tion,
Content to lack what thou hast not:
In every lot there 's consolation;
There 's trouble, too, in every lot!"

The wife looked at her husband with amazement. What a strange expression
was upon his face! And as he sat down and began to eat, she said: "What
is the meaning of that grace? What has come to you? Where did you find
it?"

"It is the best of all graces, the very best,--real God's word. Yes,
and all your life you 've never made such nice porridge before. You must
have put something special in it!"

"I don't know what you mean. Stop! There 's the book lying there--ah!
that's it--and it's by Gellert, of Leipzig."

"What! Gellert, of Leipzig! Men with ideas like that don't live now;
there may have been such, a thousand years ago, in holy lands, not among
us; those are the words of a saint of old."

"And I tell you they are by Gellert, of Leipzig, of whom your brother
has told us; in fact, he was his tutor, and have n't you heard how pious
and good he is?"

"I would n't have believed that such men still lived, and so near us,
too, as Leipzig."

"Well, but those who lived a thousand years ago were also once living
creatures: and over Leipzig is just the same heaven, and the same sun
shines, and the same God rules, as over all other cities."

"Oh! yes, my brother has an apt pupil in you!"

"Well, and why not? I 've treasured up all he told us of Professor
Gellert."

"Professor!"

"Yes, Professor!"

"A man with such a proud, new-fangled title could n't write anything
like that!"

"He did n't give himself the title, and he is poor enough withal! and
how hard it has fared with him! Even from childhood he has been well
acquainted with poverty: his father was a poor minister in Haynichen,
with thirteen children; and Gellert, when quite a little fellow, was
obliged to be a copying office-clerk: who can tell whether he did n't
then contract that physical weakness of his? And now that he 's an old
man, things will never go better with him; he has often no wood, and
must be pinched with cold. It is with him, perhaps, as with that student
of whom your brother has told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must
read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day
is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out
one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the
other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet