this nightcap is!" he exclaimed, as he dragged it off. Then
pearl after pearl began to fall from it, and they jingled and
glittered. "I must have got the rheumatism in my head," said the
burgomaster. "Sparks seem falling from my eyes."

They were tears wept half a century before--wept by old Anthon from
Eisenach.

Whoever has since worn that nightcap has sure enough had visions and
dreams; his own history has been turned into Anthon's; his dream has
become quite a tale, and there were many of them. Let others relate
the rest. We have now told the first, and with it our last words
are--Never covet AN OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP.

_Something._

"I will be something," said the oldest of five brothers. "I will be of
use in the world, let the position be ever so insignificant which I
may fill. If it be only respectable, it will be something. I will make
bricks--people can't do without these--and then I shall have done
something."

"But something too trifling," said the second brother. "What you
propose to do is much the same as doing nothing; it is no better than
a hodman's work, and can be done by machinery. You had much better
become a mason. _That_ is something, and that is what I will be. Yes,
that is a good trade. A mason can get into a trade's corporation,
become a burgher, have his own colours and his own club. Indeed, if I
prosper, I may have workmen under me, and be called 'Master,' and my
wife 'Mistress;' and that would be something."

"That is next to nothing," said the third. "There are many classes in
a town, and that is about the lowest. It is nothing to be called
'Master.' You might be very superior yourself; but as a master mason
you would be only what is called 'a common man.' I know of something
better. I will be an architect; enter upon the confines of science;
work myself up to a high place in the kingdom of mind. I know I must
begin at the foot of the ladder. I can hardly bear to say it--I must
begin as a carpenter's apprentice, and wear a cap, though I have been
accustomed to go about in a silk hat. I must run to fetch beer and
spirits for the common workmen, and let them be 'hail fellow well met'
with me. This will be disagreeable; but I will fancy that it is all a
masquerade and the freedom of maskers. To-morrow--that is to say, when
I am a journeyman--I will go my own way. The others will not join me.
I shall go to the academy, and learn to draw and design; then I shall
be called an archi