r proposal shall be considered.--The young lady is in good
spirits today."

Maria glanced indignantly at Henrica, who had leaned far across the
table. She was showing Georg a ring, and laughingly exclaimed:

"Don't you wish to know what the device means? Look, a serpent biting its
own tail."

"Aha!" replied the Junker, "the symbol of self-torment."

"Good, good! But it has another meaning, which you would do well to
notice, Sir Knight. Do you know the signification of eternity and eternal
faith?"

"No, Fraulein, I wasn't taught to think so deeply at Jena."

"Of course. Your teachers were men. Men and faith, eternal faith!"

"Was Delilah, who betrayed Samson to the Philistines, a man or a woman?"
asked Van Hout.

"She was a woman. The exception, that proves the rule. Isn't that so,
Maria?"

The burgomaster's wife made no reply except a silent nod; then
indignantly pushed back her chair, and the meal was over.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Drinking is also an art, and the Germans are masters of it
Here the new custom of tobacco-smoking was practised
Standing still is retrograding
To whom fortune gives once, it gives by bushels
Youth calls 'much,' what seems to older people 'little'

THE BURGOMASTER'S WIFE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Days and weeks had passed, July was followed by sultry August, and that,
too, was drawing to a close. The Spaniards still surrounded Leyden, and
the city now completely resembled a prison. The soldiers and armed
citizens did their duty wearily and sullenly, there was business enough
at the town-hall, but the magistrates' work was sad and disagreeable; for
no message of hope came from the Prince or the Estates, and everything to
be considered referred to the increasing distress and the terrible
follower of war, the plague, which had made its entry into Leyden with
the famine. Moreover the number of malcontents weekly increased. The
friends of the old order of affairs now raised their voices more and more
loudly, and many a friend of liberty, who saw his family sickening,
joined the Spanish sympathizers and demanded the surrender of the city.
The children went to school and met in the playrounds as before, but
there was rarely a flash of the merry pertness of former days, and what
had become of the boys' red cheeks and the round arms of the little
girls? The poor drew their belts tighter, and the morsel of bread,