sdom and experience
that Mother Lenz had gathered together laid away in the ground, and the
world none the better for it."

"Her son has, at least, inherited her goodness," replied a young woman.

"And experience and judgment every one must get for himself," said a
little old man, with keen, inquiring eyes, who always went by the name
of Proebler, the experimenter, from having ruined himself in inventions
and experiments, instead of keeping to the regular routine of
clock-making.

"The old times were much wiser and better," said old David, the
case-maker, who lived in the adjacent valley. "In those days a funeral
feast was spread, at which we could refresh ourselves after our long
journey and hard crying,--for crying is hungry and thirsty work,--and
after that the minister preached his sermon. If we did rather overdo
the matter sometimes, no one was the worse for it. But all that sort of
thing is forbidden now, and I am so hungry and faint I feel ready to
sink."

"So am I, and I," cried out several voices. "What are we to do when we
get home?" continued old David; "the day is lost. We are very glad to
give it to a good friend, to be sure; but the old way was better. Then
we didn't get home till night, and had nothing more to think of."

"And could not have thought of it, if you had," interrupted the deep
voice of young Faller, the clockmaker. He was second bass in the
Liederkranz, and carried his music-book under his arm. His walk and
bearing showed him to have been a soldier. "A funeral feast," he
continued, "is a thing Mother Lenz would by no means have allowed.
Everything in its time, she used to say; mourning and merry-making,
each in its turn. I worked under old Lenz five years and three
quarters; young Lenz and I were fellow-apprentices, and set up as
journeymen together."

"You had better turn schoolmaster and preach the sermon," said old
David angrily, muttering something further about those conceited
Liederkranz fellows, who think the world didn't begin till they learned
to sing their notes.

"That I can do too," said the young man, who either had not heard the
last words, or pretended he had not. "I can make a eulogy; and a good
thing it would be to talk of something besides our own appetites and
pleasures after laying such a noble heart in the grave. What a man our
old master was! Ah, if all the world were like him, we should need no
more judges or soldiers or barracks or prisons! He was a right stri