liation on account of his
country, of wishes unfulfilled and passionate indignation. At such a
time, in drawing an imaginative picture, not love alone, but hatred too,
flows freely and readily from the pen--practical tendencies are apt to
usurp the place of poetic fancy; and, instead of a genial tone and
temper, the reader is apt to find an unpleasing mixture of blunt reality
and artificial sentiment.

Surrounded by such dangers, it becomes twofold the duty of an author
carefully to avoid distortion in the outline of his pictures, and to
keep his own soul free from unjust prepossession. To give the highest
expression to the beautiful in its noblest form is not the privilege of
every time; but, in all times alike, it is the duty of the writer of
fiction to be true to his art and to his country. To seek for this
truth, and where found to exhibit it, I hold to be the duty of my own
life.

And now let me dedicate, with deepest reverence, my unimportant work to
you, my honored lord. I shall rejoice if this novel leaves on the mind
of your highness the impression that its conception is in faithful
keeping with the laws of life and of art, without ever being a slavish
copy of the accidental occurrences of the day.

GUSTAV FREYTAG.

LEIPSIC, _April_, 1855.

DEBIT AND CREDIT.

CHAPTER I.

Ostrau is a small town near the Oder, celebrated even as far as Poland
for its gymnasium and its gingerbread. In this patriarchal spot had
dwelt for many years the accountant-royal, Wohlfart, an enthusiastically
loyal subject, and a hearty lover of his fellow-men--with one or two
exceptions. He married late in life, and his wife and he lived in a
small house, the garden of which he himself kept in order. For a long
time the happy pair were childless; but at length came a day when the
good woman, having smartened up her white bed-curtains with a broad
fringe and heavy tassels, disappeared behind them amid the approbation
of all her female friends. It was under the shade of those white
bed-curtains that the hero of our tale was born.

Anton was a good child, who, according to his mother, displayed
remarkable peculiarities from the very day of his birth. For instance,
he had a great objection to going to bed at the proper hour; he would
pore time untold over his picture-alphabet, and hold lengthy
conversations with the red cock depicted upon its last page, imploring
him to exert himself in the cause of his young family, an