and washed-out oddities, who assemble in
such places in search of a new lease of life—
people, whose characters, perhaps, were
originally stamped in fast colours enough, but
whom time, and trouble, and small annuities
seem gradually to have fused all into the
same pale faded tint. There was a German
professor or two who had bewildered
themselves with Greek roots and Chaldaic at
Gottingen. There was a little lost old woman
who fidgetted about, and seemed to know
nobody, and to be on very distant terms even
with herself, and not at all likely to put up
with a liberty. There was a strayed dandy,
who evidently ought to have been at
Homburg, and the same eternal widow and her
three daughters whom I have met
everywhere these seven years, though why they do
not stay at their uncle's rural deanery and
marry the young solicitors and surgeons to
whom they naturally belong, and whom they
will marry at last, is a little mystery it
might make one's heart ache to peep into too
closely.

Going through the Kurhaus and a billiard-
room, which I was glad to see deserted, I
found myself among a low range of sheds,
something like the booths at a fair, for not a
single thing that they contained appeared to
be of the slightest use to anybody. People
living in small places, however, never like
their friends to go anywhere without bringing
them some little love gift or other. It is
a bad thing to go against people's fancies in
such cases, and in the commerce of life, if we
expect to receive kindnesses and to win hearts,
we must show a good-natured feeling for
others, even in the simple deed and in the
trifling word.

One may find "sermons in stones" if one
looks for them, and we may certainly very often
find an odd moral if we look for it. Here, in
this little hospital, where every person, not a
native of the place, either was or fancied
himself ill—I had a great truth impressed on my
mind quite as vividly as it has ever been before
or since: "a lady never thinks herself too old
to marry." I was rummaging about among
trumpery of all kinds, and had finally bought
a small China goose to give my friends as a
forget-me-not, when an ominous little sharp
sound upon the floor told me I had lost one
of those bachelor's torments, a shirt button.
"Madam," said I, deferentially, to the elderly
lady, who had left a still more elderly gentleman
to attend to me; "Madam, have you got
any buttons to replace the one I have just
lost." After a good deal of searching about—
for, of course, she did not keep so useful an
article as any part of her stock in trade—a
new button was at length found, and as the
elderly lady seemed a matronly sort of body,
of some sixty-five winters, and had a good
stiff beard on her chin, I, .though a staid
man enough, saw no harm in telling her that
she would add to the favour which she had
conferred upon me, if she would sew it on.
Upon this she appeared to be taken with
a strange kind of flutter, but as a new comer
at the baths, who had already purchased to
the magnificent extent of half-a-crown, was
not to be lightly lost as a probable customer
in future, she at length produced the necessary
needle, and sitting down in the chair
which the elderly gentleman had just quitted,
I prepared for the operation. Much was I
astonished to hear her say, in a tone of
coquettish anguish: "Ah Gott, the Lord Court
Counsellor (Heir Hofrath) will tease me
finely about sewing on a shirt button for
a young man." The Lord Court Counsellor,
who must have been at least seventy, was, I
suppose, the elderly gentleman who was
carrying on a sort of faded flirtation with her;
but I need not add after this, that my button
was very badly sewn on. Flirtations and
good housewifery seldom agree.

I was just returning to my inn after this,
when a little group of people coming down
the "Kurhaus" steps attracted my attention.
It was composed of two gentlemen, evidently
belonging to the better classes, and somewhat
in the decline of life—a lady, who seemed to
be the wife of one of them—a young man
of about twenty, who looked like a student—
and an invalid girl of some eighteen summers,
who was, in the sight of all men but perhaps
those to whom she was dearest, wearing away
to the "Land of the Leal!" They interested
me so strongly, and almost in spite of myself,
that I tried to learn their history. It was
short, but touching enough. The young
maiden's lover had been killed in the wars of
Holstein. He had fallen in the front of
battle, with his sword in his hand, and the
star of the Hohenzollern knighthood newly
won upon his breast. He had died while
her faith was whole in him, in the promise
and the hope of youth; in the full flush of its
beautiful romance he had passed away; like
a song unfinished, like an air but just begun,
the chords had ceased to vibrate while their
tone was sweetest. So the maid had looked
upon her dead lover as a hero, as something
greater, nobler, better than anything which
could be again. So great, and even as it has
always seemed to me, so humbling to our
grosser natures, is the love of a true-hearted
woman.

The news did not seem to affect her very
violently at first; she went about her household
duties as usual, smiling often when kind
eyes were watching her; but she drooped
gradually. From being a fine, healthy girl,
and one of those happily-constituted natures
not easily moved, she became subject to
needless alarms and cried frequently. One day
she fainted; her brother had casually
mentioned the name of her lover, who had been
his college friend and "Dutzbruder" (Thou
brother); when she came to herself, and they
asked what had ailed her, she said, at last, "I
think I I am going to join Wilhelrn."
Then they knew her secret, and the wealth