and sawed into paling, where thou rottest and art burned after a single summer of me are fashioned battle-ships, and I carry mariners and heroes into unknown seas." The richer a nature, the harder and slower is its development. Two boys were once of a class in the Edinburgh grammar-school: John ever trim, precise, and dux; Walter ever slovenly, confused, and dolt. In due time, John became Baillie John of Hunter-square; and Walter became Sir Walter Scott of the Universe. The quickest and completest of all vegetables, is the-cabbage. II.. "It is I that support this household," said a hen one day to herself; "the master cannot breakfast without an egg, for he is dyspeptical and would die; and it is I that lay it. And here is this ugly poodle, doing nothing earthly, and gets THE DISASTERS OF JAN NADELTREIBER. THERE are a multitude of places on Something of this sort of glory was cast upon the little town of Rapps, in Bohemia, by the hero whose name stands conspicuously at the head of this story; and whose pleasant adventures I flatter myself I am destined still further to diffuse. Jan Nadeltreiber was the son of old Strauss Nadeltreiber, who had, as well as his ancestors before him, for six generations, practised, in the same little place, the most gentlemanly of all professions-that of a tailor, seeing that it was, before all others, used and sanctioned by our father Adam. Now Jan was, from his boyhood, a remarkable person. His father had known his share of trouble; and, having two sons, both older than Jan, naturally looked, in his old age, to reap some comfort and assistance from their united labors; but they had successively 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 returned home one night from a carousal. Jan was came to take stock, however, and make an inventory of what he was worth, it was precious little. His father seldom had much before hand when he had the whole place to himself; and now, behold! another had come from nobody knew where; had taken a great house opposite, hoisted a tremendous sign, and threatened to carry away every shred of Jan'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, by 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 despair from the ground;-should, in short, arrive at no less dignity than mayor of Rapps. 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 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 Jan as the apple of his eye. Jan 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 was working for a funeral or a wedding at an hour's notice; the next he was despatching his dinner at the same rate; and Jan was, as I have said, soon set the third beheld him running, leap- up with the smallest spice of encouing, and playing among his com- ragement; he was, moreover, as panions as blithe as a young kid. light and nimble as a grasshopper, If he had a fault it was being too and that little animal would exactly fond of his fiddle-it was his ever- represent him, could it be made to lasting delight. One would have stand on end. His dream, therefore, thought that his elbow had labor was enough; he vowed a vow of enough with jirking his needle some unconquerable might, and to it he thirty thousand times in a day; but went. Day and night he wrought it was in him a sort of universal work came-it was done; he 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 the needle than he began to brandish the fiddlestick. If he could ever 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 the next corner homewards. However, he was a pattern of filial duty with this trifling exception. 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; but his fiddle, and the whole house, board, trade-what there was of it-all were his. When he 1 wanted little-a crust of bread and to hoard up money. What must a young man like you do with scraping up pots full of money like a miser? It is a shame, it is a sin, it is a judgment; nothing better could come of it! At all events you might afford to have a light in the house. People are ever likely to rob you. They see a house as dark as an oven, they are sure nobody is in it; they go and steal, nobody can see them come out; but, was there a light burning, they would always think there was somebody in too. At all events you might have a light! "There is something in that," said Jan. He was not unreasonable, so he determined to have a light in future, and he fell to work again. Bad as his luck had been, he resolved not to be cast down, he was as diligent and as thrifty as ever; and he resolved, when he became Mayor of Rapps, to be specially severe on sneaking thieves, who crept into houses that were left to the care of Providence and the municipal authorities. A light was everlastingly burning in his window now, and people, as they passed in the morning, said, "this man must have a good business which requires him to be up so early;" and they who passed in the evening said, "this man must be making a fortune, for he is busy at all hours." He leapt down from his board, at length, with the work that was to complete his sum-went -returned, with the future Mayor growing rapidly upon him; when, as he turned the corner of the street-men and mercies !-his house was in a full burst of flame, illuminating with a ruddy glow half the town, and all the faces of the inhabitants, who were collected to witness the catastrophe. Money, fiddle, shop-board, all were consumed; and when poor Jan danced and capered in the very extasy of his distraction, "Ay," said his neighbors, "this comes of leaving a light in an empty house. It was just the thing to happen; why don't 18 ATHENEUM VOL. 5, 3d series. you get somebody to take care of things in your absence? " Jan stood corrected; for, as I have said, he was soon touched to the quick; and when his anger was a little abated, he thought there was reason in what they said. So, bating not a jot of his determination to save, he took the very next house, which luckily happened to be at liberty, and he got a journeyman. For a long time it appeared hard and hopeless: there were two mouths to feed, instead of one; wages to pay; and not much more work done than he could manage himself. But still the money grew, slowly-very slowly-but still it grew; and Jan pitched upon a secure place, to his thinking, to conceal it in. Alas, poor Jan! he had often, in his heart, grumbled at the slowness of his journeyman's hands, but his eyes had been quick enough; and one morning before Jan was up, the fellow had cleared out his hiding-place, and was gone. This was more than he could bear. He was perfectly cast down-disheartened and inconsolable. "Ah!" said his officious neighbors, coming in to condole with him, "cheer up, man! there is nothing amiss yet. What signifies a few dollars? You will soon get plenty more with those nimble fingers of yours; you want only somebody to help you to keep them. You must get a wife. Journeymen were thieves from the first generation; you must get married." "Get married!" thought Jan-he was struck all in a heap at the very mention of it. "Get married! what! fine clothes to go a wooing in; and fine presents to go a wooing with; and parson's fees, and clerk's fees, and wedding-dinner, and dancing, and drinking; and then doctor's fees, and nurse's fees, and children without end-it is ruin upon ruin! The fifty dollars, and the mayoralty-they might wait till doomsday. Well, that is good," thought Jan, as he took a little more breath," they first counseled me to get a light then went house and all in a bonfire; next, I must get a journeymanthen went the money; and now they would have me bring on myself more plagues than Moses brought upon Egypt. Nay, nay," thought Jan, "you'll not catch me there neither." Jan all this time was seated on his shop-board, stitching away at an amazing rate on a garment that the rascally Wagner should have finished to order at six o'clock that morning, instead of absconding with his money; and, ever and anon, so far forgetting his loss, in what appeared to him the ludicrousness of this adyice, as freely to laugh out. All that day the idea continued to run in his head; the next, it had lost much of its freshness; the third, it appeared not so odd as awful; the fourth, he began to ask himself whether it might be quite so momentous as his imagination had painted it; the fifth, he really thought it was not so bad neither; the sixth, it had so worked round in his head, that it had fairly got on the other side,-it appeared clearly to have its advantages-children did not come scampering into the house all at once like a flock of lambs-a wife might help to gather as well as to spend, might possibly bring something of her own, would be a perpetual watch and housekeeper in his absence, and might speak a word of comfort in trouble when even his fiddle was dumb ; on the seventh, he was off! whither ? Why it so happened, that once he had accompanied his father to see an old relation in the mountains of the Boehmer-Wald, and there, among the damsels who danced to the sound of his fiddle, was a certain bergman's comely daughter, who, having got into his head in some odd association with his fiddle, could not be got out of it again; especially as he fancied, from some cause or other, that the simple creature had a lurking fondness for both his music and himself. Away he went, and he was right the damsel made no objection to his overtures. Tall, stout, fresh, pleasant, growth of the open air and the hills, as she was, she never dreamt of despising the little skipping tailor of Rapps, though he was a head shorter than herself, and not a third of her weight. She had heard his music, and she had never heard of such a thing as family pride. But the old people! they were in perfect hysterics of wrath and contempt. Their daughter! the sole remnant, with the exception of one brother now on a visit to his uncle in Germany, of an old substantial house, who had fed their flocks and their herds on the hills for three generations!-it was death! poison! pestilence ! Nevertheless, as Jan and the damsel were agreed, everything else was nothing-they were married. Jan, it must be confessed, was exceedingly exasperated that the future mayor of Rapps should be thus estimated and treated, and determined to show a little spirit. As his fiddle entered into all his schemes, he resolved to have music at his wedding; and, no sooner did he and his bride issue from the church-door, than out broke the harmony which he had provided. The fiddle played merrily, "you'll repent, repent, repent-you'll repent, you'll repent-you'll repent, repent, repent; and the bassoon replied, in surly tones, "and soon, and soon. Thus they played till they reached the inn, where they dined, and then set off for Rapps. It is true, that there was little happiness in this affair to any one. The old people were full of anger, curses, and threats of total disownment; Jan's pride was pricked and perforated till he was as sore as if he had been tattooed with his own needle and bodkin; and his wife was completely drowned in sorrow at such a parting from her parents, and with no little sense of remorse for her disobedience. Nevertheless, they reached home-things began to assume, gradually, a more composed aspect; Jan loved his wife, she loved him he was industrious, she was careful; and they trusted, in time, to bring her parents round, when they should see that they were doing well in the world. Again the saving scheme began to haunt Jan; but he had one luckless notion, which was destined to cost him no little vexation. He had inherited from his father, together with his stock in trade, a stock of old maxims, amongst which one of the chief was, that a woman cannot keep a secret. Acting on this creed, he not only never told his wife of his project of becoming mayor of Rapps, but he did not even give her reason to suppose that he had laid up a shilling; and that she might not happen to stumble on his money, he took care to carry it always about him. It was his delight, when he got into a quiet corner, or as he came along a retired lane from his errands, to take it out, and count it, and calculate when it would amount to this sum, and to that, and when the proposed sum would really be his own. Now it happened one day that having been a good deal absorbed in these speculations, he had loitered away a precious piece of time; and, suddenly coming to himself, he set off, as was his wont, on a kind of easy trot-in which his small, light form thrown forward, his pale, grey-eyed, earnest-looking visage thrown towards the sky, and his long sky-blue coat flying in a stream behind him, he cut one of the most extraordinary figures in the world. On checking his pace as he entered the town, he involuntarily clapped his hand upon his pocket, when, behold! his money was gone; it had slipped away through a hole it had worn. In the wildness and bitterness of his loss he turned back, heartily cursing the spinner and weaver of that most detestable piece of buckram that composed his breeches-pocket; that they had put it together so villainously as to break down with the carriage of a few dollars, halfpence, thimbles, balls of wax and thread, and a few other sundries, after the trifling wear of seven years, nine months, and nineteen days. He was pacing, There he gave |