wardly caution of one who feels the water with his
foot before he springs in to swim, I was glad that I made my first
experiences of companionship with these humble friends while it was yet
dark and none could see us. The old leaven of snobbery was unsubdued
in my heart, and, as I turned to look at poor Vaterchen and then at the
tinsel finery of Catinka, I bethought me of the little consideration the
world extends to such as these and their belongings. "Vagabonds
all!" would say some rich banker, as he rolled by in his massive
travelling-carriage, creaking with imperials and jingling with bells.
"Vagabonds all!" would mutter the Jew pedler, as he looked down from the
_banquette_ of the diligence. How slight is the sympathy of the realist
for the poor creature whose life-labor is to please! How prone to regard
him as useless, or, even worse, forgetting the while how a wiser than
he has made many things in this beautiful world of ours that they should
merely minister to enjoyment, gladden the eye and ear, and make our
pilgrimage less weary! Where would be the crimson jay, where the scarlet
bustard, where the gorgeous peacock with the nosegay on his tail, where
the rose and the honeysuckle and the purple foxglove mingling with the
wild thorn in our hedgerows, if the universe were of _their_ creation,
and this great globe but one big workshop? You never insist that the
daisy and the daffodil should be pot-herbs; and why are there not to
be wild flowers in humanity as well as in the fields? Is it not a great
pride to you who live under a bell-glass, nurtured and cared for, and
with your name attached to a cleft-stick at your side,--is it not a
great pride to know that you are not like one of us poor dog-roses? Be
satisfied, then, with that glory; we only ask to live! Shame on me for
that "only"! As if there could be anything more delightful than life.
Life, with all its capacities for love and friendship and heroism and
self-devotion, for generous actions and noble aspirations! Life to feel
life, to know that we are in a sphere specially constructed for the
exercise of our senses and the play of our faculties, free to choose
the road we would take, and with a glorious reward if our choice be the
right one!

"'Vagabonds!' Yes," thought I, "there was once on a time such a
vagabond, and he strolled along from village to village, making of his
flute a livelihood,--a poor performer, too, he tells us he was, but he
could touch the