er seen a young man of this style in
Gruenwiesel, and he created the greatest sensation that had ever been
known there. It could not be said that the nephew had learned any thing
more than the art of dancing; Latin and Greek were to him, as we were
wont to express it, "Bohemian villages." In a game at the mayor's house
he was called upon to write something, and it was discovered that he
could not even write his own name. In geography, he made the most
egregious blunders--as he would place a German city in France, or a
Danish town in Poland; he had not read any thing, had not studied any
thing, and the minister often shook his head seriously over the utter
ignorance of the young man. Yet, in spite of all these defects, every
thing he said or did was considered excellent; for he was so impudent
as to claim that he was always right, and the close of every one of his
speeches was, "I know better than you!"

Winter came, and now the young Englishman appeared in still greater
glory. Every party was voted wearisome where he was not a guest. People
yawned when a wise man began to speak; but when the young Englishman
uttered the veriest nonsense in broken German, all was attention. It
was now discovered that the young man was also a poet, for rarely did
an evening go by that he did not pull out a piece of paper from his
pocket and read some sonnets to the company. There were, to be sure,
some people who maintained that some of these poems were poor and
without sense, and that others they had read somewhere in print; but
the nephew did not permit himself to be put down in any such manner. He
read, and read, directed the attention of his hearers to the beauties
of his verses, and was applauded to the echo.

His great triumph, however, was at the Gruenwiesel ball. No one could
dance more gracefully and rapidly than he. None could execute such
uncommonly difficult steps. His uncle dressed him in the greatest
splendor, after the latest fashion; and although the clothes did not
fit his body very well, yet every one thought him charmingly dressed.
The men, to be sure, thought themselves somewhat insulted by the new
fashion which he introduced. The mayor had always been accustomed to
open the ball in his own person, while the leading young people had the
right to arrange the other dances; but since the appearance of the
young Englishman, all this was changed. Without much ceremony, he took
the next best lady by the hand and led her out