nd drank my fill, the Doctor continued to
demonstrate to me the advantages of reason. Toward the end of his
demonstration, he was accustomed to look at his watch and remark
conclusively, "Reason is the highest principle!" Reason! Never do I hear
this word without recalling Dr. Saul Ascher, with his abstract legs, his
tight-fitting transcendental-grey long coat, his forbidding icy face,
which could have served as frontispiece for a textbook of geometry. This
man, deep in the fifties, was a personified straight line. In his
striving for the positive, the poor man had, by dint of philosophizing,
eliminated all the splendid things from life, such as sunshine,
religion, and flowers, so that there remained nothing for him but the
cold positive grave. The Apollo Belvedere and Christianity were the two
special objects of his malice, and he had even published a pamphlet
against the latter, in which he had demonstrated its unreasonableness
and untenableness. In addition to this, he has written a great number of
books, in all of which _Reason_ shines forth in all its peculiar
excellence, and as the poor Doctor meant what he said in all
seriousness, he was, so far, deserving of respect. But the great joke
consisted precisely in this, that the Doctor invariably cut such a
seriously absurd figure when he could not comprehend what every child
comprehends, simply because it is a child. I visited the Doctor of
Reason several times in his own house, where I found him in company with
very pretty girls; for Reason, it seems, does not prohibit the enjoyment
of the things of this world. Once, however, when I called, his servant
told me the "Herr Doctor" had just died. I experienced as much emotion
on this occasion as if I had been told that the "Herr Doctor" had just
moved.

To return to Goslar. "The highest principle is Reason," said I
soothingly to myself, as I slid into bed. But it availed me nothing. I
had just been reading in Varnhagen von Ense's _German Tales,_ which I
had brought with me from Clausthal, that terrible story of the son who
went about to murder his father and was warned in the night by the ghost
of his mother. The wonderful truthfulness with which this story is
depicted, caused, while reading it, a shudder of horror in all my veins.
Ghost-stories invariably thrill us with additional horror when read
during a journey, and by night in a town, in a house, and in a room
where we have never been before. We involuntarily refle