jesty the King_:"

A STORY

OF

A SOLITARY WORLDLING.

BOOK VII.

(IRMA'S JOURNAL.)

Cast ashore--what is there left me, but to live on, because I am not
dead?

For days and nights, this unsolved question kept me, as it were,
hovering between heaven and earth, just as it was in the terrible
moment when I glided down from the rock.

I have solved the problem.

I am working. I shall remain resolved, no matter what the result. I
find it a relief to note down my thoughts and feelings.

I was ill,--of a fever, they tell me,--and now I am at work.

I had told the grandmother of what I could do, but there was no chance
to apply it here. She took me out into the garden, and we gathered up
the apples that Uncle Peter shook down from the tree. Then the old,
blind pensioner, whose room is over mine, came out and told us, with
angry cries, that a certain portion of the apples belonged to him. He
tried to find one, so that he might taste it, and thus ascertain which
tree we were shaking. I handed him an apple, and told him that I lived
in the room under his.

We were still in the garden, when a man came who wanted to purchase two
maple-trees that were standing by the cross road, in order to use them
for carving. This seemed like a ray of hope. I told the grandmother
that I knew how to mold in clay, and that I thought I could easily
learn how to carve in wood. And now I'm in the workshop, as a pupil.

This is my first free Sunday, and, while all are away at church, I am
writing this.

*

I once knew a man who had already been kneeling on the sand-heap, the
muskets aimed at him, and--he was pardoned. I have often seen him. Oh
that I had asked him how he lived on!

*

There is no mirror in my room. I have determined never to see myself
again.

And since I neither have, nor desire a mirror, let these pages be the
mirror of my soul.

*

Oh this repose! this solitude! It is like rising from the lake, like
life regained. And yet how calm, how restful!

Up here, and in thousands of other places on this earth, 'twas ever
thus, while, down below, I was about to commit a fearful sin!

*

I have just ret