mentally acquainted than any man before me with the earth,
its shape, its elevations, its temperatures, the changes of its
atmosphere, the exhibitions of its magnetic power, and the life upon
it, especially in the vegetable world. The facts I have recorded with
the greatest possible exactness and in perspicuous order in several
works, and stated my deductions and views briefly in several
treatises. I have settled the geography of the interior of Africa,
and of the northern polar regions; of the interior of Asia, and its
eastern shores. My _Historia Stirpium Plantarum Utriusque Orbis_
stands as a grand fragment of the _Flora Universalis Terrae_, and as
a branch of my _Systema Naturae_. I believe that I have therein not
merely augmented, at a moderate calculation, the amount of known
species, more than one-third, but have done something for the _Natural
System_, and for the _Geography of Plants_. I shall labor diligently
at my _Fauna_. I shall take care that, before my death, my works shall
be deposited in the Berlin University.

And thee, my dear Chamisso, have I selected as the preserver of my
singular history, which, perhaps, when I have vanished from the earth,
may afford valuable instruction to many of its inhabitants. But thou,
my friend, if thou wilt live among men, learn before all things to
reverence the shadow, and then the gold. Wishest thou to live only for
thyself and for thy better self--oh, then!--thou needest no counsel.

ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN

* * * * *

THE GOLDEN POT[44] (1814)

TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE

FIRST VIGIL

The mishaps of the student Anselmus. Conrector Paulmann's sanitary
canaster and the gold-green snakes.

On Ascension-day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, a young man in
Dresden came running through the Black Gate, falling right into a
basket of apples and cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was
there exposing to sale. All that escaped being smashed to pieces was
scattered away, and the street-urchins joyfully divided the booty
which this quick gentleman had thrown in the way. At the murder-shriek
which the crone set up, her gossips, leaving their cake and
brandy-tables, encircled the young man, and with plebeian violence
stormfully scolded him, so that, for shame and vexation, he uttered
no word, but merely held out his small and by no means particularly
well-filled purse, which the crone eagerly clutched and st