ce of my parents from Leipsic I was for some
months staying in the Magister's house; three flights of stairs brought
one to his door. I usually bounded up those stairs with the elastic step
that leads to a happy home, but to-day--a certain to-day that seems but
yesterday--my tread was slow and diffident. How could I face the
Magister, the man above all others whom I had treated with
disrespect--I had libelled! What reception awaited me? Whether I took
two steps at a time or one at half-time, the result was much the same; I
got upstairs, rang the bell, and went in.

This is what had happened during the morning's lesson at the
Thomas-Schule. The learned doctor was expounding the subtle meaning of
some lines in Virgil's "AEneid." I found that the top layer of the poet's
meaning would do for me, but, as is the way with the erudite, Dr.
Traumann went down very deep, backed by an army of commentators; in fact
so deep that I did not care to follow. So I took to a more congenial
occupation, and, under the cover of a friendly desk, I began to compose
what seemed to me an interesting subject. How long I was about it, I do
not know. The Doctor had walked up and down dozens of times between the
forms, when suddenly a hand reached behind the desk and quietly annexed
and pocketed the composition. The hand was the Doctor's. He walked on
quite unconcernedly, prodding and probing old Virgil's defunct thoughts
as before. And all the while he had that wicked caricature of himself in
his breast-pocket, and presently he would see it and read the legend
that relegated him and the commentators to the Dantesque depths of their
own seeking.

I was eating a green apple, to give myself courage, when the Magister
came in. What would he say? How would he take it? Well--he took it just
as if nothing had happened, and smiling pleasantly, he said, "Look
here, Felix, I have got a splendid specimen to show you," and with that,
he fumbled in his pocket and produced a small piece of quartz. "I have
got another piece, so you can have this for your collection."

"Oh, thank you, Herr Magister," I said; "I am sure you are too kind.
I--I don't deserve it."

He cut me short with: "Not at all, my boy; we are just on a footing of
exchange. 'Eine Hand waescht die andere,' as the proverb says."

What has become of my minerals I don't know, but to this day I often
think, soap in hand, of the proverb that says, "One hand washes the
other." As for the caricature,