ing I wanted, the
manikin, the target for my uncle?

Meanwhile he was scribbling rapidly on a small slate he had taken from
his pocket. With another bow (as if he had written something wrong and
was going to wipe it out with his nose), he handed me the slate, on
which I found written in a neat hand half-a-dozen lines in as many
different languages,--English, Latin, Hebrew, German, French,
Greek,--each, as far as I could make out, conveying the cheerful
information that he could communicate with me in that particular tongue.
I tried him in English, French, and Latin, and I must acknowledge that
he stood the test; he then tried me In Greek and Hebrew, and I as freely
confess that I didn't stand the test. He smiled intelligently, nodded,
and condescendingly returned to the English tongue, writing quickly,--"I
am a poor exile from Fatherland, and I much need friends."

I wrote: "You wish employment?" He replied: "I shall be much obliged for
any service I shall be capable to do,"--and passed me the slate with a
hopeful smile.

"What can you do?" I asked. He answered: "I copy the manuscripts, I
translate from the one language to others with some perfect exactitude,
I arrange the libraries, I make the catalogues, I am capable to be any
secretary." And he looked up as if he saw in my eyes a vast vista of
catalogues, manuscripts, libraries, and Fatherland at the end of it.

"How would you like to be companion to a literary man?" I inquired.

He nodded expressively, and wrote: "I should that like overall. But I
speak and hear not."

"No matter," I replied. "You will only have to sit and appear to listen,
and nod occasionally."

"You shall be the gentleman?" he asked with a bright, pleased look.

I explained to him that the gentleman was an unfortunate connection of
my family, whom we could not regard as being quite in his right mind.

Jacob Menzel smiled, and touched his fore head interrogatively.

I nodded, adding on the slate,--"He is perfectly harmless; but he can
only be kept quiet by having some person to talk and read to. He will
talk and read to you. He must not know you are deaf. He is very deaf
himself, and will not expect you to reply." And, for a person wishing a
light and easy employment, I recommended the situation.

He wrote at once, "How much you pay?"

"One dollar a day, and board you," I replied.

He of the nose nodded eagerly at that, and wrote, "Also you make to be
washed my shirt?"

I agreed;