m tell how he went through various foreign countries,
through cities and villages, with his Black Forest clocks hung about
him, making them strike as he went along, himself taking notice all the
while of everything on the way. That was the trouble with him. His eyes
were too busy with other things, with the landscape and beautiful
buildings and the manners and customs of the country,--a great mistake
for a merchant. As our clock-work never changes, go where it will, over
sea and land, so our people remain the same in every latitude. To make
and to save, to live frugally, and never be content till they can come
home with a full money-bag, that is the one thing they care for, let
the world wag as it may. A very good and necessary thing it is, too, in
its place. One head must not have too many projects at one time. But
the day of peddling and saving is past. We must be men of business now,
and establish permanent markets in other lands for our merchandise.

"Did Pilgrim ever reach Athens?"

"Indeed he did, and he has often told me that the joy and devotion with
which the Crusaders greeted Jerusalem could not have exceeded his on
first seeing Athens. He rubbed his eyes to convince himself it was
really Athens. He expected the marble statues to nod a greeting to him
as he went jingling through the streets. But not a single clock did he
sell. He was reduced to such extremity at last as to consider himself
lucky to get a piece of work to do; and what work! For fourteen days,
under the blue Grecian sky, in sight of the Acropolis, he had to paint
the green lattice-work fence of a beer-garden."

"What is the Acropolis?" asked Bertha.

"You can tell her, Storr," suggested the doctor.

The engineer gave a hasty sketch of the former beauty of the citadel of
Athens and its present scanty remains, promising to bring a picture of
it the next time he came, and then begged the doctor to go on with his
story.

"There is little more to tell," he resumed. "With the closest
management, Pilgrim contrived to dispose of his clocks, so that we were
no losers. It required no small courage to return poorer than he went,
to be a general laughing-stock among his old neighbors. But as his
enthusiasm led him to despise the moneyed aristocracy, as he was fond
of calling it, he put on a bold front, and let who would laugh. Of
course, he went first to the Morgenhalde. The parents were standing
with folded hands about the dinner-table. Lenz gave suc