write the history--the miserable bitter history--of a great
man born to a small way of life, whose merits should raise him from
his low estate to a deserved and glorious fame; who should toil, and
strive, and struggle, and when his hopes and prayers seemed to be at
last fulfilled, and the reward of his labours at hand, should awake
and find that it was a dream; that he was no nearer to Fame than ever,
and that he might never reach it. Here was enough sorrow for a
tragedy. The ballad should be written now.

The next day. Friedrich plunged into the bookseller's shop.

"Well, now, what is it?" smiled the comfortable little bookseller.

"I want some paper, please," gasped Friedrich; "a good big bit if I
may have it, and, if you please, I must go now. I will come and clean
out the shop for you at the end of the week, but I am very busy
to-day."

"The condition of the shop," said the little bookseller,
grandiloquently, with a wave of his hand, "yields to more important
matters; namely, to thy condition, my child, which is not of the best.
Thou art as white as this sheet of paper, to which thou art heartily
welcome. I am silent, but not ignorant. Thou wouldst be a writer, but
art not yet a philosopher, my Friedrich. Thou art not fast-set on thy
philosophic equilibrium. Thou hast knocked down three books and a
stool since thou hast come in the shop. Be calm, my child: consider
that even if truly also the fast-bound-eternally-immutable-condition
of everlastingly-varying-circumstance--"

But by this time Friedrich was at home.

How he got through the next three days he never knew. He stumbled in
and out of the house with the awkwardness of an idiot, and was so
stupid in school that nothing but his previous good character saved
him from a flogging. The day before the Feast of St. Nicholas (which
was a holiday) the schoolmaster dismissed him with the severe inquiry,
if he meant to be a dunce all his life? and Friedrich went home with
two sentences ringing in his head--

"Do I mean to be a dunce all my life?"

"Friedrich can do nothing useful."

To-night the ballad must be finished.

He contrived to sit up beyond his usual hour, and escaped notice by
crouching behind a large linen chest, and there wrote and wrote till
his heart beat and his head felt as if it would split in pieces. At
last, the careful mother discovered that Friedrich had not bid her
good-night, and he was brought out of his hiding-place and sent to
bed