acts his character, in due
proportion, is the main point and the most attractive one."

"Really, you are right!" exclaimed the young merchant. "I never took
time to give the matter much thought. I looked at every thing, and then
let it pass by me. I was amused with one, found another wearisome,
without knowing exactly why; but you have given us the key that unlocks
the secret, a touch-stone with which we can make the test and decide
properly."

"Make a practice of doing that," answered the old man, "and your
enjoyment will constantly increase, as you learn to think over what you
have heard. But see, another slave has risen to tell his story."

THE YOUNG ENGLISHMAN.

Sire, I am a German by birth, and have been in your country too short a
time to be able to entertain you with a Persian tale or an amusing
story of sultans and viziers. You must, therefore, permit me to tell
you a story of my native land. Sad to say, our stories are not always
as elevated as yours--that is, they do not deal with sultans or kings,
nor with viziers and pashas, that are called ministers of justice or
finance, privy-counsellors, and the like, but they treat very modestly
(soldiers sometimes excepted) of persons outside of official life.

In the southern part of Germany lies the town of Gruenwiesel, where I
was born and bred. It is a town identical with its neighbors; in its
centre a small marketplace with a town-pump, on one corner a small old
town-hall, while built around the square were the houses of the justice
of the peace and the well-to-do merchants, and, in a few narrow streets
that opened out of the square, lived the rest of the citizens.
Everybody knew everybody else; every one knew all that was going on;
and if the minister, or the mayor, or the doctor had an extra dish on
the table, the whole town would know of it before dinner was over. On
afternoons, the wives went out to coffee parties, as we call them,
where, over strong coffee and sweet cakes, they gossiped of the great
events of the day, coming to the conclusion that the minister must have
invested in a lottery ticket and won an unchristian amount of money,
that the mayor was open to a bribe, and that the apothecary paid the
doctor well to write costly prescriptions. You may therefore imagine,
Sire, how unpleasant it was for an orderly town like Gruenwiesel, when
a man came there of whom nothing was known--not even where he came
from, what