gone from my heart. I felt myself no longer alone, no
longer a stranger, no longer shut out. I was by her, with her and in
her. I thought it might be a sacrifice for her to give me the ring,
and that she might have preferred to take it to the grave with her, and
a feeling arose in my soul which overshadowed all other feelings, and I
said with quivering voice: "Thou must keep the ring if thou dost not
wish to give it to me; for what is thine is mine." She looked at me a
moment surprised and thoughtfully. Then she took the ring, placed it
on her finger, kissed me once more on the forehead, and said gently to
me: "Thou knowest not what thou sayest. Learn to understand thyself.
Then shall thou be happy and make many others happy."

FOURTH MEMORY.

Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and
dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is. Of these
years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have
advanced and only grown older. While the river of life glides along
smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank
seems to change. But then come the cataracts of life. They are firmly
fixed in memory, and even when we are past them and far away, and draw
nearer and nearer to the silent sea of eternity, even then it seems as
if we heard from afar their rush and roar. We feel that the life-force
which yet remains and impels us onward still has its source and supply
from those cataracts.

School time was ended, the first fleeting years of university life were
over, and many beautiful life-dreams were over also. But one of them
still remained: Faith in God and man. Otherwise life would have been
circumscribed within one's narrow brain. Instead of that, a nobler
consecration had preserved all, and even the painful and
incomprehensible events of life became a proof to me of the
omnipresence of the divine in the earthly. "The least important thing
does not happen except as God wills it." This was the brief
life-wisdom I had accumulated.

During the summer holidays I returned to my little native city. What
joy in these meetings again! No one has explained it, but in this
seeing and finding again, and in these self-memories, lie the real
secrets of all joy and pleasure. What we see, hear or taste for the
first time may be beautiful, grand and agreeable, but it is too new.
It overpowers, but gives no repose, and the fatigue of enjoying is