uainted with the Siegwart family?"

"No; what I know of Angela I learned from the people of Salingen."

They arrived at the platform. Klingenberg stood silent for some time
admiring the landscape. The view did not seem to interest Richard. His
eyes rested on Angela's home, whose white walls, surrounded by
vineyards and corn-fields, glistened in the sun.

"It is worth while to come up here oftener," said Klingenberg.

"Angela's work," said Richard as he drew near the statue. The doctor
paused a moment and examined the flowers.

"Do you observe Angela's fine taste in the arrangement of the colors?"
said he. "And the forget-me-nots! What a deep religious meaning they
have."

They returned by another way to Frankenhoehe.

"Angela's pious work," began Richard after a long pause, "reminds me of
a religious custom against which modern civilization has thus far
warred in vain. I mean the veneration of saints. You, as a Protestant,
will smile at this custom, and I, as a Catholic, must deplore the
tenacity with which my church clings to this obsolete remnant of
heathen idolatry."

"Ah! this is the subject you alluded to yesterday," said the doctor. "I
must, in fact, smile, my dear Richard! But I by no means smile at 'the
tenacity with which your church clings to the obsolete remnants of
heathen idolatry.' I smile at your queer idea of the veneration of the
saints. I, as a reasonable man, esteem this veneration, and recognize
its admirable and beneficial influence on human society."

This declaration increased Frank's surprise to the highest degree. He
knew the clear mind of the doctor, and could not understand how it
happened that he wished to defend a custom so antagonistic to modern
thought.

"You find fault," continued Klingenberg, "with the custom of erecting
statues to these holy men in the churches, the forest, the fields, the
houses, and in the market?"

"Yes, I do object to that."

"If you had objected to the lazy Schiller at Mayence, or the robber's
poet Schiller, as he raves at the theatre in Mannheim, or to the
conqueror and destroyer of Germany, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue is
erected as an insult in a German city, then you would be right."

"Schiller-worship has its justification," retorted Frank. "They erect
public monuments to the genial spirit of that man, to remind us of his
services to poetry, his aspirations, and his German patriotism."

"It is praiseworthy to erect monuments to the poet. Bu