle, with the request that he would have the goodness to write in his Stammbuch. Semmler, who, spite of his well-known and highly praiseworthy economy of time, could not repress his curiosity to turn over the leaves of the Stammbuch, found, to his great amazement, almost on every page such sentences and sayings as were not the most calculated to give him a high idea of the morality of the friends of the gentleman Stammbuch-holder. Finding a clear page, he therefore wrote--Matt. viii. 31. "Lord, suffer me, that I go amongst this herd of swine."
Pittschaft.--If Rapunzel could say such stupid things as thou dost, I should set her down for a very conceited person, and would not trouble her with my Stammbuch, more particularly that she might not get a wicked notion of the morality of my friends, and amongst them of her beloved.