erk did the same. Each one kept
to his own opinion, and so they separated.

"It's a strange race, those poets!" said the clerk, who was very fond of
soliloquizing. "I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such
nature upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make
no such miserable verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most
delicious day for a poet. Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening
into life. The air is so unusually clear, the clouds sail on so
buoyantly, and from the green herbage a fragrance is exhaled that fills
me with delight. For many a year have I not felt as at this moment."

We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to
give further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for
it is a most foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men.
Among the latter there may be far more poetical natures than many an
acknowledged poet, when examined more closely, could boast of; the
difference only is, that the poet possesses a better mental memory, on
which account he is able to retain the feeling and the thought till they
can be embodied by means of words; a faculty which the others do not
possess. But the transition from a commonplace nature to one that is
richly endowed, demands always a more or less breakneck leap over a
certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus must the sudden
change with the clerk strike the reader.

"The sweet air!" continued he of the police-office, in his dreamy
imaginings; "how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my aunt
Magdalena! Yes, then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school
very regularly. O heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on
those times. The good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She
always had a few twigs or green shoots in water--let the winter rage
without as it might. The violets exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I
pressed against the windowpanes covered with fantastic frost-work the
copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made peep-holes.
What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change--what
magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted
by their whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But
when the spring, with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival,
a new and busy life arose; with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn
asunder, the ships were fresh tarred and rigged, that