ustom herself
to constant sorrow, and to learn to lead a life tranquil and resigned.

Nearly all to whom invitations had been sent, promptly answered that
they would come. My sister wrote that she would bring her daughter, and
her future son-in-law; but, that, on account of his duties, her husband
would be unable to leave home. My brother-in-law, the pastor, who lived
in Alsace, was also unable to come.

With every letter that came, I felt as if I must read it to my wife.
Who could so help me to celebrate such a day, as she would have done?
The life of the best of children is really for themselves. It is only
the wife who lives entirely for and with her husband--one life
consisting of two lives inseparably united. Inseparably! They have been
separated, and a portion yet lives, leading a fragmentary existence.

I succeeded in repressing my emotions, and prepared myself for the
great joy which was yet vouchsafed me.

On his return from his short trip, Ludwig had much to tell us, giving
us quite a medley of merry and sad experiences. He had met many of his
old comrades; and, among others, had visited his most intimate friend,
a Professor at the teachers' seminary, in a town of the Oberland. The
Professor was a model of quiet unobtrusive learning.

"I am shaping my block of stone," were the Professor's words: "what
place it may occupy in the great Pantheon I do not know; but,
nevertheless, I fulfil my little task as well as I know how."

He felt quite sad to find one of his old comrades in the very position
he had occupied twenty-five years before. He might have become one of
the best of men, for he has a good wife, and fine children; but he is
the slave of drink, and is intoxicated from morning till night. Indeed,
in the country one must constantly renew his intellectual life, or
there is danger of giving way to drunkenness.

Ludwig had also visited his uncle, the Inspector of the water-works at
the Upper Rhine, under whom he had worked for a year. He regretted his
inability to attend our festival, but promised to send his son; and
Ludwig was quite pleased when he told us how his uncle had said:

"The Rhine seems as if lost, and does not know whither it should flow.
It is against nature that one bank of a stream should belong to one
country, and the opposite bank to another."

Sister Babette and her family were the first to arrive; and, shortly
after their first greeting of Ludwig and his family, they inquired for