nly once sit on that bench there!' How glad you'd be
to see the big milk-pans! and, oh, to think of your seeing little Bat,
and the one that's coming soon! If I have ever done you any harm,
forgive me; for you may be sure there's not a living soul on earth that
loves you more than I do.

"I have been resting a little, and now I'm going on. What a fine thing
it is that we've learned to read and write properly! I'm always
grateful to you for having made me learn it. But you mustn't think I'm
out of spirits. To-be-sure, I'm not so full of fun as I sometimes was,
years ago, but then I've grown older, and had a good deal of
experience; but still, sometimes I am so glad, and feel so kindly for
every thing in the world, that I begin to whistle and dance and sing.
Sometimes I feel a little pang when I call something to mind; but then
I say, 'Whoa!' and shake myself like a horse, and away with it. I and
Mechtilde live as happy as two children, and our Bat has bones in him
as strong as a young calf, and muscles like the kernel of a nut.

"On Sunday, when we go to church, we take salt with us, and what we
need besides; and Mechtilde once said we get heavenly salt for it in
the mass and the sermon, and salt our souls with it. Mechtilde often
makes fine riddles and jokes. We've bought a story-book, too, about
Rinaldo Rinaldini: it's a shuddersome story of knights and robbers, and
we've read it move than ten times and the other day, when I overslept
myself, she sang a song out of it and waked me. Talking of songs, I
want to ask a favor of you, but you mustn't laugh at me.

"You see, when a fellow gets out alone into the world and wants to sing
by himself, he finds out, all of a sudden, that of ever so many songs
he only knows the beginning, and that the rest of it he has only just
sung after somebody else; and then I want to pull my head off because
it won't come into my mind; but it won't come in, nohow. There's a good
many things just so you think you know them until somebody says, 'Now,
old fellow, do it alone, will ye?'

"Now, I'd like to ask you--but you mustn't laugh at me--to please get
the old schoolmaster to write down all the Nordstetten songs. I'll pay
him for it well. You won't forget, will you? And then send it to me, or
bring it when you come.

"I must tell you something else, too. Only think, mother! last Tuesday
three weeks, as I was sitting at my wagon and mending the tongue,--you
can't run to the wagoner's here