sat there
quietly; Sonnenkamp had a standing request that they would excuse his
rudeness. Turning to Roland, he said good-humoredly,--

"Don't get this bad habit--don't get in the way of having a stick in
your hand to whittle."

And so he sat and whittled away, occasionally looking up with a fixed
stare, holding the knife in his right hand and the piece of wood in his
left; then he would resume his whittling.

Roland always seated himself opposite the reader, so that Eric must
look him in the face. Often, until it was very late, Roland would talk
with Eric about the wonderful things he had been listening to.

Eric had been reading Macbeth, and he was glad to hear Roland say,--

"This Lady Macbeth could easily be transformed into a witch, like one
of those who came in at the beginning."

Another time, when Eric had been reading Hamlet, he was not a little
surprised at hearing Roland say to him in the evening, before going to
bed,--

"Strange! Hamlet, in that soliloquy, speaks of no one returning from
the other world, when, only a short time before, the spirit of his
father had appeared, and he appears again afterwards."

One evening, after Eric had read Goethe's Iphigenia, Roland said,--

"I can't make out at all why Manna said once that she was Iphigenia. If
she were Iphigenia, I should be Orestes. I, Orestes? I? Why was it? Do
you understand Manna's meaning?"

Eric said no.

One evening when the Physician and the Priest were present, Sonnenkamp
requested Eric to read aloud Shakespeare's Othello. Eric looked at
Roland. Will not Roland be stirred up to fresh questioning concerning
the negroes? He had no reason he could assign for declining, and he
could contrive no excuse for sending Roland away.

Eric commenced reading. The fulness and flexibility of his voice gave
the requisite expression to each character, and he preserved the proper
distinction between reading and theatrical presentation. He brought out
no strong colors; it was an artistic embodiment that allowed the
outlines of form to appear, but gave no coloring; it was not an
imitation of life, but a simple outline drawing of the general
features, softened but sufficiently defined.

The Doctor nodded to the Mother, as much as to say that Eric's
interpretation was very pleasant.

For the first time, Frau Ceres listened with eager attention, without
leaning back once during the whole evening; she continued bent forward,
and her countenance wore an