for Friedrich's ballad.

He would not read it himself, so Marie was pressed into the service,
and crowned with the hood and cloak, and elected Maerchen-Frau.

The author himself sat in an arm-chair, with a face as white and
miserable as if he were ordered for execution. He formed a painful
contrast to his ruddy brothers and sisters; and it would seem as if he
had begun already to experience the truth of Marie's assertion, that
"great men are not always happy ones."

The ballad was put into the Maerchen-Frau's hands, and she was told
that Friedrich had written it. She gave a quick glance at it, and
asked if he had really invented it all. The children repeated the
fact, which was a pleasant but not a surprising one to them, and Marie
began.

The young poet had evidently a good ear, for the verses were easy and
musical, and the metre more than tolerably correct; and as the hero of
the ballad worked harder and harder, and got higher and higher, the
children clapped their hands, and discovered that it was "quite like
Friedrich."

Why, when that hero was almost at the height of fortune, and the
others gloried in his success, did the foolish author bury his face
upon his arms, and sob silently but bitterly in sympathy?--moreover,
with such a heavy and absorbing grief that he did not hear it, when
Marie stopped for an instant and then went on again, or know that
steps had come behind his chair, and that his father and the
Burgomaster were in the room.

The Maerchen-Frau went on; the hero awoke from his unreal happiness to
his real fate, and bewailed in verse after verse the heavy weights of
birth, and poverty, and circumstance, that kept him from the heights
of fame. The ballad was ended.

Then a voice fell on Friedrich's ear, which nearly took away his
breath. It was his father's asking sternly, "What is all this?"

And then he knew that Marie was standing up, with a strange emotion on
her face, and he heard her say--

"It is a poem that Friedrich has written. He has written it all
himself. Every word. And he is but twelve years old!" She was pointing
to him, or, perhaps, the Burgomaster might not have recognized in that
huddled miserable figure the genius of the family.

His was the next voice, and what he said Friedrich could hardly
remember; the last sentences only he clearly understood.

"GOD has not blessed me with children, neighbour. My wife, as
well as I, would be ashamed if such genius were lost for want