use for resigning, and marrying the young widow, the daughter of
Herr von Endlich. When you come home you will have some new neighbors.
They say, though, that Pranken is to enter on a diplomatic career, and
I think he has talent for it.

Have you seen or heard nothing of Frau Bella?

[The Majorin Grassler late Fraeulein Milch, to Knopf.]

You can fancy how your letter rejoiced us. My good husband was cheered
up by it into better spirits than he has had for a long time. I am
sorry to say that since you all went off, he has been full of trouble.
For months he has not been able to get rid of the thought why he was
not younger, so that he could have gone with you. And then, don't laugh
at us, we have a real family trial, for our Laadi has grown blind, and
no physician can help her. People laughed at us for tending the dog so
carefully: they want us to have her shot, but that we can't do, and so
we take care of poor Laadi. My husband sits for hours by her, talking
to her, and even takes her out for a little walk every day. Why must
the dog grow blind? Ah, but I'm asking stupid questions; one has to be
careful not to grow sentimental; Mother Nature is a hard mother.

I knew the father of your Rosalie; he was once at our house with the
school-master Fassbender.

[Eric to Weidmann.]

Adams was ordered to work in the trenches, and a great number of
negroes with him, but he would not take the pick in his hand; then
Roland did what I once dissuaded him from doing, when he wanted to
labor among the workmen at the castle. I think I told you about it. Now
he joined the negroes and used his pick with them, and when I went to
him once, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, I saw a light
in the youth's eye, which said that the crown of human honor rests on
the brow from which runs the sweat of toil.

Beginning this letter to you composes me, in the midst of the constant
excitement of camp-life.

There is much discontent in the army; men are blaming Lincoln for
maintaining a vacillating, uncertain policy, or, to say the least, for
his extreme slowness.

I must leave it to Dr. Fritz, or rather to time, to prove the truth of
his words when he says, Lincoln is not a genius, an individual towering
above the mass; he is an average man, the exact exponent of the spirit
of the people at its present stage of progress. He is not remarkably
distinguished, but a man of just the right stamp.