tely the
position with Sonnenkamp; he might have effected it, and then have
received a considerable sum of money. He blamed himself for letting the
old cavalier pride get the better of him.

Eric looked sorrowfully upon a whole pile of manuscript sheets, books,
and inserted printed scraps, which his father had been collecting and
preparing his whole lifetime.

Eric's father had intended to write a book with the title, "The Real
Man in History;" but he had died before accomplishing his purpose. Many
valuable notes, even single portions, had been written out, but no use
could be made of them, for each separate remark was considered in three
different ways, and the leading idea had been contained in the head of
the professor alone. All the sciences and the most remote facts of
history had been drawn together, but the leading and connecting thought
of the whole had vanished with the man himself, now resting in the
ground; no entire form could be constructed out of these fragments.
Only one thing was often pointed out, that the title should be, "The
Real Man."

The first and larger part was to have collected those traits, scattered
in the course of ages, out of which the image of God could be
constructed as it was manifest in all the actual unfoldings of
humanity; the second part was then to give an exact account of the
manifestations of the soul's life in the past, to be as definitely
determined as past events in external nature; and from there onwards
was the point to be designated where genius, that miracle in the
intellectual sphere, lays the foundation for new developments. This was
what Eric thought, at any rate, when he tried to arrange the papers
left by his father; then the leading and fundamental thought vanished,
and all this matter collected with such laborious industry seemed
utterly useless. As a treasure-digger, who must raise the treasure
without speaking, so his father seemed to have closed his lips upon
what he had already done, and upon what he intended to do.

Eric went back to the sitting-room, and the deep emotion of his heart,
the whole uncertainty of his position, the growing strangeness of his
home--all these were gathered into the thought of the lost labor, the
useless toil of his father.

He looked around the room; it seemed to him inconveniently crowded with
old furniture. He, who generally examined himself so closely and judged
himself so severely, did not suspect that the sight of luxuriou