y books." And, casting a
loving glance at his book-shelves, he rose as if to introduce his guest
to them.

Anton looked at their titles, and said, "They are too learned for me."

Bernhard smiled. "Through the Hebrew I have gone on to the other Asiatic
languages. There is much beauty in them, and in their Old-World legends.
I am now engaged upon a translation from the Persian, and some day or
other, when you have a few idle minutes, I should like to inflict a
short specimen upon you."

Anton had the politeness to beg to hear it at once. It was one of those
countless poems in which a votary of the grape compares his beloved to
all fair things in heaven and earth. Its complicated structure impressed
Anton a good deal, but he was somewhat amazed at Bernhard exclaiming,
"Beautiful! is it not? I mean the thought, for I am unable to give the
beauty of language;" and he looked inspired, like a man who drinks
Schiraz wine, and kisses his Zuleika all day long.

"But must one drink in order to love?" said Anton; "with us the one is
very possible without the other."

"With us, life is very commonplace."

"I do not think so," Anton replied, with fervor. "We have the sunshine
and the roses, the joy in existence, the great passions and strange
destinies of which poets sing."

"Our present time is too cold and uniform," rejoined Bernhard.

"So I read in books, but I do not believe it. I think that whoever is
discontented with our life would be so still more with life in Teheran
or Calcutta, if he remained there long enough. It is only novelty that
charms the traveler."

"But how poor in vivid sensations our civilized existence is," rejoined
Bernhard. "I am sure you must often feel business very prosaic."

"That I deny," was the eager reply; "I know nothing so interesting as
business. We live amid a many-colored web of countless threads,
stretching across land and sea, and connecting man with man. When I
place a sack of coffee in the scales, I am weaving an invisible link
between the colonist's daughter in Brazil, who has plucked the beans,
and the young mechanic who drinks it for his breakfast; and if I take up
a stick of cinnamon, I seem to see, on the one side, the Malay who has
rolled it up, and, on the other, the old woman of our suburb who grates
it over her pudding."

"You have a lively imagination, and are happy in the utility of your
calling. But if we seek for poetry, we must, like Byron, quit civilized
countries