l? Because, on either side of this stream, cold and
respectable persons have taken up their abodes, and, forsooth, their
summer-houses and tulip-beds would suffer from the torrent; wherefore
they dig trenches, and raise embankments betimes, in order to avert the
impending danger.

MAY 27.

I find I have fallen into raptures, declamation, and similes, and have
forgotten, in consequence, to tell you what became of the children.
Absorbed in my artistic contemplations, which I briefly described in my
letter of yesterday, I continued sitting on the plough for two hours.
Toward evening a young woman, with a basket on her arm, came running
toward the children, who had not moved all that time. She exclaimed
from a distance, "You are a good boy, Philip!" She gave me greeting: I
returned it, rose, and approached her. I inquired if she were the mother
of those pretty children. "Yes," she said; and, giving the eldest a
piece of bread, she took the little one in her arms and kissed it with
a mother's tenderness. "I left my child in Philip's care," she said,
"whilst I went into the town with my eldest boy to buy some wheaten
bread, some sugar, and an earthen pot." I saw the various articles in
the basket, from which the cover had fallen. "I shall make some broth
to-night for my little Hans (which was the name of the youngest):
that wild fellow, the big one, broke my pot yesterday, whilst he was
scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired
for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving
a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed
Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found
that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was
gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left
him. "They wanted to cheat him," she said, "and would not answer
his letters; so he is gone there himself. I hope he has met with no
accident, as I have heard nothing of him since his departure." I left
the woman, with regret, giving each of the children a kreutzer, with an
additional one for the youngest, to buy some wheaten bread for his broth
when she went to town next; and so we parted. I assure you, my dear
friend, when my thoughts are all in tumult, the sight of such a
creature as this tranquillises my disturbed mind. She moves in a
happy thoughtlessness within the confined circle of her existence; she
supplies her wan