to the making of perfect lebkuchen might descend.
But he was a philosopher in his way, and did not suffer himself to be
seriously disconcerted by an accident that by no means was irreparable.
As he smoked his long pipe that night, while the bread was baking,
he said to himself, cheerily: "It is a girl. Yes, that is easy. Girls
sprout everywhere; they are like grass. But a boy, and a boy who is to
grow up into such a baker as my boy will be--ah, that is another matter.
But patience, Gottlieb; all in good time." Then, when his third pipe was
finished--which was his measure of time for the baking--he fetched out
the sweet-smelling hot bread from the oven with his long peel, and set
forth upon his round of delivery. And he whistled a mellow old Nuernberg
air as he pushed his cart through the streets before him that frosty
morning, and in his heart he thanked the good God who had sent him
the blessings of a dear wife and a sweet little daughter and a growing
trade.

And yet once more were his honey-pots sacrificed, and this time the
sacrifice was sad indeed. From the day that the little Minna came into
the world his own Minna, as in a little while was but too plain to
him, began to make ready to leave it. As the weeks went by, the little
strength that at first had come to her was lost again; the faint color
faded from her cheeks, and left them so wan that through the fair skin
the blue veins showed in most delicate tracery; and as her dear eyes
ever grew gentler and more loving, the light slowly went out from them.
So within the year the end came. In that great sorrow Gottlieb forgot
his ambition, and cared not, when the bills were paid, that his
honey-pots still remained unfilled. For the care of his home and of
little Minna his good sister Hedwig came to him. Very drearily, for a
long while, the work of the bakery went on.

But a strong man, stirred by a strong purpose, does not relinquish
that purpose lightly; and the one redeeming feature of the life of many
sorrows which in this world we all are condemned to live is that even
the bitterest sorrow is softened by time. But for this partial relief
our race no doubt would have been extinguished ages ago in a madness
wrought of grief and rage.

Gottlieb's strong purpose was to make the best lebkuchen that baker ever
baked. After a fashion his sorrow healed, as the flesh heals about a
bullet that has gone too deep to be extracted by the surgeon's craft,
and while it was wi