gh of
the loftiest and noblest kind. Also, but a few days ere he died, he had
admonished Ann, in whom he had long discerned the true teacher of his
younger children, to warn them above all things against self-seeking,
inasmuch as now that the hand of death was already on him, he found his
chiefest comfort in the assurance of having labored faithfully, trusting
in his Redeemer's grace, to do all that in him lay for his own kith and
kin, and for other folks' orphans, whether rich or poor.

This discourse had sunk deep into Ann's soul, and had been in her mind
when she spoke such brave words to Herdegen, exhorting him to higher
aims. Now, again, coming forth from the good priest's door, she had
met her grand-uncle the organist, and asking him what he would say if
a hapless and forlorn maid should seek the peace she had lost in the
silence of the cloister, the simple man looked her full in the eyes and
murmured sadly to himself: "Alack! And has it come to this!" Then he
went close up to her, raised her drooping head, and cried in a cheering
voice:

"In a cloister? You, in a cloister! You, our Ann, who have already
learnt to be so good a mother in the Sisters's school? No child, and
again and again I say No. Pay heed rather to the saying which your old
grand-uncle once heard from the lips of a wise and good man, when in
the sorest hour of his life he was about to knock at the gate of a
Cistercian convent.--His words were: 'Though thou lose all thou deemest
thy happiness, if thou canst but make the happiness of others, thou
shalt find it again in thine own heart.'"

And at a later day old Heyden himself told me that he, who while yet
but a youth had been the prefectus of the town-pipers, had been nigh
to madness when his wife, his Elslein, had been snatched from him after
scarce a year and a half of married life. After he had recovered his
wits, he had conceived that any balance or peace of mind was only to be
found in a convent, near to God; and it was at that time that the
wise and excellent Ulman Stromer had spoken the words which had been
thenceforth the light and guiding line of his life. He had remained in
the world; but he had renounced the more honorable post of prefect of
the town-musicians, and taken on him the humble one of organist, in
which it had been granted to him to offer up his great gift of music as
it were a sacrifice to Heaven. This maxim, which had spared the virtuous
old man to the world, made its ma