wife and
daughters, and the doctor began as follows.

CHAPTER V.

PILGRIM'S ADVENTURES.

Pilgrim was the son of a case-painter. Left an orphan at an early age,
he was brought up at the public expense by the old schoolmaster. But he
spent by far the greater part of his time with Lenz the clockmaker on
the Morgenhalde. In old Lenz's wife he found almost a second mother,
while their only surviving child, the Lenz who has been working to-day,
was like a brother to him. Pilgrim was always the more ready and
skilful workman of the two; for Lenz, with all his undoubted ability,
has a certain fanciful dreaminess of character. Perhaps there is a
genius for music in Lenz and for painting in Pilgrim that has never
been developed; who knows? You must hear Lenz sing some time. He is
first tenor in the Liederkranz; and it is chiefly owing to him that our
society won the prize at two musical festivals,--one at Constance and
the other at Freiburg. As the boys grew up, Lenz was apprenticed to his
father and Pilgrim to a case-painter, but they continued close friends.
Through the long summer evenings they would wander singing and
whistling over hill and valley, as sure to be together as the twin
stars in heaven. Winter nights Pilgrim had to walk up to the
Morgenhalde through snow and storm; for Lenz, being, as I have said,
the last of five children, was somewhat spoiled by his mother, and kept
at home in bad weather. There they would sit together half through the
night, reading books of travel or whatever else they could lay hands
on. Many a volume out of my library has their thirst for knowledge
devoured. Together they devised a plan for travelling abroad; for, with
all the domestic habits of our people, there is a general desire among
them to see the world. As soon as it was sure that both were exempt
from military service,--Pilgrim by lot, and Lenz as being an only
son,--they were anxious to carry their plan into execution. Lenz showed
on this subject for the first time a persistent obstinacy which had
never been suspected in him. He would not be dissuaded from the
journey. His father was for letting him go, but the very thought threw
his mother into despair. When the minister's persuasions failed, I was
called in, and enjoined to talk the boy into a whole catalogue of
diseases, if other arguments failed. Of course I pursued a different
treatment. The two friends had