Loffels, and then there was no other retreat but among the Messers.

The students formed a floating party, each settling down to his proper level, according to his dress, at the first clubball. Did he glory in a dress coat, he was a Loffel; had he a frock-coat, he was a Gabel; did he gallant in fancy pantaloons and colored shirt, he was a Messer.

Four balls, during the winter, open to the whole town, and two very select picnics in summer, completed the festivities of the year.

For the winter galas, six musicians were hired; a keg of pickled herring, some lettuce, oil, and vinegar were purchased, and the necessaries for the fête were completed. What master-strokes of policy, what subtle intrigues did not these dear people carry on, in order to make each other miserable! Did it happen to rain or snow, the Löffels had secured every carriage in the town (the town locomotion comprised two brokendown English traveling carriages, and an omnibus), and the Gabels and Messers trudged on foot in the mire to the dance.

The Gabels, once, by a Machiavellian effort of diplomacy, managed to get on the executive committee, upon which occasion, having secured the right of mixing the herring-salad, they seasoned it so with garlic, that not a Löffel could partake of it. (This stupid trick, a Loffel afterwards told me, recoiled upon the perpetrators; both Gabels and. Messers, from an undue quantity coming to their share, having been made quite ill.)

The Messers had a quiet way of taking their revenge; how many picnics did they not spoil, by warning the parties off their fields, setting their dogs on them, and in buying up all the real Kalbs-coteletten, which is an indispensable part of a German merry-making.

In the club-house was a room devoted to whist, and Boston; here assembled the Aesellenites to smoke their pipes, and, through the tobacco-fumes, to settle the fate of nations, according to the Grossherzogthums Priviligirte Gazette, a tri-weekly newspaper, seven inches by nine.

How well I recollect our first entrance there. It was during my first week in Aeselen, and I was an uninitiated. I had paid my four guldens subscription, and was desirous of getting

the worth of my money. I say our entrance, for I was accompanied by three merry fellows, a Frenchman, an Englishman, (by royal letters patent, son of her Majesty the Queen's apothecary), and a Russian, killed, poor fellow, in the last sortie from Sebastopol. Passing into the whist-room, we sat down to a game. Our entrance was remarked; although students had the nominal entreé to this room, it was never used, and we were ignorant of it. A loud whisper, at the side, from the head salt inspector, perhaps intended for our ears, expressed his amazement and disgust at our intrusion!" Our plan was soon formed. The Russ drew a pile of rouble notes from his pocket, the Briton his Bank of England notes, the Gaul a handful of Napoleons, and I happening to have some fifty dollar California pieces, placed them on the table.

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Slowly we began to play. I managed to let fall a piece of my gold on the floor, it rolled under the salt inspector's feet; the ring of gold had its effect; every eye was upon us. Our money changed hands; now I had it all, next the Russian, and the notes and gold flew about the table.

Every game was stopped: you might have heard a pin drop, and I am certain ten pipes, at least, went out. Apparently not noticing the intense excitement around us, Vlademir, the Russian, said: "This is all nonsense; you, de Clermont, have a chateau or so, you, John, have a forge, beside a coalmine, and you have cotton and sugarplantations, with negroes. I play my versts of pine-forests and serfs, without number, against them. What do you say? We are nine a-piece, the odd trick wins the game, and stakes the negroes and coal-mines against my serfs and a chateau !" His acting was inimitable; it was quietly, neatly done, said in a low, distinct tone, and every one heard it.

As luck would have it, we each took six tricks, and the first card of the seventh was on the table, when a heavy hand was placed on each of our packs, and the Herr University Proctor, and University Beadle, with four soldiers (the whole garrison of Aeselen), tore us from our game; with a protestation,. we were marched, each one home, with summons to appear at the University court on the morrow. That night all

At the University court-room the Herr University Proctor made an elaborate speech, full of the choicest quotations, and his rage was unequaled when we told him our ignorance of transgression, and the true state of the joke.

We were severely reprimanded, and only escaped being rusticated, from the fact of no precedent being found to judge the case by. Aeselen was in a passion, and, from that time, we were considered dangerous. There was not a soul in the place, of a philological turn of mind, that did not ferret, in the English dictionary, the meaning of the word "sell," which term the son of the Queen's apothecary had unguardedly used, as explaining the circumstance. How dark and muddy were the streets in winter; and how we used to plunge ankle deep in the slime, on going to our evening lectures. Aeselen had two street-lamps, the illumination being vested in the hands of two important functionaries, the upper lantern-inspector, and the lower lantern inspector, the former going up the rungs of the ladder, whilst the latter steadied him. We four procured huge tin lanterns, such as only primeval Germany can invent, and with them, even at sundown, no matter how clear or moonlit the night, we sallied out. It was considered as an insult to the corporation, the matter was reported to the capital, and the matter was compromised, by the addition of a third lantern, which, we devotedly hope, still swings, creaks, and flickers over the streets of Aeselen.

Herr Professor Von Stickstoff was the great man of the place; all Aeselen bowed before him, and well they might. His immense talents, the discovery of a new science, had brought, to Aeselen, students from all the world. In gratitude to him, the townspeople had presented him with some two acres of sand, on which not even stunted briars grew, with the pithy remark, "That since his lectures on agriculture taught how to make the poorest land rich, he was welcome to this, to grow wealthy thereby," an ambiguous compliment, rather smacking of the idea, that "no

one is a prophet in his own country." The peasants, poor simple folk, in their patois, called it "Stickstoff's folly."

Now-a-days, Aeselen has lost its professor, and Aeselen is among "the gewesens," or things that have been. The students have deserted it. The illiberal policy of a government, that gave this great man an under-usher's salary, with a thousand restrictions, has deprived the Grossherzogthum of its only reputation; for, beside the occasional production of a Prince or Princess, for a European marriage, the noise it makes in the world is on a parallel with that of Monaco.

It was strange to see how this little country was incensed against its neighbors; how it raved and stormed against the adjacent electorate people.

The incident made an impression on me, and as it, curiously enough, has something to do with our own history, it is worth recording.

Riding through the adjacent state (a ten minutes' easy canter brought you there), with no less a person than the Herzogthumlich Rittmeister, the Royal University riding master-(every student in Germany is supposed to be a master of equitation, and sleeps in boots and spurs, though his familiarity with the noble quadruped is about the same as his acquaintance with the dromedary); the riding master had a stud of three broken down cavalry horses, and a kicking mare, which latter amiable animal I was bestriding;the important functionary said to the ostler, who fed our steeds, on dismounting, “Give him some water, du blinder Hesser."

"Why call him blind, oh, well-born riding-master?" I asked.

"Because all these electoral Hessians are blind-blind as stones, blind as puppies, we all call them so."

"Ah," thought I, "unfortunate people cursed with cecity." I then asked, but the reason why you call them blind, is it because -?"

"The Lord knows," answered the riding master. "They ain't worth talking about; I suppose you have lots of buffaloes, lions, and wild horses, for the powder's worth, in your country?"

On arriving at Aeselen, hearing the Herr Professor Aepfelkopf (Professor of History) using the same epithet, I inquired the reason. He gravely informed me, that after the Boeotians of

old, the inhabitants of the neighboring electorate were the next in stupidity; in fact, that if he had the palm to award, he would confer it on the latter, and that the fact of their having been caught asleep at Trenton, by General Washington, had given them this pleasing cognomen of "blind," throughout all Germany; but he pressed me, at the same time, not to confound them with the people of his country, who were not at all of the same race, and whose intelligence and far-sightedness, he had no doubt, were already impressed on my mind.

But to return to Aeselen-what subjects of interest they had there. Did an officer of the army arrive, how he was stared at, and how they gave him the whole side-walk, and how every window mirror on the place was made bright, as a Daguerreotype plate, to receive his impression. Some Messers were absolutely elevated to be Löffels, from the fact of his having nodded to them. And how these mighty chieftains would sneer at the timid waiters, abuse the food, and glance at us poor students, at the tavern table d'hôte. One dear fellow, with an apple dumpling head, and wasp-waist, and with at least five feet of sword, once sat near us at dinner. My friend the Englishman (a true disciple of Albert Smith's) quietly asking him in English, "whether a corset did not answer the same purpose as a coat of mail?" was disagreeably surprised by his understanding it. The soldier grew intensely red and apoplectic, and threatened to cut off the apothecary's son's ears.

We arranged it, though, upon the solemn statement, that it was an established article of English military equipment, and that it was a well known historical fact, that Wellington fought his Waterloo in stays, and would never have left the field, had not the bullet directed against him flattened on his busk. Upon this he was pacified.

Numerous bottles of Liebfraumilch and Jesuitengarten were ordered, and wine, like oil, stilled the troubled waters. I recollect he got very happy, and insisted on fraternizing; pathetically protesting, "that rather might his allbelovedmuchhonored sword be broken, than would he ever draw it against America, or England," and concluded by quietly asking the Englishman, that if he did know one artisan more

skilled in England than others, in making corsets, he would much like to have his address."

Professor Herr von Stickstoff once invited me to his house. We had redcabbage, cooked white, and white-cabbage, cooked red (a beautiful experiment of the Professor's), beside lentil porridge, and sour-beef with currants and raisins. He had a pretty daughter Magnesia (all the Pharmacie-Studenten were supposed to be dead in love with her), and with Mademoiselle I was, unfortunately, on not the best of terms. At the last club, I had danced a polka with her, to polka music, when she insisted on waltzing, which little disparity of motion was by no means agreeable to ourselves, nor to the look

ers on.

The Professor, worthy man, had a sad way of pumping his students. His delight was to mount one on the very Pegasus of science, and then, with a word, tumble the unwary pupil out of the saddle to the ground. I had been warned of this. He acknowledged that it was the only way of his getting an idea of their capabilities.

"Was this morning's lecture clear to you?" he asked.

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I think so, worthy sir," I answered. Well, sir! That astonishing property the common ant possesses, of wood-assimilating, and converting the same into an acid; does it not induce you to imagine that some one-who knows, perhaps yourself-may be the means of artificially producing some much required substance? Eh? Eh? Give me your idea about it. Induction is the great key to our science!"

"You mean formic acid, I suppose, Herr Professor?"

Exactly. The formica rupra, eating the wood, digests the same; now digestion we know is but a slow oxidation-the wood is oxidized. We can imitate this little creature. We take wood, sour-dust, and, by the presence of an acid, we can artificially produce this same formic acid. Now make an induction! Do you not see? Eh? Eh?”

"What is the equivalent of formic acid?" innocently asked Magnesia, turning her eyes on me.

I was perfectly aware that she had every equivalent specific by heart. I believe she was weaned on them.

"Ah, sir," I answered, at first ap

parently embarrassed, then gradually, with a more decided air. The allminute ant has oft been my study. To nature copy, has always been my delight. Should I ever successful be, what wreaths of science-flowers, would not a discovery, mine may I be allowed to say, if it succeeds-make!"

"Ah, indeed-and what might it be?" asked the Professor dryly, getting up already a mental trip for me.

"Yes," I went on quite warmly, "since ants make formic acid, and we higherbornanimals can make it, too (in our retorts, instead of in our stomachs), I have cast my eyes on the scarlet dyes of South America; what a forwardbattalionmarch of intellect that would be; what-what-great heaps of gold to one's money wallets!"

"The Americans are very practical," said the Professor.

"And as fond of making gold as of showing it," sarcastically added Fraulein.

Pray, Mademoiselle, allow me to pluck this prickly leaf from out your jardiniere?" and, to her horror, I took a small leaf from a thorny plant. "Here," I added, "is what I want. The insect that feeds on this produces the most vivid of colors-a dye, worth more than its weight in gold. Now, this leaf, forming the food of the insect, the insect producing the color-the vegetable substance going through nothing more than a slow oxidation: I propose taking the leaves of the cactus, to treat them properly, and produce cochineal."

"Ahem!" said the Professor.

"As well," remarked Magnesia, with a withering look, "as well make silk from the mulberry-leaf!"

"It is within the bounds of possibility, and when that silk is produced," I went on to say, in a lower tone, to Mademoiselle, "my artificial cochineal shall color it a brilliant hue, to form a

robe, to be worn by you, at some future club-ball."

"That will do, sir," said the Professor. "Let us talk of something else."

A conversation commenced on literature, American books, home authors; and I found him wonderfully well-informed, and a universal book reader. How he found time to read all the modern novels, poems, histories, is still a wonder to me, occupied, as he was, the whole day, with his lectures, his laboratory, and his own immense researches. The Professor will have a statue in the gallery of great men; for the discovery of his new science, now so familiar to us all, scientifically, is as remarkable as the finding of a new world by Columbus.

Of course, Magnesia never forgave me the plucking of that leaf, and her perspective scarlet ball-dress; and, next day, cut me dead, in the presence of the head salt-inspector's wife and daughter -in consequence of which, I was a man tabooed among the Loffels.

At the next club-ball, neither Loffel nor Gabel would as much as speak to me, and my dancing with my landlady's daughters stamped me as a Messer.

What sweet, modest girls my landlady's daughters were, and how they enjoyed the dances I had taught them.

The Löffels and Gabels had declared it not comme il faut to do anything else than waltz, to all dance music; and my introduction of the polka, redowa, and mazurka, among the Messers, was a heinous crime. My pupils were so apt, so graceful, that even one of the Loffels (who had been at the capital for a week, and got worldly thereby), regardless of caste, invited one of the Messers to dance-an immense condescension on his part; but the Messer lady refused him, and the rage of the Loffels was redoubled.

A great Suabian student, with a schlager cut on his face, was instigated, by

the Löffels, I feel certain, to quarrel with me; but a hint on my part, that the art of boxing was familiar to me, and that an ignorance of his baby weapons necessitated a more serious method of settling the question (a harmless bravado on my part), soon quieted him.

There was one bright spot in Aeselen, and that was my home. When first looking for a lodging, the fact of my having refused a room in a professor's house-from the pompous way in which the professor's lady majestically did me the honor of showing me her bare apartment, with the proviso of three towels and one pair of sheets per month-did much to make me a subject of talk and tattle (unfortunate that I was, I must confess, I took the Frau Professorin for a rapacious landlady). The cleanliness of my little room-perhaps more, some familiar prints on the wall-the pleasant face of my old landlady, made mo secure it, without bargaining.

Dear old landlady, how she cared for me; and her daughters, how they spoiled me. Pretty Dorothie! How much sweeter was the sugar, when passing through your taper fingers! The daughters kept the house, week and week about; and how well I knew it. Was it Christiana, the bustling, the relentless! a big thump at my door woke me at cock-crow, for early morning lecture. Was it Dorothie, I got five lumps of sugar, every morning, with my coffee, whilst the other students in the house got but three. Was it Wilhemine, lisping Wilheminchen! I was at liberty to sleep on forever. Charlotte! Lottche ever graced my frugal breakfast with sweet cake, made by her own fair hands. How they manufactured for me smoking-caps and tobaccopouches, and strangely-knitted things, which only German women's hands and patience can devise. Dear souls, how they cried their eyes out, when I left; and how I promised to write to them, which promise, wretch that I am, I have never yet kept. How merrily we worked in the garden, and how I went up the apricot trees, and showered down the golden fruit on them. There was a potato-patch, back of the house, some half an acre, with a summer-house in

the middle, which was to be planted. The laborer, who had promised to undertake it, had disappointed them, and they were sorrowful with the idea of having no potato-pancakes for the coming year. I proposed, for economy's sake, to dig and plant the same; and how they all agreed with merry glee, and how cheerfully all hands set to work. The blow-pipe professor's wife, opposite, observed it, from her reflecting window mirror, and, in ten minutes, all Aeselen knew it, and throngs of the curious inspected our labors. What an occasion to talk and tattle! I must admit that, in order to appear quite at my ease and accustomed to the work, I almost broke my back over the spade.

When summer came, a basket of the first-fruits were sent to the blow-pipe professor's wife, by myself, with a polite note, expressing "the hope of her acceptance of the same, as the auspicious eye, with which she had regarded our potato-planting, had, no doubt, aided them in their growth." They were thankfully received, and pronounced "ausgezeichnet."

What an excitement the club-ball was for our young ladies, and how Dorothie would wear Charlotte's scarf, and Charlotte Dorothie's skirt. For my dancing lessons, Dorothie taught me the zitter -and how I bungled at it, and tried her patience over the twanging wires. Sweet Dorothie, a fairer, purer creature never lived to be immersed within the stupid Aeselen!

At first, the good old mother lifted up her hands, at our goings on, and cried, "What will Aeselen say?" I pacified her, with saying, that it was all “ according to the American fashion."

I confess, at first, they were wont to tattle, and tear the Löffels and Gabels to tatters: but, after a score of protracted struggles, I cured them. I proved to them, that the fact of my wearing a turn-down collar in the morning, and a stand-up one in the evening, was of no moment to Aeselen, and of no particular eccentricity on my part.

That the fact of my taking an occasional evening walk, of a mile or so, was neither a reason to suppose me of a romantic turn, nor that, conscience strick