n those
days he lived in the clerk's house, and was to have everything in the
house, to be at free quarters, as the saying is; but he was still, so
to speak, a fine young gentleman. He wanted to have his boots cleaned
with patent blacking, and the clerk could only afford ordinary grease;
and upon that point they split--one spoke of stinginess, the other of
vanity, and the blacking became the black cause of enmity between
them, and at last they parted.

This is what he demanded of the world in general--namely, patent
blacking--and he got nothing but grease. Accordingly he at last drew
back from all men, and became a hermit; but the church tower is the
only place in a great city where hermitage, office, and bread can be
found together. So he betook himself up thither, and smoked his pipe
as he made his solitary rounds. He looked upward and downward, and had
his own thoughts, and told in his way of what he read in books and in
himself. I often lent him books, good books; and you may know a man by
the company he keeps. He loved neither the English governess-novels,
nor the French ones, which he called a mixture of empty wind and
raisin-stalks: he wanted biographies and descriptions of the wonders
of the world. I visited him at least once a year, generally directly
after New Year's-day, and then he always spoke of this and that which
the change of the year had put into his head.

I will tell the story of three of these visits, and will reproduce his
own words whenever I can remember them.

FIRST VISIT.

Among the books which I had lately lent Ole, was one which had greatly
rejoiced and occupied him. It was a geological book, containing an
account of the boulders.

[Illustration: THE RIDE TO AMACK.]

"Yes, they're rare old fellows, those boulders!" he said; "and to
think that we should pass them without noticing them! And over the
street pavement, the paving-stones, those fragments of the oldest
remains of antiquity, one walks without ever thinking about them. I
have done the very thing myself. But now I look respectfully at every
paving-stone. Many thanks for the book! It has filled me with thought,
and has made me long to read more on the subject. The romance of the
earth is, after all, the most wonderful of all romances. It's a pity
one can't read the first volumes of it, because they 're written in a
language that we don't understand. One must read in the different
strata, in the pebble-stones, for each separate