nsiderable share of reflection, and I found that, do what
I would, a certain voice within would whisper, "Where are your fine
resolutions now, Potts? Is this the life of reality that you had
promised yourself? Are you not at the old work again? Are you not
masquerading it once more? Don't you know well enough that all this
pretension of yours is bad money, and that at the first ring of it on
the counter you will be found out?"

"This you may rely on, gracious sir," said the waiter, as he laid a
bottle on the table beside me with a careful hand. "It is the orange
seal;" and he then added, in a whisper, "taken from the Margrave's
cellar in the revolution of '93, and every flask of it worth a
province."

"We shall see--we shall see," said I, haughtily; "serve the soup!"

If I had been Belshazzar, I believe I should have eaten very heartily,
and drunk my wine with a great relish, notwithstanding that drawn sword.
I don't know how it is, but if I can only see the smallest bit of _terra
firma_ between myself and the edge of a precipice, I feel as though
I had a whole vast prairie to range over. For the life of me I cannot
realize anything that may, or may not, befall me remotely. "Blue are the
hills far off," says the adage; and on the converse of the maxim do I
aver, that faint are all dangers that are distant. An immediate
peril overwhelms me; but I could look forward to a shipwreck this day
fortnight with a fortitude truly heroic.

"This is a nice old half-forgotten sort of place," thought I, "a kind
of vulgar Venice, water-washed, and muddy, and dreary, and do-nothing.
I 'll stay here for a week or so; I 'll give myself up to the drowsy
_genius loci_; I'll Germanize to the top of my bent; who is to say what
metaphysical melancholy, dashed with a strange diabolic humor, may
not come of constantly feeding on this heavy cookery, and eternally
listening to their gurgling gutturals? I may come out a Wieland or a
Herder, with a sprinkling of Henri Heine! Yes," said I, "this is the
true way to approach life; first of all develop your own faculties, and
then mark how in their exercise you influence your fellow-men. Above
all, however, cultivate your individuality, respect this the greatest of
all the unities."

"_Ja, gnaediger Herr_," said the old waiter, as he tried to step away from
my grasp, for, without knowing it, I had laid hold of him by the wrist
while I addressed to him this speech. Desirous to re-establish my
char