e: "Thou shalt labor. To-day, this will be finished; to-morrow, that."
And when I lie down to rest, there is always something more in the
world than there was at daybreak.

*

"Work!" "Work!" is the daily, hourly watchword here. They think of
nothing but work. It is a necessity of their being, just as growth is
to the tree. It is this that makes them so self-reliant.

*

There is misery and discord, even here.

In the kindness of her heart, Walpurga said that she could not endure
the thought of the old blind pensioner's being obliged to eat his meals
alone, and that she meant to have him at the table with the rest.

"I won't have it!" said Hansei. "Not a word more about it; I won't have
it."

"Why not?"

"Why? You ought to know that yourself. If Jochem has once been at the
table, you can never get rid of him again. So we'd better not have him
at all. You don't know how an old blind man eats."

After that, not a word was spoken during the meal. Walpurga made
believe that she was eating, but she was merely choking down her tears,
and left the table soon afterward. She is keenly sensitive to such
rudeness and cruelty; but she never complains, not even to me.

*

(During a violent storm.)

What a fright I have had to-day! My little pitchman told me that a man
had hanged himself somewhere in the vicinity.

"It had to come," thought he. "The man had hanged himself fifteen years
ago, but they cut him down, and he lived on. But it was just as if he
always had a rope around his neck--people who've once tried anything of
that sort, never die a natural death."

How his words startled me.

Can it be that such dread fate is yet in store for me?

I answer: No! It shall not be!

*

To sit in my warm room and look out at the driving snowstorm, is like
going back in thought to the hurly-burly of the great world.

Nine weeks have passed already.

I still have a dull, heavy feeling, as if I had been struck in the head
with a hammer. I merely exist, but it seems as if life were again
dawning upon me. When I awake in the mornings, I am obliged to ask
myself who and where I am, and to recall all my woe. But then work soon
summons me away.

*

I have nothing more to look for, be it from the outer world, or the
morrow. I am forced back upon my