labors, and strenuous swimming
for life, these beautiful humors and transactions must have been! A
crook-backed boy, dear to the Great Elector, pukes, one afternoon; and
there arises such an opening of the Nether Floodgates of this Universe;
in and round your poor workshop, nothing but sudden darkness, smell of
sulphur; hissing of forked serpents here, and the universal alleleu of
female hysterics there;--to help a man forward with his work! O reader,
we will pity the crowned head, as well as the hatted and even hatless
one. Human creatures will not GO quite accurately together, any more
than clocks will; and when their dissonance once rises fairly high, and
they cannot readily kill one another, any Great Elector who is third
party will have a terrible time of it.

Electress Dorothee, the Stepmother, was herself somewhat of a hard
lady; not easy to live with, though so far above poisoning as to have
"despised even the suspicion of it." She was much given to practical
economics, dairy-farming, market-gardening, and industrial and
commercial operations such as offered; and was thought to be a very
strict reckoner of money. She founded the _ Dorotheenstadt, _ now
oftener called the _ Neustadt, _ chief quarter of Berlin; and planted,
just about the time of this unlucky dinner, "A.D. 1680 or so," [Nicolai,
_ Beschreibung der koniglichen Residenzstadte Berlin und Potsdam _
(Berlin, 1786), i. 172.] the first of the celebrated Lindens, which (or
the successors of which, in a stunted ambition) are still growing there.
_ Unter-den-Linden: _ it is now the gayest quarter of Berlin, full
of really fine edifices: it was then a sandy outskirt of Electress
Dorothee's dairy-farm; good for nothing but building upon, thought
Electress Dorothee. She did much dairy-and-vegetable trade on the great
scale;--was thought even to have, underhand, a commercial interest in
the principal Beer-house of the city? [Horn, _ Leben Friedrich Wilhelms
des Grossen Kurfursten von Brandenburg _ (Berlin, 1814).] People did not
love her: to the Great Elector, who guided with a steady bridle-hand,
she complied not amiss; though in him too there rose sad recollections
and comparisons now and then: but with a Stepson of unsteady nerves it
became evident to him there could never be soft neighborhood. Prince
Friedrich and his Father came gradually to some understanding, tacit or
express, on that sad matter; Prince Friedrich was allowed to live, on
his separate allo