th was, Kohle had but one coat for all times of the day
and year.

"You may say what you like, my dear friend," said Fat Rossel,
concluding a rather long dispute about the difference in character
between the North and South Germans--he himself was from Passau and
Kohle from Erfurth--"there is one talent you people on the other side
of the Main are lacking in; you can swim excellently, but you can't lie
on your back and let yourself drift. Didn't I drag you put here to this
tiresome summer retreat because your aspect had become positively
unbearable to a flesh-painter, your skin having dried to a respectable
parchment, and you standing in danger of composing yourself into an
early grave? And now you don't do anything better out here; but consume
one yard of paper after another, while the shadows in your face grow
blacker from day to day. Why are you in such haste, my dear Kohle, to
produce things for which no one in the world is waiting?"

Kohle's pale face never moved a muscle. He slowly drank a few drops of
wine from his glass, and then said, calmly:

"Forbid the silkworm to spin!"

"You forget, my dear godfather, that the worm you cite as your model
has at least the excuse that it spins silk. If you could get so far as
to do that, the thing would have a practical purpose. But your
spinning--"

"Now you are talking again against your better convictions,"
interrupted the other, coolly, "There are more than enough people
nowadays who pursue their so-called art for a practical purpose. Just
listen once when our colleagues talk about their 'interests.' One would
imagine he was at the Bourse: for this picture, five thousand gulden;
for that, ten thousand, or even twenty and twenty-five thousand; and
that a certain artist has an annual income of so and so much, and owns
several houses besides--these things make up the motive power of an
incredible number of them. Their pictures have no longer a value, but
merely a price. How to go to work and make an equal amount from the
fabrication of painted canvas, that is the pivot on which all the labor
of an artist's fancy turns, instead of steering straight for the thing
itself, as it ought by rights to do. Well, I have nothing in common
with this worm that nourishes itself by crawling about in the dust. But
what does it matter to me whether I spin silk, or only a plain thread
that delights me alone, and from which I can beat my wings and soar
away into space?"

"You are a th