found that things were even as we read of them in good German
picture-books--that every house has its 'Fater,' who is horribly
beneficent and extraordinarily honourable. So honourable is he that it
is dreadful to have anything to do with him; and I cannot bear people
of that sort. Each such 'Fater' has his family, and in the evenings
they read improving books aloud. Over their roof-trees there murmur
elms and chestnuts; the sun has sunk to his rest; a stork is roosting
on the gable; and all is beautifully poetic and touching. Do not be
angry, General. Let me tell you something that is even more touching
than that. I can remember how, of an evening, my own father, now dead,
used to sit under the lime trees in his little garden, and to read
books aloud to myself and my mother. Yes, I know how things ought to be
done. Yet every German family is bound to slavery and to submission to
its 'Fater.' They work like oxen, and amass wealth like Jews. Suppose
the 'Fater' has put by a certain number of gulden which he hands over
to his eldest son, in order that the said son may acquire a trade or a
small plot of land. Well, one result is to deprive the daughter of a
dowry, and so leave her among the unwedded. For the same reason, the
parents will have to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of
the army, in order that he may earn more towards the family capital.
Yes, such things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the
subject. It is all done out of sheer rectitude--out of a rectitude
which is magnified to the point of the younger son believing that he
has been RIGHTLY sold, and that it is simply idyllic for the victim to
rejoice when he is made over into pledge. What more have I to tell?
Well, this--that matters bear just as hardly upon the eldest son.
Perhaps he has his Gretchen to whom his heart is bound; but he cannot
marry her, for the reason that he has not yet amassed sufficient
gulden. So, the pair wait on in a mood of sincere and virtuous
expectation, and smilingly deposit themselves in pawn the while.
Gretchen's cheeks grow sunken, and she begins to wither; until at last,
after some twenty years, their substance has multiplied, and sufficient
gulden have been honourably and virtuously accumulated. Then the
'Fater' blesses his forty-year-old heir and the thirty-five-year-old
Gretchen with the sunken bosom and the scarlet nose; after which he
bursts, into tears, reads the pair a lesson on morality, and dies.