trade and recite to him verses she had learnt at her dame
school--fragments from the Teutonic masterpieces of the time--"Kruschen
Kruschen," and--

"Baby white and baby red,
Like a moon convulsive
Rolling up and down the bed,
Utterly repulsive!"--

a beautiful little lullaby of Herman Veigel's. Gretchen used to recite
it with the tears pouring down her cheeks, so poignantly affected was
she by the sensitive beauty of it. Her father also used to weep
hopelessly--also her mother, if she happened to be near; and Heinrich,
the cat, invariably retreated under the sofa, unutterably moved.

Life dragged on with some monotony for Gretchen. She often used to help
her mother in the kitchen--and occasionally in the sitting-room. One day
she became a woman! Every one noticed it. Neighbours used to meet her
mother in the _strasse_ and say, "Frau Schmidt, your Gretchen is a
woman." Frau Schmidt would nod proudly and reply, "Yes, we have seen
that; my Peter and I--we are very happy." Thus Gretchen left her
girlhood behind her. It was her habit, so Grundelheim tells us, to walk
out in the forest with one Hans Breitel, an actor at the municipal
theatre. He used to teach her to talk to the birds, and when she
besought him ardently to tell her stories of the theatre, he would
relate to her the parts he had nearly played. Gretchen's heart
thrilled--oh to be an actress, an actress! On her twenty-fourth birthday
von Bottiburgen[16] tells us, Gretchen left home, and went to Berlin.
She wanted to get an interview with Goethe. One day, after she had been
in Berlin a little while, she found him. Brampenrich describes the scene
for us, so beautifully and with such truly exquisite rotundity of
style:--

"The Great Goethe ate at his lunch. What was that noise? He swiftly put
down his knife: the door bursts open; Gretchen Schmidt enters, her
lovely hair awry, her cheeks flushed. 'I will act!' she cries in
bell-like tones. '_Ach, ach!_' cries Goethe. Then Gretchen, with a
superb gesture, hangs her hat on the door handle, and recites to the
amazed man his beloved 'Faust,' word for word, syllable for syllable!"

Thus Brampenrich shows us, with his supreme word imagery, what really
happened.

Gretchen never saw Goethe again; he left Berlin almost immediately for
the Black Forest. Gretchen, alone in the great capital, alone and a
woman, what could she do? Grundelheim, in his celebrated "Toilers who
have Toiled," relates how d