y-where as a model of culture and intelligence.
The old gentleman was accustomed to take his nephew with him every
evening to the "Golden Hirsch," an inn of the town. Although the nephew
was quite a young man, he did all that his elders did, placed his glass
before him, put on an enormous pair of spectacles, produced a mighty
pipe, lighted it, and blew his smoke among them mischievously. If the
papers, or war, or peace, were spoken of, and the doctor and the mayor
fell into a discussion on these subjects, surprising all the other
gentlemen by their deep political knowledge, the nephew was quite
liable to interpose very forcible objections; he would strike the table
with his hand, from which he never drew the glove, and gave the doctor
and the mayor very plainly to understand that they had not any correct
information on these subjects; that he had heard all about them
himself, and possessed a deeper insight into them. He then gave
expression to his own views, in singular broken German, which received,
much to the disgust of the mayor, the approval of all the other
gentlemen; for he must, naturally, as an Englishman, understand all
this much better than they.

Then, when the mayor and doctor, to conceal the anger they did not dare
express, sat down to a game of chess, the nephew would come up, look
over the mayor's shoulders with his great goggles, and find fault with
this and that move, and tell the doctor he must move thus and so, until
both men were secretly burning with anger. If then the mayor challenged
him to play a game, with the design of mating him speedily--as he held
himself to be a second Philidor--the old gentleman would grasp his
nephew by the cravat, whereupon the young man at once became quiet and
polite, and gave mate to the mayor.

They had been accustomed to play cards of an evening at Gruenwiesel, at
half a kreuzer a game for each player; this the nephew thought was a
miserable stake, and laid down crown-thalers and ducats himself,
asserting that not one of them could play as well as he, but generally
consoled the insulted gentlemen by losing large sums of money to them.
They suffered no twinges of conscience in this taking of his money. "He
is an Englishman, and inherits his wealth," said they, as they shoved
the ducats into their pockets.

Thus did the nephew of the strange gentleman establish his
respectability in the town in a very short time. The oldest inhabitants
could not remember having ev