the
hopeless condition of his own dephlegmatised heart, endeavoured to force
into his eyes something that might meet the occasion by staring with
them wide open and in a state of rigid expansion.

The morning-lecturer, Flacks, looked like a Jew beggar mounted on a
stallion which is running away with him: meantime, what by domestic
tribulations, what by those he witnessed at his own lecture, his heart
was furnished with such a promising bank of heavy-laden clouds, that he
could easily have delivered upon the spot the main quantity of water
required had it not been for the house which floated on the top of the
storm; and which, just as all was ready, came driving in with the tide,
too gay and gladsome a spectacle not to banish his gloom, and thus
fairly dammed up the waters.

The ecclesiastical councillor--who had become acquainted with his own
nature by long experience in preaching funeral sermons, and sermons on
the New Year, and knew full well that he was himself always the first
person and frequently the last, to be affected by the pathos of his own
eloquence--now rose with dignified solemnity, on seeing himself and the
others hanging so long by the dry rope, and addressed the chamber:--No
man, he said, who had read his printed works, could fail to know that he
carried a heart about him as well as other people; and a heart, he would
add, that had occasion to repress such holy testimonies of its
tenderness as tears, lest he should thereby draw too heavily on the
sympathies and the purses of his fellow-men, rather than elaborately to
provoke them by stimulants for any secondary views, or to serve an
indirect purpose of his own: 'This heart,' said he, 'has already shed
tears (but they were already shed secretly), for Kabel was my friend;'
and, so saying, he paused for a moment and looked about him.

With pleasure he observed that all were sitting as dry as corks: indeed,
at this particular moment, when he himself, by interrupting their
several water-works, had made them furiously angry, it might as well
have been expected that crocodiles, fallow-deer, elephants, witches, or
ravens should weep for Van der Kabel, as his presumptive heirs. Among
them all, Flacks was the only one who continued to make way: he kept
steadily before his mind the following little extempore assortment of
objects:--Van der Kabel's good and beneficent acts; the old petticoats
so worn and tattered, and the gray hair of his female congregation at