d to-day. So begin your
confession, my friend! To-day, at least, you are secure from any
moralizing on my part."

Mohr having seated himself in a chair beside the open window, had begun
to twist a cigarette, the materials for which he took from a tin box.

"There is absolutely nothing new to tell," he replied with great
apparent indifference. "The old apothegm that no one can add one inch
to his stature, has been once more ratified, that's all. I left Berlin,
as you will remember, because I thought that the noise and bustle alone
prevented me from becoming a great man. 'Talent developes in a quiet
life.' Well, I've lived quietly enough with my old mother, but nothing
has developed. So, thinks I to myself, as no talent developes let us
try character--'character is formed in the current of the world'--and
so back I have come again, and have already selected a character to
which I intend to adapt myself. A match, Edwin!"

He puffed huge clouds of very strong Turkish tobacco out of the window.

"So nothing came of the editing of the newspaper, from which you
expected so much?"

"It was a miserable sheet, children, a commonplace, provincial,
gossiping little paper, in which appeared, twice a week, bad novels,
stolen from various quarters, or 'original contributions' by the
buergermeister's daughter or chief customhouse officer's son, and lastly
charades and rebuses. However, all the citizens swore by it, and not a
syllable was lost. The right kind of fellow might have made something
of it, or at least in time have smuggled in something better, and, in
so doing, might himself have found room to grow. But there is the
point. After first turning up my nose at this narrowmindedness, I at
last discovered that I really could not do much better myself. You know
I always believed that if I could once form a correct appreciation of
my own powers, a thing not to be accomplished in the intellectual
ant-hill of Berlin, the world would be astonished. Well, I have really
arrived at this just appreciation, and for a long time have been unable
to endure myself! God be thanked, that my good taste yet remains to
save me from that."

"Still the same old Mohr, whose favorite pastime it is to blacken his
character instead of washing himself white."

"Let me go on, and don't suppose that I am making myself out bad in
order that you may praise me the more. Besides, I don't _wish_ to make
myself out 'bad'; I am really quite a passable fello