Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Metzerott, Shoemaker

“Omne vivum ex vivo.”

“What is your creed?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What do you believe about him?”

“What we can. We count any belief in him—the smallest—better than any belief about him—the greatest,—or about anything else.”

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

13 Astor Place

Copyright, 1889, by

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

C. J. PETERS & SON,

Typographers and Electrotypers,

146 High Street, Boston.

DEDICATION.

“Laborare est orare.”

TO

The Clergy and the Workingmen of America.

MAY THEY WORK AND PRAY TOGETHER

FOR THE COMING OF THE

KINGDOM OF CHRIST.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.
LOVE.

METZEROTT, SHOEMAKER.

CHAPTER I.
KARL METZEROTT ATTENDS A KAFFEE KLATSCH.

Karl Metzerott, shoemaker, counted himself reasonably well-to-do in the world. It was a favorite saying of his (though he was not greatly given to sayings at any time, his days being so full of doings), that his Socialist opinions were not based upon his own peculiar needs; and that, when the Commune should supervene, as he fervently believed it must some day, he, Karl Metzerott, would be numbered rather among its givers than its receivers.

In truth, he had some reason for self-gratulation. He was young, strong, and able to earn a fair living at his trade; and his wife,—but stop! We have not come to her quite yet.

The shop where he bent over his lapstone for ten hours a day, excluding meal times, was an odd-looking structure, in a poor quarter of a city which we shall call Micklegard; and which, if any one should strive to locate, we warn him that the effort will bring him only confusion of face and dire bewilderment. For its features may be recognized, now here, now there, like those mocking faces that peered at Ritter Huldbrand through the mists of the Enchanted Forest.

The shoemaker’s dwelling contained but three rooms. The front, a shingled frame building of one story, presented its pointed gable at the street like a huge caret, denoting that all the sky and stars, perhaps something further, were wanted by those beneath. This was the shop; behind it were the kitchen, looking out upon a small square yard, opening on a not over-clean alley; and a bedroom above, whose front window peered over the gable roof, between the high blank walls of the adjoining houses, while the opposite one kept watch from the rear: and each, in its curtainless bareness, looked equally desolate and unsatisfied.

It was on a cold, dreary November evening that the shoemaker put aside his work somewhat earlier than usual, and, after carefully closing his shutters, stepped through the ever-open door into his little kitchen, which was almost as red-hot as the huge cooking-stove, filled with bituminous coal, that occupied nearly half the tiny apartment. The other half was over-filled by a gigantic four-post bedstead, on which two corpulent feather-beds swelled nearly to the tester, and were overspread by a patchwork quilt, gaudy of hue and startling in design. Fringed dimity curtains hung from the tester, until their snow-white balls caught the reflection from the glowing counterpane, when they were snatched away, as if from the possible soil of contact, and fastened in the middle of each side by an immense yellow rosette. Upon one side of the stove stood an oil-cloth-covered table, which served equally for the preparation and consumption of food; above it, a steep, narrow stair wound upward to the room above; and on the other side of the kitchen, basking in heat which would have consumed a salamander, were a small old-fashioned candle-stand, half hidden by a linen cover, wrought in the old Levitical colors of red and blue, and sustaining a cheap kerosene lamp; a slat rocking-chair, with patchwork cushions, and a tiny old woman bowed over a huge German Bible, bound in parchment, with a tarnished steel clasp and corners, and heavy smooth yellow leaves.

As her son entered, Frau Metzerott lifted her brown, withered face, and fixed her dark eyes and steel-rimmed spectacles upon him.

“You have quitted early this evening,” she said, in the Platt-Deutsch dialect, which, with the High German of the book on her knee, was her only mode of speech, though she had lived in America for nearly forty years.

He nodded briefly, and then, as if by an afterthought, added, “It is the evening of the Kaffee Klatsch at the Hall, and I will go there for my supper. There is a little concert to-night, and dancing.”

“And a few pretty girls, Karlchen?”

He smiled, not ill-pleased, but vouchsafed no further remark as he sprang up the difficult, crooked stairway to his bedroom.

The old woman looked after him with a slow shake of her head. “I wish he would marry one of them,” she thought. “There is room for a wife, up yonder, and it is hard doing the work alone. Besides, one cannot live forever, and, when I am gone, who will make his coffee and his apple cakes as he likes them?”

With a sigh, she fell to reading again.

It is quite possible that, on the sailing-vessel where her husband met and won her, and which, to afford him ample time for the operation, was obligingly blown out of her course so as to lengthen the voyage to America some three months or so, Frau Metzerott had her fair share of youthful attractiveness; but this had been swept from her by the scythe of Father Time, and the storm and stress of life had left her no leisure to cultivate the graces of old age. Of actual years she numbered barely sixty, and the dark hair under her quaint black cap showed scarcely a touch of gray; but the skin was as brown and wrinkled as a frost-nipped russet apple; and rheumatism and the wash-tub together had so bowed her once strong, erect figure, that, like the woman in Scripture, she could in no wise lift up herself. She was dressed in a dark blue calico, marked with small, white, crooked lines, a brown gingham apron, and a small gay-colored plaid shawl over her rheumatic shoulders. Her feet were incased in knitted woollen stockings, and black cloth shoes; and her knotted brown fingers showed beneath black cloth mittens.

She did not trouble herself greatly with the preparations for her lonely supper, when her son, in his Sunday coat, had left her for the Hall; a fresh brew of coffee, a slice or two from the rye loaf, and a few potatoes dressed with oil and vinegar, which had stood in her corner cupboard since noon, supplied all her needs.

The dishes were washed, the kitchen tidied, after this frugal meal, and the mother had settled to her knitting, when there came a knock at the shop door. A pleased smile shone upon the old woman’s face as she recognized the tap, and hastened to admit the person who had formerly embodied her dreams of a daughter-in-law, who should be the instrument of rest and ease to her old age. But the Anna Rolf who now passed through the dark shop into the glowing kitchen, had been for two years a comely young matron; Leppel Rolf, the stalwart young carpenter, having wooed and won her, while Shoemaker Metzerott sat passively under his lapstone. Rumor asserted that the fair Anna had been somewhat piqued by this same passivity; but, however that may be, it was certainly no love-lorn personage who now added the radiance of youth, health, and beauty to the glow of the fire and the yellow light of the kerosene lamp.

Yet Anna was not strictly a beauty, though her vivid coloring, sparkling eyes, and overflowing vitality had gained her that reputation. She was simply a tall, well-made woman, with an abundance of silky black hair, a rich, dark complexion, and features which, like her figure, seemed likely to be sharpened, rather than filled out, by advancing years. She was dressed with a good deal of taste, in a new, black silk, with a bunch of crimson roses in her bosom; and her greeting was interfused by the consciousness of such array.

“So you are not at the Kaffee-Visite, Frau Metzerott?” she asked, laughing a good deal. Laughing was very becoming to Anna; she had such charming dimples, and strong, white, even teeth.

“Kaffee-Visite, indeed!” grumbled the old woman, taking, with her withered hand to her wrinkled brow, a leisurely survey of her radiant visitant. “What should an old woman like me do there? I drink my coffee at home, and am thankful. But, Du lieber Himmel! how fine you are, Anna! A new silk dress?”

“Of course,” said Anna proudly, “and all my own doing, too. Not a penny of Leppel’s money in it, from the neck to the hem. My earning and my making, Frau Metzerott.”

“Ach, Herr Gott!” sighed the old woman, smoothing down the rich folds, half enviously, not for herself, but for her son, whose wife might have worn them; “but what a clever child you are, Aenchen.”

“You see,” said Anna, “it was this way. You remember when I was first married we lived at his home, and when I had swept and dusted a bit, there was no more to be done, for Frau Rolf lets no one help with the cooking. I don’t believe she would trust an angel from heaven to work down a loaf of Pumpernickel for her.” She laughed again, and Frau Metzerott added a shrill cackle as her own contribution.

“So, as twirling my thumbs never agreed with me,” continued Anna, “I just apprenticed myself to a dressmaker; for it is well to have two strings to one’s bow, and Leppel’s life is no surer than any other man’s.”

“But, Anna—?”

“Yes, I know, Mütterchen. It was a special arrangement, of course, not a regular apprenticeship. I was to give so many hours a day to work I already knew how to do, such as running up seams and working buttonholes; and she was to teach me to cut and fit. She knew me, you see, and wasn’t afraid of losing by the bargain.”

“I should think not!” said Frau Metzerott admiringly. She had heard the story at least a dozen times, and never failed to adorn the right point with the proper ejaculation.

“Well, then,” continued Anna, “what should happen but little Fritz came to town, and any one but me would have had enough to do at home; but I never give up!”—she drew herself up proudly—“and so, since I finished my course, I have earned enough money to buy this dress.”

“And yet you do so much besides,” said Frau Metzerott.

“Since his father and mother went to live with their son in the West,” said Anna, “I do all my own work, make my own clothes and Fritz’s, and take in sewing besides.”

“What a girl you are!” sighed the old woman. “But why are you home so early from the Hall to-night?”

“Leppel is gone to New York on business. There is some new machine he wants to look at. I wish he would let them all alone, and attend to his day’s work. I did not bargain to marry an inventor,” said Anna discontentedly.

“It is expensive going to New York,” said the old woman, shaking her head.

“It is expensive inventing,” said the young one, her brilliant face darkened by a shadow of real anxiety. “But, however, he must have his own way, and the money is his. So he was off from the Hall, when he had had his supper, and of course,” with a conscious laugh—“he would not leave me there without him.”

“No, no,” said the Frau, her withered lips expanding into a toothless smile, “you are much too pretty for that, Aenchen.”

“The new pastor was there,” said Anna, when she had playfully shaken the old woman by her bowed shoulders, in acknowledgment of this remark, “and, I think, the Frau Pastorin that will be.”

“So?” exclaimed the old woman eagerly; “who is she, Anna?”

“She came over on the same steamer as the Herr Pastor, and her name is Dorothea Weglein. It seems she had a sweetheart here in Micklegard, and came over to be married to him; but when she arrived he had died in the mean time, of something or other, very sudden, I don’t know what.”

“Poor child! And the Herr Pastor is courting her?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders. “It looks like it,” she said. “It seems she got a service place after her Schatz died. The Herr Pastor could do better than that. But some one else was taken with her baby face and frightened ways, Frau Metzerott. Your son was eating her up with his eyes when I came away.”

“Did her Schatz leave any money behind him?” asked the Frau.

Anna laughed a little shrilly, as she moved towards the door. “You know they weren’t married, Mütterchen; so, if he did, it probably went to his relations. Well, it is two years since it happened; she will be easily consoled. Good-night, Fritz will be wanting me. I only ran over to tell you the news,” and she was gone, leaving the shop and kitchen darker and stiller than ever, by contrast.

Karl Metzerott, meanwhile, had walked briskly enough to meet his fate, but with small thought of new Herr Pastors or possible Frau Pastorins. He was his mother’s own son in appearance, every one had said, when both were younger; at present, the resemblance was less striking. Karl was a man of nearly thirty, who looked older than his years; of average height, strongly and squarely made, the shoulders slightly rounded by his occupation, the head a little large, with a fine, square brow, and a thick covering of coarse black hair. The eyes were keen and clear, the features strong and rugged. The skin was dark, not particularly fine, but clear and healthful; he wore neither beard nor mustache, and his manner showed no slightest consciousness of himself or his Sunday clothes.

But it is best that we should precede him, rapid as are his steps, and gain some knowledge of the scene whither he is bound. The Maennerchor of Micklegard held its collective head rather higher than any similar association in the city. In its own opinion, its members, or the majority of them, were more aristocratic, its club-house better fitted up, its auditorium larger, and its inventive genius greater, than those of any contemporary. Nor shall I attempt to disprove this innocently vain assumption on the part of the Maennerchor, though vanity, whether innocent or the reverse, is said by some to be a part of the German national character. Others doubt whether such a thing exists as a national type of character. My own individual opinion is that, so far as it does exist, the Germans are no vainer, au fond, than any other people; but that what vanity they possess is of a surface, childlike type, more quickly recognized, but rather less offensive, than the vanity of, say, an Englishman.

But to return to the Maennerchor.

The managers had, of late, at the instigation of the Ladies’ Chorus, issued invitations to a Kaffee-Visite, as it was officially termed; familiarly known as a “Kaffee Klatsch,” or Coffee Scandal. The ladies were to meet at three o’clock, said the program (and we assure our readers that we translate from a veritable document), in the club-house parlor; from three to five was to be theirs alone.

“Needle-work, Gossip, Stocking-knitting,” said the program, with a shriek of triumph. At five was to be served the “Ladies’ Coffee;” from 6.30 to 8.30, “Supper for Gentlemen;” and this exceedingly unsociable arrangement having been carried to its lame and impotent conclusion, the concert, or Abendunterhaltung, would begin at nine, under the auspices of the Ladies’ Chorus.

In its primary aspect, the Kaffee-Visite was emphatically what is jocularly known as a “Dutch treat.” The refreshments were in charge of two or more ladies, in rotation, called the Committee, who undertook all the expense and took charge of the modest receipts, fifteen cents being the charge for each person’s supper. The receipts and expenses usually balanced with tolerable evenness, the gains of the Committee never amounting to a sum which compensated for their trouble, while anxiety of mind lest the incomings should not equal the outlay was written on their foreheads during the early part of the evening.

When Karl Metzerott arrived on the occasion we have selected for description, the “Ladies’ Coffee” was over, and the little parlor was full of uproarious Herren, the ladies having repaired to the Hall upstairs. All parties were full of true German enjoyment, heightened by the independence and freedom from sense of obligation only possible at a real “Dutch treat.” Everybody was host, everybody was guest; the Committee waited on the tables, and passed small jokes, with the coffee and cold tongue, and the convives roared with laughter as they disposed of the viands with a business-like rapidity, which, in part, accounted for the smallness of the profits.

Strains of music had already begun to resound from the Hall, as Metzerott finished his repast.

“The girls are enjoying themselves,” he said, smiling, to his neighbor, who happened to be Leppel Rolf; but an obese little man opposite called out,—

“Enjoying? But how can they, with no partners to whirl them around? When I was your age, Karl, would I have been so lazy? No, my arm would have been round the prettiest waist in the lot long ago. Hurry, lazy fellow!”

There was a roar from the tableful at this sally, for the speaker was well known as the shyest of men where “ladies” were in question. It was even asserted that he had never found courage to ask the decisive question of his wife, but that the marriage had been arranged by his mother.

“If there are no partners at all up yonder,” replied Metzerott, “there is no need to hurry. They’ll wait till I come.”

His voice was a deep bass, rich and mellow; his enunciation slow but distinct, his pronunciation and accent those of the public schools, aided by care and thought at home. A shrill falsetto voice followed his reply with:—

“Vanitas vanitatum. If you have so much vanity, Herr Metzerott, I must make you a pastoral visit.”

Karl turned, and leisurely surveyed the speaker. The remark struck him as in a degree personal, from one whom he had met for the first time half an hour before. The Rev. Otto Schaefer, however, as he stood under the full light of the parlor chandelier, seemed rather to court than to avoid scrutiny. He was a man who could be best described by the one word, insignificant. His height was five feet one, his proportions thin to meagreness, his hair and beard of scant quantity, and not even so red as they might have been; his voice thin and unmusical. He had been in America only two years, in Micklegard not a fortnight; had recently lost his wife, and was said to be looking out for another, in which search, though the possessor of six small children and a limited income, there was no doubt he would very soon be successful.

“But you know I’m a free-thinker,” said Metzerott.

The Rev. Otto laughed. “I’ll soon cure you of that,” he said. “I have studied nothing else but the Bible all my life, and I believe in it, so why can’t you?”

“Because I have studied other things,” replied Karl dryly, whereupon he was dragged away by Rolf and the obese little man, both crying, “No theology, no religion to-night; let us dance.”

Their progress towards the Hall being somewhat retarded by Karl’s playful resistance, they found, upon reaching it, that the Herr Pastor had preceded them, and was making a sort of triumphal progress up through its very fair proportions; shaking hands right and left with the lambs of his flock. At the end of the Hall, close by the stage, stood the piano, where the wife of the obese little man was rattling off a waltz with considerable spirit. The floor was full of whirling Tänzerinen, here and there embraced by a Tänzer. Metzerott, who was really, like all Germans, fond of dancing, made his way to a group near the piano, among whom Anna Rolf’s tall form was conspicuous.

“Dance!” she cried, in answer to his request, “why, of course I will; I’d dance with the Wild Huntsman if he were here to ask me.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Karl. “My mother believes in him as she does in”—

He hesitated, and Anna playfully held up her finger. “No wicked speeches,” she said; “your mother is a good woman, much better than you.”

“Oh! she’s good enough,” the man said carelessly. “I don’t see what that has to do with it, though; any one can be good who tries.”

“Then I’m not any one,” said Anna; “for I never was good in my life, and I’m sure I’ve tried.”

“Leppel thinks you are good,—the best of wives,” said Karl, with an indulgent smile.

“Oh! I’m good to him,” replied Anna, “and so I ought, for he is the best of husbands; then I am clever, industrious, economical, and good-tempered, I know very well; but I’m not religious, though I should like to be.”

“Religion is all nonsense, and the religious man”—and here he was suddenly struck dumb.

“Ah! you dare not speak slanders against religion, so near the Herr Pastor,” said Anna, looking up into his face with amused curiosity, as they whirled away again, Karl waltzing on mechanically, because in his confused state of mind it was easier to do so than to stop. “That girl in gray is the one they say he will marry. Eh? you are dancing horribly, Karl;” as they collided violently with another couple. “Suppose we stop.”

She dropped into the nearest chair, and fanned herself briskly with her handkerchief, while her partner stood aside, and mentally regained his feet, after the shock that had overthrown him. Yet what was it after all? Had he lived to his present age without seriously loving; pleased here or there, it might be, by a voice or a face, which he forgot the next moment, to be thus vanquished in the twinkling of an eye? It was impossible! Why, he could not even recall, now that she was beyond his immediate vision, a single feature; only a cloud of golden curls on a low, childlike brow, and a soft gray tint surrounding her that might have been an angel’s robe, he thought, if there were angels.

Poor Karl! and above all poor Dora! For the gray frock had been pinched and saved for as a wedding dress, if the young man whom she had crossed the ocean to find had but lived to welcome her. Anna had guessed aright, that his savings had gone to his relations; and Dora, in the midst of her grief and bewilderment, had been forced to look out for some way of supporting herself. For two years she had been nursery governess to two riotous boys, who adored and tyrannized over her; and under whose vigorous kicks and caresses her nature had slowly recovered from the shock it had received. Yet she had with difficulty persuaded herself to accept an invitation to accompany the wife of the obese little man to the Kaffee Klatsch this afternoon; but, that difficulty having been surmounted, wearing her wedding dress followed as a thing of course. It cost her a pang, no doubt, but she had nothing else.

Just how the rest of the evening passed, Karl Metzerott could never after give a coherent account, even to himself. Somehow, somewhere, he was introduced to Dora; he sat near her during the concert, silent, and apparently not looking at her, yet he knew her features well by that time, and could almost have specified the number of her eyelashes.

Then he took her home, actually superseding the Herr Pastor in so doing. They talked but little on the way; when they had nearly reached her home, Karl said,—

“You are not betrothed to the Herr Pastor, Fräulein Dora?”

“No, indeed, he has never asked me,” she replied, laughing and blushing a little, but looking up into his face with childlike, innocent directness. Perhaps little Dora was scarcely the beauty that Karl fancied her; Anna’s description, “a baby face, and frightened ways,” was much more accurate than any he could have given. But her large, blue eyes, with their long, golden lashes, were really beautiful; and nothing could have so moved the man beside her as the sight of that shy timidity, changed into calm reliance on his strength.

“But you would not marry him, nicht wahr? He is poor, he is a fool, and he has six children.”

“And he is very ugly,” said naughty Dora, deserting, without a pang, her oldest friend in America.

“He is very ugly indeed,” said Karl Metzerott, in a tone of deep conviction; “God be thanked therefor.”

And Dora, though she laughed and blushed still deeper, found it most convenient not to inquire his exact meaning.

CHAPTER II.
THE PASTOR’S BLUE APRON.

Pastor Schaefer was in serious trouble. It was the 22d of December, and his Christmas sermon was still unprepared: worse still, it stood every possible chance of remaining so; for how on earth was a man to consider texts, headings, arguments, or perorations, who had a house and six small children to care for, and a housekeeper whose brother had just been inconsiderate enough to die? In truth, however, it was rather the housekeeper who should be blamed for want of consideration, since the brother would very likely have remained alive if he had been consulted about the matter; whereas Mary, the housekeeper, could certainly have restrained her grief sufficiently to take the sausages off the fire!

It was early that same morning that it had all happened, though the brother had been in a dying condition for several weeks, ever since he had fallen from a ladder during the operation of hod-carrying, and fractured his skull. Therefore Mary’s mind had certainly had time to prepare itself for the shock; indeed the pastor’s children had become so accustomed to hearing her shriek wildly every time there came a knock at the door, under the supposition that the knocker brought news of her brother’s death, that, when this event really happened, little Bruno, the third from youngest, said solemnly, “Poor Mary’s brother is dead again;” but nobody supposed it was actually so.

“You had better hold still, and have your hair brushed,” said Christina a little sharply. Poor Tina was only nine years old, yet felt herself, as the eldest, responsible for the family; and the responsibility was apt to re-act on her temper. So they all hurried to finish dressing (for the odors of breakfast were unusually strong), and descended in procession to the kitchen, Tina first, leading Heinz, who was two and a half, and apt, when left to himself, to make only one step, and that head first, from bedroom to kitchen. He had fallen downstairs and landed on his head so often, that Tina said she did not believe he minded it at all. Next to him came Bruno, with Gretchen, who was six, and a person to whom nothing, good or bad, ever happened; then Franz, who was eight, and very useful in splitting wood, clearing away snow, and running errands; and then the father, carrying Lena, the six-months-old baby, at whose birth their mother had died.

“Poor Mary!” said Heinz.

The procession abruptly halted.

The children’s tongues had been running so fast about the nearness of Christmas, and what gifts the Christ-child might be expected to deposit in their shoes, that no one heard a sound from the kitchen until they had almost reached the lowest step.

“Tina, but why do you stop there?” cried the pastor, who at the turn, with the baby in his arms, could see nothing of what was happening below. “Go ahead!” he added in English, being very anxious that his children should acquire the language of their adopted country.

They were good children, and did their best to obey. Heinz made a flying leap down two steps, and, being withheld by Tina’s grasp upon his petticoats from landing on his head, brought some other portion of his anatomy, less toughened by hard knocks, in contact with the steps, whereupon he howled like the last of the Wampanoags. Tina, from the violence of the exertion, fell back upon Bruno and Gretchen, and Franz made two long steps over everybody’s head, and landed first of all in the kitchen.

“Donnerwetter!” said the pastor under his breath, but from the bottom of his heart.

There sat Mary on the floor, her apron over her head, howling like a legion of wolves; Heinz was singing the tenor of the same song, the baby added a soprano, Tina rubbed her back, and Bruno, with doubled fists, attacked Franz, who, he averred, had kicked him on the head in passing. Gretchen alone retained sufficient equanimity to realize the full situation.

“Oh, Tina!” she cried, “the coffee is all boiled over, and the sausages burnt to nothing at all.”

“When your mother died,” said the pastor solemnly, after they had eaten such breakfast as was possible under the circumstances, “when your dear mother died, children, I had no time to sit and weep. And I was able to do all that I had to do; but Mary, it seems, was not able even to move back the sausages. Come, let us wash the dishes.”

Matters did not improve as the day went on. There never were better children than Heinz and Bruno; but when one had upset the dishwater, and the other fallen against the stove, in their eagerness to be of use, and they had consequently been turned adrift on the wide world, pray, could they be expected to be as quiet as mice? It was quite natural they should find their way to the pastor’s study, where there was an excellent fire; natural, too, that the thought of tidying the room, as an atonement for their presence there and previous misadventures, should occur to them; and most natural of all that they should upset the lamp over a valuable book, which had been a college prize of their father’s.

Then it was certainly not the baby’s fault if she had a tooth nearly through, and was cross about it; nor Tina’s if she was too small to handle the tea-kettle dexterously, and so poured the boiling water over her foot, instead of into the basin; but when the kitchen door was opened by Frau Kellar, the wife of the obese little man, and her niece, this was the situation. Heinz and Bruno were seated in different corners of the room, with orders not to move hand or foot until permitted; Christina, in a third, was contemplating her injured member, bandaged, and supported on a pillow; Gretchen, to whom nothing ever happened, rocked the baby in the middle of the floor; and the pastor, with his coat off, and a blue check apron tied around his waist, was bending over the stove, frying cabbage.

“You poor fellow!” said Frau Kellar, “though begging your pardon for the word, Herr Pastor. Gott! but you must have the patience of Job!”

“Oh, no,” said the pastor. “They are good children, all. It is not their fault if they are young and little; but of course it is hard for a man,” he added wearily.

“I should say so!” cried Frau Kellar; “but now here is my niece Lottie, who will stay to-day, and to-morrow for that matter, and help you.”

“She is very good,” said the pastor, looking up admiringly at Lottie, a tall, florid, good-natured-looking girl, who had already caught up the baby, and hushed its wailing on her substantial shoulder.

“Let Gretchen and the boys go and play with my children,” said Frau Kellar. “Lottie can look after these two, and see to your dinner, and you come into your study with me. There is something I must say to you.”

The pastor meekly obeyed. He was tired out, poor man, mind and body, and disinclined to assert himself; yet he was scarcely prepared for the decided tone of Frau Kellar’s first remark.

“You need a wife, Herr Pastor; you must marry. This state of affairs cannot go on.”

“But I wish to marry,” said the pastor seriously.

Frau Kellar hesitated a moment; there are limits to every woman’s frankness, thank Heaven! especially when she is talking to her pastor. Then she said,—

“Of course you know that Karl Metzerott and Dora Weglein are betrothed?”

The pastor, still in his blue apron, sat somewhat uneasily upon a chair much too high for his short legs. A sufficiently grotesque figure, one would have said, even if his hair had not been so very rumpled, and the hands upon his thin, aproned knees so very grimy; yet, as he straightened his meagre figure and looked Frau Kellar full in the face, there was an unselfish distress upon his ugly little face that dignified his whole personality.

“That man!” he said, “that infidel, that free-thinker!”

“Well, one knew it was sure to happen,” replied Frau Kellar, with a shrug of her ample shoulders; “he has been her shadow ever since the Kaffee-Visite.”

“I tried to hinder it,” said the pastor boldly. “Fräulein Dora is good and pious, and she has no right to marry an atheist. But she only grew angry with me,” he added sadly.

“Of course,” answered Frau Kellar with a laugh, “folks who meddle with mating birds must expect a peck or two. Well, I have no fault to find with Karl, for my part. He is as steady as a rock, and if he chooses to think for himself, it’s no more than every one does nowadays. After all, too little religion is better than too much beer,” she added sagely.

The pastor shook his head. “That may follow,” he said.

“Hardly,” she replied; then, with an access of boldness, “but if she had listened to my advice, Herr Pastor, she would have taken you.”

The pastor did not resent her freedom of speech. “She is very beautiful,” he said sadly, “and who would marry a man with six children, if she could do better?”

Frau Kellar regarded the figure before her with some inward amusement, as she mentally contrasted Dora’s two suitors. “I wonder,” she thought, “if he really considers the six children his only drawback.” Then she said aloud, “If you really wish to know, Herr Pastor, I will tell you. My niece Lottie in there would marry you to-morrow if you asked her.”

“Your niece Lottie?” he said slowly.

“Yes, indeed. And Lottie is a good girl, a very good girl, Herr Pastor; not so young as she has been, perhaps, but you were not born yesterday yourself.”

“No,” he said, “certainly I was not born yesterday.”

“And she would be all the better wife and mother for her thirty years,” continued the match-maker, recklessly subtracting several units from Lottie’s actual attainments. “She is a good worker, too, an excellent cook, and the temper of an angel. And, best of all, Herr Pastor, she has a nice little sum in bank, saved out of her wages. No one knows it, or she’d have offers enough; but Lottie is sharp; she won’t waste her money on any idle good-for-naught. No; but she is tired of living out, and wants a home of her own, and she’d like well enough to be a pastor’s lady. That, you know, gives one a good position.”

“So it does,” said the pastor absently.

“Well, think it over,” said Frau Kellar, rising, “and if it suits you, mention it to Lottie. She’ll stay with you to-day, and you can see what she is for yourself.”

The pastor sat still for a long while after Frau Kellar had left him with his hands upon his knees, gazing into the fire. Presently a tear trickled down his cheek, then another and another. The pastor was weeping the death of his first and only love: for his first marriage had been as business-like a contract as the present proposed arrangement; and his feeling for Dora had been his one romance. But, after all, one cannot live on romance; especially one plus six children, and minus either a wife or a housekeeper. Romance will not mend the broken head or heal the scalded foot: it will not light the kitchen fire or keep the sausages from burning. The pastor might shed a tear or so over his lost golden-haired darling; but business is business, and when the door at last was gently opened, he knew quite well that the buxom figure and smiling face in the doorway were the face and form of his future wife.

“Dinner is ready, Herr Pastor.”

The pastor rose and untied his blue apron.

“Fräulein Lottie,” he said, “this apron belonged to my former wife. I shall not need it, if you are good enough to stay with me: could you, perhaps, make use of it?”

It was the freedom of the city, the investiture with the best robe, the sending of the pallium, the throwing of the handkerchief; and, as she promptly and proudly tied it on, Lottie took seizin of the pastor, his house and children, and all that he had.

CHAPTER III.
A PESSIMIST.

That same afternoon the Reverend Otto paid a pastoral visit to Dorothea Weglein, the lamb who was about to give herself over to the jaws of an infidel and socialistic wolf. His own fate was sealed, as he knew very well; the stalwart Lottie already comported herself with the dignity of a Frau Pastorin; but a certain latent chivalry in the heart of the little man had been developed by his love for Dora, certainly the purest and most unselfish feeling he had ever known; and he would have perilled his dearest possession, his children or his vanity, to avert the fate that was coming upon her.

His way lay from the German quarter of the city, through its business centre, to the region where dwelt the privileged few, where clustered the stately homes of the wealthy manufacturers, for whose sake Micklegard and the world are permitted to exist by an all-wise Providence. Nevertheless, this German quarter deserves more than a passing mention.

It had been originally a distinct settlement, and had only lately been incorporated in the city. There were, as we already know, old people living there who were as ignorant of English as on the day they first trod the shore of America. Indeed they had no especial use for English, since around them were German shopkeepers of all descriptions, as well as German doctors and apothecaries. Over the shop doors stood German signs, German tones resounded on all sides; even the houses, though the ear-marks of America were upon them, had evidently been erected by Germans, and were, for the most part, surrounded by tiny gardens, whose overwhelming luxuriance betokened German thrift upon American soil.

The residence of Mrs. Randolph, Dora’s employer, was at quite the opposite end of the town; the North End, where are the seats of the gods and the horn of plenty. It was a large, square mansion, built of brownstone, and surrounded by a spacious lawn, that sloped down to the river, blackly and barely enough at this Christmas season, but no more uselessly than in summer, when its closely mown turf, too precious to be walked on, might, perhaps, have soothed a tired eye, but otherwise benefited neither man nor beast.

The pastor rang at the side door, and was admitted into a small square hall, luxuriously furnished. A divan ran along two sides, gorgeous tiger-skins lay upon the tiled floor; here and there stood ottomans and lounging-chairs; the walls were decorated with Japanese pottery, pipes of all nations, and swords of not a few; opposite the door a wood fire burned under an elaborately carved mantel-shelf, upon which leaned negligently a tall, finely proportioned man of about thirty, his fair, composed, and slightly sarcastic face distinctly reflected in the mirror above, as he gazed down into the fire.

As he saw the pastor standing, somewhat aimlessly, where he had been left by the servant, this young man took his elbow off the mantel, and advanced a step.

“I have really no right to ask you to sit down in this house,” he said, with a smile that he could not make unkindly, “but if you will do so, I do not suppose any one will object.”

“Perhaps,” said the pastor, slightly bewildered by this mode of address, and not quite sure that he had fully understood his interlocutor. He sank vaguely into the nearest chair, and gazed around him so helplessly that his companion, partly from pity and partly from a certain nervousness which he would by no means have acknowledged, was impelled to continue the conversation.

“You are a German, and a minister, nicht wahr?” he said, in the other’s native language.

“Ja, gewiss!” said the pastor delightedly. “I am the Pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church.”

“So? And you find the sheep of your pasture obey your words? or is the crook sometimes needful to coerce them into the right way?”

“They are as good as other people,” returned the pastor, relapsing into bewilderment. His questioner shrugged slightly his shapely shoulders, as he turned away to his old position. “You are happy if they are no worse,” he said.

At the same moment, he started into sudden vigor and alertness, with a gleam in his eye that told of eagerness for the fray. A heavy silk curtain that hung beside the fireplace was suddenly swept aside, with an angry rattle of rings upon a brass rod, and in the opening appeared a handsome, stately, well-dressed woman, of something more than his own age.

“Dr. Richards, I will speak with you in a moment; I wish I could say that I am glad to see you. Herr Schaefer, you wish to see Fräulein Dora?” Her tone was sharply military rather than rude; but contrasted a little absurdly with the meek obsequiousness of the pastor’s reply.

“If you permit me, gracious lady,” he said, executing his fifth bow.

“I shall be delighted if you can make her see the error of her present course,” said Mrs. Randolph. “You have heard of her betrothal, I suppose? Betrothal, indeed! Upon my word, I think all the girls have gone crazy together!”

The corners of Dr. Richards’s mouth twitched amusedly.

“So?” he said, under his breath; but perhaps the lady caught the sound, or saw the movement of his lips in the mirror, for she grew suddenly very red as she motioned the pastor towards the doorway.

“You will find a servant just beyond, who will direct you,” she said, “and I hope you will succeed in convincing Fräulein Dora that marriage to one of Karl Metzerott’s opinions can bring her nothing but misery. And now, Dr. Richards”—

“If you will pardon the interruption,” said that young man easily, “I wish to say that, although quite unacquainted with the peculiar tenets of the person referred to, I am entirely at one with you in believing marriage to one of any opinions so exceedingly likely to lead to misery that an opposite result can only be considered a happy accident.”

Mrs. Randolph stared into his calm face with angry amazement.

“And you ask my sister to expose herself to such a future?” she said. “I am at a loss to understand you, sir.”

“My dear madam, misery is, unfortunately, peculiar to no state of life. I love your sister, and she is good enough to love me. Such being the case, if she prefer misery with me to misery without me, I can only say that I share her taste, and will do my best to make her as little miserable as fate may permit.”

“If your efforts prove as weak as your arguments, Dr. Richards, that ‘best’ will be a very poor one. ‘Misery without you!’ Why, I will give Alice one year, just one, in America, or six months in Paris, to forget you, and be as happy as a queen.”

“I have always heard,” said Dr. Richards, coolly, “that good Americans go to Paris when they die, so perhaps you may be right.”

“You mean she will never forget you while she lives?” asked the lady scornfully.

“I mean that if you can make her forget me, you are quite welcome to try.”

“Ah! this is coming to the point, indeed. I am glad to find you so sensible. So you will not oppose her going abroad with us?”

“I shall not oppose anything that Miss Randolph wishes.”

The lady frowned, knowing well in what direction those wishes tended; but, before she could answer, the silken curtain was gently moved by the hand of a young girl, whose appearance filled Frederick Richards’s blue eyes with the light of anything but misery.

She was about eighteen, of medium height, and slender, with the unconscious grace of a gazelle. Gazelle-like, too, were the large, brown, trustful eyes, her only really beautiful feature, though the brown abundance of her hair, the delicately roseate cheeks and scarlet lips, made her very charming, at least in one pair of eyes. But to us who are present in the spirit, dear reader, at this interview, the most noticeable thing about Alice Randolph is that, despite the shy grace of every movement, and the childlike innocence of the face, we read at once that she will not quail before any pain the future may hold in store for her. Suffer she will; blench or falter, she will not.

She did not speak as she entered the room, but went quietly to Dr. Richards’s side, looked for one instant into his face, and laid her hand in his.

Certainly they seemed well matched, for he also was silent as he held fast the hand she had given him. Then his firm lips curved into a triumphant smile. “Well, Mrs. Randolph?” he said.

The lady’s face flushed again, rather unbecomingly.

“There is only this to be said,” she cried angrily, “Alice, by her father’s will, cannot marry without my husband’s consent, or she forfeits every penny she has in the world. If you marry a beggar”—

“You forget, my dear madam; at twenty-five she becomes her own mistress.”

“Ah? you have read the will? That accounts for your prophecies of misery.”

“Wrong, Mrs. Randolph. I have not read your father-in-law’s will, though I shall make it a point to do so as soon as possible. I know only what Alice has told me, and hence am well aware that she will lose her fortune in the event of becoming my wife.”

“Yet you urge her to do so!”

“You mistake. I leave her to decide for herself.”

“Harry would not refuse his consent if it were not for you,” interposed Alice. “It is really you who oppose us, Jennie.”

“And have I not good cause?” cried Mrs. Randolph. “Would your father himself have consented to your marriage with an infidel, an atheist?”

Alice Randolph grew pale, then flushed deeply as she hesitated to reply, while her sister looked on, in her turn triumphantly.

A sparkle came into the blue eyes of her lover as they searched hers. “That,” he said, “is a strong argument, Alice. Weigh it well, and dispose of it once for all. If you marry me, I don’t want that to contend with. I am an atheist, for I cannot believe in a God who leaves nine-tenths of his creatures to hopeless suffering.”

She gave the other hand to his clasp, and looked up trustfully into his face.

“It is a great mystery,” she said, “but I don’t think my giving you up would help you to solve it.”

“If it can be solved,” he answered.

“I have never tried,” she said; “my life has been so sheltered, I know almost nothing of the pain that is in the world. But you will tell me, and perhaps we may solve the mystery together.”

For all answer he stooped and kissed her.

Mrs. Randolph was furious,—and slightly undignified.

“Very well,” she cried, “go to perdition your own way, Alice Randolph. I have tried to be a mother to you, and this is my reward. You will lose not only your money but your soul, by marrying that man.”

“Be consoled, my dear madam,” returned the young man, sarcastically, “the first will be very useful to you and your children; the second can be of no benefit to any one but the owner. For my part, though I should find it hard to justify myself in holding property under the present régime, I am not exactly a beggar. My practice is a good one, and I can maintain my wife in comfort, if not in luxury.”

“And if your health should fail, or you should die?” sneered Mrs. Randolph.

“And if Mr. Randolph’s calculations should fail, his workmen strike, and his mill burn down?” he answered coolly. “In the present state of things, Mrs. Randolph, a shade more or less of uncertainty as to the future is of very little moment. It is settled, then, Alice?”

“Yes,” she said softly; then her eyes suddenly flashed, her cheeks grew crimson; she turned upon her sister with the air of a lioness defending her young.

“Do you suppose I have not seen,” she cried, “how you wish me to marry him while pretending to oppose it? I am ashamed for you, Jennie, ashamed to put your motive into words, because you are my brother’s wife. But don’t delude yourself with the idea that it is your work; I would have given up the money in any case rather than force him to act against what he believes to be right; and I love him so dearly that I had rather endure misery, cold, and hunger with him than to be a queen without him.”

Here, woman-like, her vehemence resolved itself into a burst of tears, and, turning, she threw herself into the arms that were open to receive her.

CHAPTER IV.
DREAMS AND DREAMERS.

Dora Weglein belonged to that large class of women in whom the heart is far stronger than the head. Such women feel strongly, but reason weakly; if the feeling be pure and right, their actions are the same; but if selfishness clog the action of the heart, there is no head to appeal to. These are the women who never theorize, or else theorize wide of the mark, and whose husbands often are the happiest, whose children are the best-behaved in the world.

Alice Randolph, on the contrary, was a woman of theory. It was to her impossible to act without a clear knowledge of all the laws that ought to govern such action; hence, as time and tide wait for no man, the opportunity for action often passed while she was weighing pros and cons; and hence, also, she frequently came to doubt the correctness of her own conclusions, when their resulting action had lapsed into the past.

That two women so different, when placed in circumstances almost exactly similar, should choose the same course, is at least noteworthy; indeed Alice found it rather too much noted. She was not aware of any sort of reprehensible pride. It certainly would have mattered little to her if Frederick Richards had been the son of a hangman, to put it as strongly as possible, and she had proved herself not purse-proud; but it was—yes, it was—very galling to be always likened and compared to Dorothea Weglein, her sister’s German nursery governess. But in truth a woman of theory and one of feeling (or shall I say instinct? It is a good old word, and, while perhaps not strictly scientific, expresses my meaning fairly well)—women of theory and women of instinct, then, are only too apt mutually to look down upon and scorn one another. Dora, however, loved and admired Miss Alice, and was strengthened in allegiance to her lover by the knowledge of her young lady’s course.

“It is beautiful that she gives up all her money,” she said to Karl, as they walked towards his home on the Sunday afternoon when, as his betrothed, she was in all solemnity to take tea with his mother.

“She may be glad of it some day,” he answered grimly. “When the people get their rights, they will have a heavy score to settle with Henry Randolph. He has a heart as hard as his own nails.”

“Ach, how terrible!” sighed little Dora. “But the money is good all the same, Karl.”

“It is stained with blood,” he said. “I am glad you are to touch little more of it.”

Whereupon Dora began to cry, as she told him of the check Mr. Randolph had slipped into her hand that morning, and which would be so convenient in buying her wedding outfit.

“And he called me a good girl, Karl, and said you should be a happy man. I think his heart cannot be so very hard. Rich people are sometimes so kind, they cannot be all bad. Must I give him back the money?”

“Keep it, keep it,” said Karl gloomily. “You have a right to more than that, you who have slaved for him so long. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cry and spoil your pretty eyes,” he added tenderly.

Dora and Alice were married on the same day, though not by design, or even with the knowledge of the latter, who had, to the grief and dismay of the little governess, lately turned a deaf ear to all confidences, and even frowned coldly upon proffered sympathy. Unamiable, very; but Alice had never been particularly amiable. It was a necessity that both, if they married at all, should do so before the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph for New York, whence they were to sail for Europe; and so, one morning, Alice Randolph, quite alone, stepped into the carriage her lover had brought, entered St. Mark’s Church a rich woman, and left it without a penny in the world, except what she had in her purse.

“And you are sure you will never repent, Alice, my darling?” asked her husband, when they stood together in the little parlor of the home he had prepared for her. “It was hard for you, dear, with not a sister or a friend to look on at your marriage. Are you quite sure you do not regret?”

“What, already?” she answered, laughing. “You might at least give me time. No, sir, I’m not sorry yet, and never expect to be, in spite of your pessimism.”

“I hope your optimism may be right, my darling.”

“I will make it right,” she cried defiantly, not of him but fate; “and as for friends, whom do I want but you? Don’t you suppose I could have had scores of bridemaids?—girls who would have called you ‘too sweet for anything,’ and considered it ‘so romantic’ to have one’s only brother”—her eyes filled, but she shook off the tears and went on merrily. “No, sir, I don’t repent as yet, and don’t mean to; but, if ever I should, I am very much afraid that you will be certain to find it out.”

Dora’s wedding took place that same afternoon, but with scarcely more pomp or circumstance. She had been staying for some days with Frau Kellar, and in the immediate neighborhood of the Herr Pastor, to whom, long ere this, the buxom Lottie had gained a legal title. The pastor’s experience in haling into the narrow path this wandering lamb had not been such as to encourage any further effort on her behalf; in fact, the lamb had shown, if not the teeth of a wolf, at least the claws of a cat, and had given her spiritual guide to understand that she was perfectly competent to direct her own goings in the way.

“We love each other, Herr Pastor,” she had said, “and the good God would not have put that into our hearts if He had wished us not to marry.”

“But the man is an infidel, Fräulein Dora; he does not believe in God.”

“That is nothing,” answered Dora, smiling. If she had been able to put into words what she meant, it would have been something like this, perhaps,—

“Love is of God, and God is love: Karl loves, therefore he partakes of the being of God; and whether he professes to believe in Him or not is of very little consequence.”

But carefully remember, dear reader, I am not justifying little Dora in this conclusion, only stating the argument as she would have done, had her mental powers been cultivated up to syllogisms.

The pastor, however, understood her to mean that belief or unbelief were equally Nichts, and went away sorrowful. But Karl Metzerott, when he heard of the conversation, was exceeding wroth, and expressed himself with great force, in a string of German nouns and adjectives, some of which began with “ver,” while others referred to well-known atmospheric phenomena. No such person, he said, should marry a dog or cat that belonged to him, Karl Metzerott; if Dora objected to a justice of the peace, there was the Calvinist minister, and plenty of Americans in the same business, more was the pity. All ministers were thieves and rogues, anyhow, said Karl Metzerott, living on the charity of their parishioners under pretence of saving their souls. Souls, indeed!

It was not often that Karl found words for his thoughts to such an extent as this; but gentle little Dora was unmoved by the torrent of eloquence. She would not be married by any one but a minister of God, she said; but that minister need be by no means the Rev. Otto Schaefer. “Though, for her part, and though she had been angry at the time, Dora would always believe that the Herr Pastor was a good little man, and meant well.”

“He meant to marry you himself, if you call that meaning well,” growled Karl.

And so they were married by the Episcopal clergyman, who in the morning of the same day had united Frederick and Alice; selected by Dora, indeed, for that very reason; a clergyman of the old, indolent sort, now happily almost unknown, who married all that were set before him, pocketed his fee, and asked no questions for conscience sake. He shall not trouble the reader again, and is of importance here only because, having been Alice’s pastor all her life, she was not likely to have been aroused by his walk or conversation to any consciousness of the deep things of the spiritual life.

After the ceremony, the happy pair and their friends, who had witnessed the marriage, partook of a social tea, for which Frau Kellar provided house-room, and the bridegroom paid; then, husband and wife went home to their little three-roomed dwelling, and the new life began.

And then—for a while—how Karl would have laughed at any pessimistic theories. As for Dora, she would not have known a theory of any description, if she had stumbled across one. But she was very, very happy, our little Dora! Life had not been easy to her,—an orphan, maintained and educated by grudging fraternal care, and with her early hope nipped, in its first flower, by the frost of death. Now, surrounded by love, her nature blossomed into a wonderful luxuriance; the wistful blue eyes grew full of laughter, the sad lips smiled, and the cheeks grew rosy. She was as merrily busy all day long as a child at play; and Frau Metzerott the elder found her a daughter beyond her dreams.

Shoemaker Karl said little; but no king upon his throne ever more intensely believed his wife a queen among women. All day he could hear her blithe, sweet voice, singing over her work, or chatting and laughing with his mother, who had suddenly failed, now that she had some one to rest her cares upon. It mattered little, she said; Dora was eyes, hands, and feet to her; she had worked hard enough in her time, now she could rest. And so she lay and rested under her gay, patchwork quilt, upon her testered bed, while Dora bustled cheerfully about the tiny kitchen. In the evening, when work was over, she would often draw the old candle-stand to the bedside, and, with the yellow lamplight shining on her golden hair, read aloud from the heavy yellowed pages of the old German Bible, while Karl sat near with his pipe. Not that he listened, except to the soft murmur of his wife’s sweet voice; yet the unheeded words returned to him in after years, stirring always a new throb of misery.

But at the time the Bible-reading served as a not unpleasant accompaniment to his pipe, which he would not for worlds have disturbed or interfered with. “Religion was an excellent thing for women,” said Karl Metzerott.

During the following summer occurred the great Sängerfest, the first held by the Sängerbund to which belonged the Micklegard Männerchor. Karl had been married nearly six months at the time, and when we say that in all probability he would not have gone if he could not have taken Dora, we have sufficiently indicated that he was still very much in love with his wife. Fortunately, Laketon, where the Fest was held, is only a short journey by rail from Micklegard, so that travelling expenses were light; and he had cousins in Laketon with whom they could board very reasonably; nevertheless, the sum expended made a hole in Karl’s savings-bank account, at which he would have shaken his head dismally a year before.

With the Sängerfest itself we have nothing to do. Of course there were processions, concerts, balls, and all the rest of the routine with which Americans have since become so familiar; but the only noticeable incident for us is that when, as their contribution to the prize singing, the Micklegard Männerchor gave that sweetest of German Volkslieder, “Bei’m Liebchen zu Haus,” the audience arose as one man and applauded to the very echo. The prize was theirs; a result to which, in Dora’s opinion, Karl’s rich bass had not a little contributed.

She was thinking blissfully of this and other matters, in the train that bore her homewards, when her attention was attracted to a conversation going on between two young men who occupied the seat before her. They were students of the Laketon University, though this Dora could not be expected to know; and as one was Irish and the other a German, even more prone than is the case with students in general to discuss all things in heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. They spoke in English or German as suited their subject-matter or the impulse of the moment, and the first words that caught Dora’s attention were these:—

“Have I ever objected to Socialism in itself?”

“What do you call its Self? You seem to object to its most necessary elements.”

“By no means. I only say that you Socialists are short-sighted, and seem to adopt the very measures best calculated to defeat your own ends.”

“Specify, specify!” growled the German.

“With pleasure. The end at which you profess to aim is a universal brotherhood among men, a sort of lion and lamb lying down together all over the world; yet you go to work, with your secret plots and your assassinations, as if you were preparing for another Reign of Terror.”

“The Reign of Terror may be necessary beforehand.”

“Very long beforehand, then. You know the story of the tiger who has once tasted blood. Teaching men to murder makes them murderers; no less. You can’t build your social republic out of unsocial Republicans, dear boy.”

“Oh! get along with your Irish sophistry! A social republic, as you call it, seems to be, in your eyes, another Donnybrook Fair!”

“Take your time,” said the Irishman. “When a fellow falls back on old Donnybrook, I know he’s hard pressed for an argument.”

“I could prove to you in five minutes that tyrannicide is not murder, any more than tiger-hunting; and”—warned by a twinkle in the blue Irish eye,—“far more righteous than ordinary capital punishment. But, passing that over for the time, I should like to know what means you would employ to build a social republic, supposing you wanted one?”

“Do you suppose I should not hail the advent of true Socialism as the dawn of new light and life for the world?”

“Eh? a new convert! But stop! there was a qualifying word. True Socialism; that is, with all its distinctive features omitted.”

“Not at all. Socialism with all its vital organs strengthened and purified; in short—Christianity.”

“I thought so! Christianity! Why, Christianity has had her fling for eighteen centuries, and what has she done?”

“The first thing she did was to establish a commune,” replied the Irishman. “You can read a full account of it in the Book of Acts, including the history of some weak disciples, who, having perhaps been trained in tiger-hunting, were not fully equal to the occasion during a reign of peace. As the first recorded experiment in Socialism, it ought to interest you.”

“But the experiment failed.”

“Failed? In the reign of Tiberius, with Nero and Caligula and all those fellows to come after? Well, rather! The world wasn’t quite ready for it, not by some eighteen centuries, so Christianity fell back on her intrenchments, as you might say, and, while she reserved the spirit of Socialism, let go the letter.”

“She did, did she? why, Christians.”

“I’m not talking about Christians. We’re a bad lot, most of us, but it’s because we don’t live up to our principles. You read over your Gospels, old boy, and tell me whether, if they really and vitally influenced the lives of the majority of Americans, Socialism in its essence—that is, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—would not follow as a matter of course.”

“Oh! perhaps, yes. I don’t quarrel with your religion as a system of morality, Clare. It is”—

“I know; miracles. But how a fellow who, not content with making bricks without straw, tries to build a house by tearing up the foundations, can quarrel with miracles, passes my comprehension. Look here. Do you not know that it is a waste of time to reform society from the outside, and especially by main force? The worm at the root of the social tree, my dear fellow, is sin. How do you propose to get rid of it?”

“Ah, there indeed,” sighed the German, his metaphysical soul rising to the bait, “you start the great religious problem, my friend, with which Zoroaster, Buddha, and other religious teachers have grappled.”

“And which only Christ has solved,” said Ernest Clare.

Whereupon they rushed into a discussion which, taking by and by another turn, led them into transcendental mathematics, and the possible existence of worlds or universes where a fourth dimension forms part of the usual order of things; with many wild fancies as to the type of inhabitants such universes may possess. When Karl hurried back from the other end of the car to fetch his wife and change cars for Micklegard, they were still hard at it.

That night Dora had a singular dream. She stood in a world which formed part of one of those universes of which Clare and his companion had spoken; a universe which admits a fourth, even perhaps a fifth, dimension, and which must therefore differ so widely from our earth even in the primary elements that compose what here we call land and water, that any attempt to describe it were but as the meaningless babble of an infant.

In the world whereon she stood or floated—for our commonplace to them would be miraculous, while what we call miracle is there a daily happening—there was a stir and moving to and fro, as of leaves swayed by a sudden breeze. One of their number had willed to leave them, and seeking our earth—known to him as the theatre of the wondrous drama of redemption—to don our uniform of flesh and strike one good blow against sin. And this, by a law of his world, was possible to him.

He stood, a tall, radiant figure, before One appointed to hear such requests and decide upon them.

“Have you thought well upon the matter?” it was asked him. “It is nothing that, though you may choose to go or stay, you may by no means choose your post in the battle. No good soldier would grumble at that; nor, to say truth, is the difference between what there they call riches and poverty, high and low, happiness and misery, at all worth considering. But have you thought upon the horribleness, the awful, slimy infectiousness, of the foe you must close with in a death grapple? Have you considered the sinfulness of sin?”

“I have looked upward to the midnight sky,” he made answer, “and have beheld the universe that contains earth floating there, a pale, translucent disk. And when the thought of sin had stained its purity with the hue of blood, I have been as one who, bound and helpless, beholds a fiery serpent approaching, to devour before his eyes a sleeping, innocent babe.”

“But what,” it was urged, “if you should be overcome in the struggle? For the serpent is very strong, and his poison is death.”

“The Life of our King,” he replied, “is stronger than the death of the serpent.”

“But the choice is forever,” he was told. “Victor or vanquished, hither you can never return, save as others have done, in passing from world to world. Man you will be, and man you must remain forever. Also, you will forget your world, your friends; and, though broken visions may float about your infancy, like rainbow hues above the dewdrops of morning, they will vanish all too soon before the coming of that sun of earth.”

“Morning and evening are alike His handiwork,” he replied. “Everywhere and always I shall have Him.”

Then He who had questioned him arose solemnly. “Thou bearest with thee the sign of victory,” He said. “Go in peace.”

And it seemed to Dora as if the tall, radiant form turned upon her, her alone in all that illimitable throng, a face of wondrous and eternal beauty. Close it came, and closer still; now they two were alone in all that measureless universe, and his lips smiled, and the eyes were the eyes of a little child.

“Mother!” he said, and kissed her on the lips; wherewith a strange shuddering thrill of utter bliss shot through every member. She woke to find the daylight streaming in at the curtainless window. Her heart was throbbing heavily, her limbs trembled, and her eyes were full of tears.

CHAPTER V.
“WHEN SORROWS COME.”

Do you know, dear reader, how slowly and heavily fall the first drops of a thunder shower? After a little, when the storm is fully upon us, when the wind crashes in the branches of the trees, and sheets of rain beat against the windows, there is but small account made of a single drop; but at first, after a day of sunshine, ah! how large and ominous they seem; and even so is the first coming of trouble.

It was but a few weeks after the end of the Sängerfest that a change in Leppel Rolf which had long been silently operative, began to manifest itself in his outward man. He grew morose in speech and manner, shabby in his clothing, negligent of his daily task, more and more absorbed in his invention, which now neared completion, and as he fondly hoped, success. Meanwhile, the hope brought something far from happiness, whatever might be the case with realization. Anna’s color grew hard, her features sharp, her eyes anxious, under the pressure of dread for the future, and the knowledge that Leppel’s savings and her own had been exhausted to the last penny, and that all which now stood between them and dire want were her husband’s daily wages. And Leppel had been of late more than once sharply reproved by the foreman of the great building firm for which he worked.

Indeed, Anna could not justly blame the foreman. She would have scolded, too, if an employé of hers had been found dreaming over his work, and drawing plans on the smooth pine boards, instead of making them into doors.

“If he had looked at the plans, he would have admired, instead of cursing,” growled Leppel.

“Not if they delayed work he had contracted to finish by a certain time,” returned Anna shrewdly. “Everything in its own time and place, Leppel; should I get through the work I do, if I did not remember that?”

Anna’s practical, clear-seeing spirit did not know the power of an idea stronger than itself; it was no wonder she lacked patience. Meanwhile troubles dropped faster and faster both upon herself and her neighbors.

The old Frau did not wait to receive the little grandson who came when the June roses bloomed over the land, as beautiful and sweet as they. Life and death lay together under the shoemaker’s roof; the old life passively drifting out of the world, as the young life struggled into being. It was terrible for Dora, said all the gossips; but, fortunately, Dora was one of those happy persons who take everything quietly, so it seemed to do her no harm. Anna Rolf was at the house day and night, and managed everything, in spite of the fact that her own domestic anxieties were daily on the increase. It was owing to her, she always said afterwards, that little Louis had such splendid health. She “started him right,” and the start is just everything to a baby!

There never was such a baby! Of course not. Others might be as pretty, perhaps as bright and knowing, but what baby ever was so good and loving since the world began, or cooed in such varied tones, as sweet as the notes of an angel’s harp? There was no doubt about it, he was certainly a remarkable child; and as the young mother lay upon her bed in the hot, close room, or by and by went about her work again in the kitchen beneath, many an old tale returned to her mind that she had heard in her German home, of beings from the upper air, higher intelligences who had come down to teach and bless our sinful earth. Her wonderful dream also returned to her many times, and, bending over the little form, she strove to trace in the unconscious baby features some resemblance to that strange and beautiful face that had looked so lovingly into hers. And at times she quite believed she could; when little Louis’ eyes were suddenly opened, and he looked into her face with that strange, grave look, the resemblance was wonderful, thought Dora.

These thoughts she kept to herself; they were sweet and beautiful, but Karl would only have laughed at her for them, willing as he was to agree that such a baby as their boy had seldom, if ever, been seen before.

The grandmother’s testered bed was very convenient for Louis to lie upon while Dora was busy. They remembered the old Frau tenderly. “She was a good woman and a hard worker,” Karl had said gravely. But she was now reaping the reward of her goodness. Was it possible to wish her back into such a world as this, especially as her funeral expenses and Dora’s illness had brought their savings very low indeed?

And trade began to fall off.

Karl Metzerott had a certain reputation in his own quarter of Micklegard for the excellence of his work. His shoes were not fancy shoes, he was wont to say, but he used only the best leather, and they were every stitch hand-made. One pair of them would outlast two pairs of machine-made shoes, he said, and then be half-soled to look as good as new. But there was no denying that the machine-made shoes were cheaper to begin with, whatever they might be in the end; and when business is bad all over the country, money as tight as wax, and the air filled with rumors of a general financial crisis, and complaints of over-production,—whatever that may be,—why, people will wear the cheapest things they can find. Perhaps they reason that the sooner the things wear out the sooner will the demand catch up with the supply, and the evil of over-production be remedied; or perhaps it is simply that if a man have five dollars to buy shoes for his entire family, he must make it go as far as it will, rather than spend it all on one member (or pair of members), letting the rest go barefoot. As to what he shall do when the cheap shoes are gone, why, he must just resort to the expedient of which the rest of us avail ourselves when everything else has proved unsuccessful,—he must trust in Providence.

Whatever the cause, Metzerott saw his best customers pass his door in machine-made shoes; but he did derive a sort of cynical pleasure from noticing how soon the shoes were brought to him to be mended and patched.

“I must work over hours, and lower my prices,” he said to Dora; and, though the latter could not quite understand why he must overwork, when rows of unsold shoes stood upon his shelves, she made no objection, as the idea seemed to comfort him.

Lowering the prices, however, had an excellent effect; and though the shoes were sold at little more than cost, it was certainly less depressing than to see them hanging there so helplessly, or staring from the shelves with their toes turned out in the first position, in such an exasperating manner.

Anna Rolf also felt the hard times, even more than the Metzerotts, since “every woman her own dressmaker” is an easier problem to solve than how to make one’s own shoes. Leppel had been discharged at last,—got the sack, as he expressed it; not before he had richly earned, as one might candidly admit, all that the sack might contain. But oh! for the innocent who suffer with the guilty, in this world of ours! There is never a jewelled cup of gold in the mouth of any sack for them.

Leppel’s family bade fair to have very little in their own mouths for a while, with the father out of work, and Anna expecting to be again laid aside from hers for a season. “But you have no rent to pay, that is one thing,” said Dora comfortingly, “and we will take care of the children, Karl and Louis and I. Do you suppose I can forget how good you were to me?”

Leppel himself could have lived on air, in his present tension of mind and body. His model was at last completed; more, it actually worked. It was indeed a beauteous little machine, and the admiration of the whole quarter; so that, in spite of the hard times, he had been able to borrow five dollars here and ten there, until he had raised enough to pay the necessary fees at the patent-office.

“But if you take my advice,” said one of the lenders (the loans were all to be secured by shares in the patent), “you’ll get a man I know in Washington to look into it for you. I believe he has that patent-office at his finger-ends, and it’s a regular picnic to hear him tell why this model was a failure, and that, not half so good, perhaps, took like hot cakes. Just send your machine to him. It looks to me like a pretty good thing, but”—

“I’ll take it to him,” answered Leppel sharply.

He did take it to him.