he gifted
can be in rags, while enclosed in a wadded dressing-gown; they can go
supperless to bed after a meal of oysters and toasted cheese; they can,
if they will, be fatally wounded as they sit over their wine, or cast
away after shipwreck with their feet on the fender. Great privileges all
these; happy is he who has them, happy are they amidst whom he tries to
spread the blessings of his inheritance!

Amid the many admirable traits which I recognize in myself,--and of
which I speak not boastfully, but gratefully, being accidents of my
nature as far removed from my own agency as the color of my eyes or the
shape of my nose,--of these, I say, I know of none more striking than
such as fit me to be a patron. I am graceful as a lover, touching as a
friend, but I am really great as a protector.

Revelling in such sentiments as these, I stood at my window, looking at
the effect of moonlight on the Falls. It seemed to me as though in the
grand spectacle before my eyes I beheld a sort of illustration of my
own nature, wherein generous emotions could come gushing, foaming, and
falling, and yet the source be never exhausted, the flood ever at full.
I ought parenthetically to observe that the champagne was excellent, and
that I had drunk the third glass of the second bottle to the health of
the widow Cliquot herself. Thus standing and musing, I was startled by a
noise behind me, and, turning round, I saw one of the smallest of men in
a little red Greek jacket and short yellow breeches, carefully engaged
in spreading a small piece of carpet on the floor, a strip like a very
diminutive hearth-rug. This done, he gave a little wild exclamation
of "Ho!" and cut a somersault in the air, alighting on the flat of
his back, which he announced by a like cry of "Ha!" He was up again,
however, in an instant, and repeated the performance three times. He was
about, as I judged by the arrangement of certain chairs, to proceed to
other exercises equally diverting, when I stopped him by asking who he
was.

"Your Excellency," said he, drawing himself up to his full height of,
say, four feet, "I am Vaterchen!"

Every one knows what provoking things are certain chance resemblances,
how disturbing to the right current of thought, how subverting to the
free exercise of reason. Now, this creature before me, in his deeply
indented temples, high narrow forehead, aquiline nose, and resolute
chin, was marvellously like a certain great field-marshal w