C. R. L. F.

THE WINE-GHOSTS
OF BREMEN.

'Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well
used.'--_Othello_, ii. 3.

'There's nothing to be done with the fellow,' I heard them say, as they
stumped down the stairs; 'nine o'clock and he is going to doze away his
evening like a dormouse. He wouldn't have been like that four years
ago.' They were not far wrong from their point of view, good fellows;
for this evening there was to be a most brilliant musical tea and
muffin fight with dancing and recitation, and these gentlemen had come
to invite me (who was a stranger to the High Life of Bremen) to go with
them. But I did not feel up to it. Some one, whom I had come to Bremen
on purpose to visit, was not to be there, and what's the use of going
anywhere where Some one isn't? Besides, I knew I should have to sing if
I went, and I didn't choose to sing if she wasn't to be there to hear
me. I should only spoil all their fun by looking sulky. I preferred to
let them curse me for a dull dog for a few minutes on the steps, rather
than let them bore themselves from nine to one in talking to my body
only, while my soul would be whole streets off wandering about in the
neighbourhood of the Frauenkirche.

It wasn't sleepiness though. I am not a habitual dormouse, and don't
like being called one. No, I meant to be thoroughly awake that night,
and one of my friends--it was you, Hermann--said as much when he got
outside. 'He didn't look sleepy,' I heard him say, 'with those bright
eyes of his. But he looked like a man who had been drinking either too
much or too little, which probably means that he is going to make a
night of it with the bottle, and alone.'

Prophetic soul! Did you know that my eyes were sparkling yet
proleptically with the thought of old Rhenish? You didn't know that I
had a permit from their High Mightinesses to greet my Lady Rose and the
Twelve Apostles. And you certainly didn't know that it was my
'Retreat.'[1]

In my opinion the habit which I inherit from my grandfather of blazing,
so to speak, the tree of life here and there with a notch, and spending
a quiet day of meditation over each notch, is not a bad one. To keep
the ordinary festivals of the Church only is hardly sufficient; one
becomes commonplace, and one's thoughts are too apt to become
commonplace on such days. But let th