Drink brothers! your last greeting,
And wish him blessings round.
'Tis gone! with gray years blended,
That are for ever ended.
It brought much gladness, many woes,
And leaves us nearer to our close.
Voss.
The last evening of the year had arrived. It found the two friends Hoffmann and Freisleben in the room of the latter, where the friends were accustomed gladly to assemble. "Shall I light the lamp?" asked Freisleben. "No! let us sit in the dark. When the eye does not distract itself with outward objects, it then turns with delight to those images which memory brings before the mind." So the two sate; and they thought over all which this year had given and taken away; on all, after which they had striven, and which they had achieved; and on much, after which they had desired to strive and accomplish. Each was lost in this internal review, and the silence was only broken by one of the friends being so powerfully seized with the recollection of the past, that he must communicate his feeling to the other. "So then," said Freisleben, "another year of this beautiful university life is over! and when I call to mind that this year is a quarter, or a fifth of the whole, the words of a German writer are irresistibly forced upon me:--'The world may easily roll on, as it has hitherto done, yet for a million years; and in that period, five thousand years would be exactly proportionate to a quarter of a year in the life of a man of fifty,--scarcely a twelfth of our university life!' What have I done in the last quarter of a year? Eaten, drunken, electrified, made a calendar, laughed over the tricks of a kitten, and so are five thousand years of this little world run out, in which I move!"
Hoffmann.--Away with this calculation! To embellish the life of our friends, and to enjoy ourselves that life cheerily, that is the business of existence.
Freisleben.--The time spent at the university is certainly the most lovely time of our life; but even in that I am amazed to-day how one can be so merry, when one recollects how much more of unpleasant than pleasant the year has brought.