Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

We were standing in a deep recess at the open window of our class-room. The sparrows were noisily chattering in the school-yard, and some scattered rays of the late summer sun g...

"How you startled me!" said Frau von Zehren, seizing her son by both hands. "We began to think, what was really impossible, that Professor Lederer had refused you permission. Yo...

"O ciel!" cried Fräulein Duff, "_mon jeune compatriote!_ A thousand pardons!--my near-sightedness! How is your respected father, and your amiable mother? Dear me! how confused I...

As I closed the door behind me, old Frederica, who, since my mother's death, had been housekeeper for my father, came suddenly out of the small room on the right. By the light o...

I ran for a short distance like a madman, when suddenly my limbs began to totter under me; the moonlit roofs, the lighted windows in some of the houses, danced wildly before my...

He was, as well as I could distinguish by the faint light of the moon that was now partly obscured by clouds, a man of tall stature and slender frame; so alert in his movements...

On awaking the next morning, it was long ere I could arrive at a clear consciousness of my situation. My sleep had been disturbed by frightful dreams, which had left an oppressi...

The breakfast which the ugly, taciturn old woman--whom Constance called "Pahlen"--set before me after about half an hour, might well have been ready in less time, for it consist...

As I entered the court through a little door in the park-wall, there stood a light wagon from which the horses were being unharnessed, and by the wagon a man in hunting-dress, h...

If, according to the unanimous report of travellers by that route, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I am convinced that several square rods of it are my work, and...

Since that memorable walk with her through the wood to the ruins on the promontory, I had not again been alone with Constance for a long time. During the three rainy days I saw...

The following morning was so fine that it might well have cheered even a gloomier spirit than mine. And in my fatigue I had fallen so promptly asleep when I laid my tired head u...

The confidence with which Herr von Zehren had looked forward to that evening, which at the very least was to repair his former ill-fortune, was after all a deceitful one. It may...

My first sensation, as I awaked late, was a feeling of thankfulness that it was day; my second was one of shame at having been so powerfully affected by the terrors of the night...

Striding along the road to Trantowitz, under the rustling willows, scarcely seeing the way before me in my excitement, I several times barely escaped falling from the slippery p...

Caro probably saw no reason, as I rather ran than walked along the narrow path leading over the heath to Trantowitz, to be more satisfied than before with his master's proceedin...

"It means," I replied, "that Herr von Granow is a blackguard who has had the audacity to defame a lady whom we both respect, in a manner which deserves far more serious treatmen...

It was four o'clock when we set out, and already it was growing dusk as we took the foot-path through the stubble-field to Zehrendorf. No clear judgment of the weather was to be...

The cutter now flew gallantly along under a press of canvass that laid her lee-bulwarks nearly under water, while the _Lightning_ fell astern, and in brief time was lost to our...

We had passed the dunes, and were marching in single file across the sandy waste land on the other side. No word was spoken; each man had enough to do in carrying his heavy pack...

At the edge of the morass, where we now were, there was a hollow, in which, among the deeper marshy spots overgrown with long reed-grass, there were higher patches, like islands...

Some feeling of this kind must have been in the breast of the unhappy man at my side, for he said once or twice, as we clambered up the ravine, up which a steep path led between...

I was still sitting, stupefied and incapable of reflection, by the dead man, when the first rays of the sun, which rose with tremulous lustre over the sea, fell upon his pallid...

But the most dazzling ideas are frequently found to have their dark side when it comes to putting them in execution. The financial question Hans thought he had settled when he w...

Food, drink, and sleep had completely restored my old strength, and I was now in a condition to play my part in the game of "robbers and soldiers" more successfully.

This little alley by the _Rathhaus_, in which footsteps gave such a singular echo, had never, even within the recollection of the most ancient crow on the neighboring steeple of...

It was an evening of May, as the wagon in which I was conveyed, escorted by two mounted gendarmes, drew near the place of my destination. On the left of the road, which was line...

I was still standing on the same spot, endeavoring to collect my thoughts, when the door again opened, and the old turnkey who had first received me, entered with a lighted cand...

For a fortnight I had been doing the very hardest work which at the time was to be had in the establishment, which combined in itself the features of a work-house, jail, and pen...

A black night which is but a long, long continuation of the dreadful dream, until at last it is broken by rare gleams of soft, dim light, at which the forms of fear grow faint a...

In the shady garden, especially reserved for the use of the superintendent and his family, there was at the farthest corner a little garden-house, which stood upon the old city-...

"Have you finished?" I asked, availing myself of the permission, and going behind her chair. "Why, you are still at work on the eyes. How can you have so much patience?"

I stood behind these iron gratings on the following morning, and looked sadly out of the window. Strangely enough, I had not thought the evening before that these gratings could...

I gazed in mute astonishment at the stranger, whose looks and manner were, to use the mildest expression, very singular; but was really frightened when he, so soon as the door h...

I will not maintain that the excellent man said all that I have put into his mouth in the last chapter, in these identical words, or upon this particular morning. It is probable...

It was certainly not with the intention of stimulating me--for that was no longer needed--that my teacher in his discourses ever returned to the same theme, that free, voluntary...

The day had been rainy and disagreeable, and my frame of mind was as dull and gloomy as the weather. In the morning the superintendent had had an attack of hemorrhage. I was for...

My wish and my hope to be allowed to keep out of sight during the family conference, were to be frustrated in the most singular manner. I was appointed to play a part, and no in...

The two brothers Von Zehren, with the commerzienrath, were occupied for an hour the next morning in a conference which was the object of this family gathering. The session must...

Doctor Willibrod and I had hoped that, now that their business was at an end, the burdensome guests who had so long made the superintendent's house their home, would take their...

And as if through a veil I see the years as they come and go, the following years of my imprisonment. Though a veil which time has woven with invisible spirit-hands, but not so...

And there came a storm such as had not raged along this coast--which yet throughout the year heard many a fierce gale sweep over its low beach of sand and chalk--within the memo...

It was two o'clock when we re-entered the house. At the first touch of the bell Paula appeared in the hall; but the superintendent only gave her an affectionate smile and a pat...

It was a year after these events that a solitary traveller was ascending the slope of one of the hills of the heath which surrounded the town of Uselin on the land side. He jour...

A gray foggy morning succeeded to the cold windy night. It was six o'clock when the _Elizabeth_ left the wharf, and I had been busy with the fires since three. I soon fell into...

I had travelled during the day a long distance upon an interminable turnpike-road where the rows of poplars on each side stretched away until they met at the horizon in an acute...

In the machine-works of the commerzienrath a great boiler was being riveted. Three sooty workmen, with shirt-sleeves rolled above the elbows, and hammers in their strong hands,...

In another shop of our establishment several men had been wounded, more or less dangerously, by the slipping of a belt. In our shop we had heard the news of the accident just be...

As the next day was Sunday, I had leisure to reflect upon the singular behavior of the doctor the evening before; but either the affair was in itself too complicated, or else my...

To be sure, if I had any fancy at this time for indulging in dreaming, I had to do it at night, for by day I had no leisure for such vagaries. By day I was taken possession of b...

Since her success at the exhibition Paula had been overwhelmed with invitations, and she had accepted one for this day from the banker Solomon, the purchaser of the _Monk and Te...

I do not know how many hours I passed in wandering thus through the streets: I have only a dim remembrance of great blocks of houses rising dark into the gray of the night; of f...

I had not seen the doctor since we last parted so unpleasantly, and the visit of the man with the keen spectacles and the keen eyes behind them was doubly disagreeable to one wh...

It was spring once more; the first spring for nine years that I had greeted as a free man. True that fair season had not debarred me the sight of her loveliness in the prison: I...

upon poor Herr Berg because he had had so long in the works a man like myself, whose mathematical and technical genius had long been known to him, the commerzienrath, and had no...

"Oh, these women, these women! I just now learn for the first time what you have kept from my knowledge half a year--that you have so long been working, like Samson among the Ph...

A lively breeze was blowing in my face as the carriage in which I was jolted along the road from Fährdorf to Zehrendorf, a bad one in the best of times, but now, in the spring,...

But when I awoke the next morning at early dawn I knew what it was. It was the embroidered ribbon which I had discovered the evening before in the bunch of flowers, and in which...

could do this: and then let the fair Hermine treat me as superciliously as she pleased, I stood firmly on my feet and could hold my head as high as nature had placed it.

I had now been more than a week at Zehrendorf. A letter written in those days now lies before me, a letter several pages long, upon which there are spots as if tears had fallen...

I came back from the chalk-quarry, where I had been busy all the morning with setting up the new machine. The work under my direction, owing to good luck and the good will of th...

I had spent the rest of the forenoon in my room, in order to finish a calculation necessary to the proper adjustment of the machine at the quarry. But I had not got beyond the s...

But the deliverers of ambiguous oracles do not always find their avocation an exhilarating one, as I at once discovered while the light, elegant vehicle, drawn by two magnificen...

The following day was unusually hot and close for the time of year. At sunrise gray storm-clouds had appeared in the east, and hung threatening in the horizon, while the sun in...

I was about to hurry after them, and compel them to give me some assistance, when a flash of lightning of unusual vividness showed me the hillock or "giant's barrow" which lay a...

Who knows how long we can! Perhaps not long; perhaps but a short, far too short a time. It is a melancholy word, but unhappily the right word to open the record of this part of...

Upon these happy days, whose number I cannot even give--for who counts days like these?--followed others that were as full of unrest and intervals of gloom, as those were of cal...

Perhaps that isolated life which is the ideal of a young married pair, when from any causes its realisation by an abode upon a desert island is found to be impracticable, can no...

It was not merely that without sufficient experience I had to a certain extent to find my way in a vast domain of industry, at that time scarcely explored by us Germans. I share...

The prince received me with politeness which I might almost call cordial. He had arrived half an hour before, and the journey through the cold winter's day seemed to have done h...

But I scarcely had quitted my house when I reflected that after what had happened, it was scarcely possible that the prince could still be in the theatre, and I turned my steps...

I have often in later days tried to recall the state of mind in which I was on this miserable night: but have never been able perfectly to do so. So I am conscious than any acco...

When I reached home it was one o'clock--a fact which I could scarcely comprehend. It seemed to me as if not hours but weeks had elapsed since I parted from Hermine. I went on ti...

When I reached home there was a running and a calling--something had happened. An hour before she had rung for me, and I was not to be found. "She was taken in a dreadful way; b...

First from the meshes of the dishonest web in which the association with my father-in-law had involved me, the meshes from which he for his part had torn himself swiftly loose b...

There come days in our lives which we afterwards remember as some blessed dream which knows nothing of earthly sufferings or earthly restrictions, in which we soar as on the pin...

In this history of my life I have now reached the point at which from the first I intended to close the narrative. To be sure I said to myself then, and still must admit, that i...