The Children of the World

Two winters and two summers have passed since the evening when the honeymoon happiness of the newly united pair was so deeply shadowed. The blow, however, left very different tr...

The noise Edwin's next neighbor, the fat landed proprietor, made in preparing for the hunt, roused our friend early the next morning from a sound sleep. He was obliged to reflec...

Edwin had just finished the letter and risen from his seat, to take it himself to the post office, when there was a knock at his door; a familiar knock, but one which he had not...

The following day was cloudy and dismal. When at the appointed hour Edwin arrived at the Thiergarten, he found it completely deserted. The autumn rain was trickling drearily dow...

"Since I burned the old volumes in which I so conscientiously gave an account of all my secret struggles before and after confirmation, I have had a horror of all writing. But i...

"We have now no more important task than to eat the best dinner we can get. I hope the table in the Pagoda has made some progress in civilization since my student days, when I u...

The sheet on which these verses were written, lay on Balder's knees. Soon after Edwin left him, he had seated himself at the window in the sunlight, and began his holiday by tak...

Edwin's first thought was that his long nap had fortunately debarred him from dining at the castle with the aristocratic visitors. He hoped also to evade them in the evening, an...

The new comer was a singular-looking person of middle height, clad in coarse but neat clothes, who looked like a workman just returning from his labor. The insignificant form wa...

The lamp was not yet lighted, and the broad brim of her straw hat shadowed her face, yet all three noticed, though no one made any remark, that the young wife's features were st...

As soon as the music below ceased, Mohr took his hat. "To envy this happiness is one of my favorite occupations," he growled, twisting his under lip awry. "I pity you for being...

She had not left a line for him, not even a note to say farewell; it was too much kindness to say: 'I'm going for such and such reasons, to such and such a place.' He was of so...

Three or four hour's ride by rail from the scene of these incidents is situated the little Thuringian city where Edwin had become a teacher of mathematics and Franzelius had fou...

But he had not strolled far from the quay, when these newly made friends vanished from his memory as suddenly as we blow out a candle, and in their place appeared in most vivid...

He who undertakes to tell a "true story"--and ours is as fully attested as any a novelist ever gathered from family archives--he who represents life, as it is experienced, not i...

After Christiane had seen the couple in the carriage and fled from the wide avenue into the more densely wooded portions of the park, she had wandered about for hours without ai...

Edwin was scarcely in his room, to which a footman with a very bewildered expression, had lighted him, when his excitement passed away and bitter indignation and wrath took poss...

When the young girl saw Balder, she hastily rose from the sofa and with the most winning cordiality approached him, holding out both little hands, as if to support his tottering...

This night was succeeded by days, whose radiance and joy exceeded even the far famed happiness of the honeymoon. And in fact many drops of gall had mingled with the honey of our...

At the moment when after a lapse of four years we resume the thread of our story, we find Edwin sitting at the open window of a hotel, attired in a costume very similar to the o...

"It's true! Rinaldo is in the old chains again!" exclaimed Edwin, as he entered the room where Balder sat alone, sunning himself in the window. He was apparently unoccupied, for...

When, soon after, Edwin returned home, passed Christiane's door, behind which he heard loud, eager voices, and climbed the dark stairs, he was glad that neither Mohr's nor Franz...

About the same hour Lorinser was sitting on the little leather sofa in Christiane's room, with his knees half drawn up on the seat, and his long arms stretched along the back, l...

"I thought it would only be a soap bubble of happiness," said he. "A removal at this season of the year is as impossible, as for him to remain here alone. You'd undoubtedly take...

Ever since the day mentioned in the last chapter, Edwin had become a regular dinner guest at the house in Jaegerstrasse. He came every third day, but could never be induced to e...

This room, termed by its occupants' friends "the tun," was a large three-windowed apartment, with walls painted light grey, a floor scoured snow white, and over the windows inst...

A fortnight had elapsed. The autumnal storms, which had burst over the country, had stripped the last withered leaf from the top of the acacia tree, and the little garden with i...

Sensitive minds are in the habit of terming the union between body and spirit an unequal marriage, a _mesalliance_. And yet good and evil days might teach them a better term, sh...

So deep a silence reigned here, that when he paused, he fancied he could hear the sap rising through the trunks of the trees. The wind, which had brought the rain, had changed,...

Balder's convalescence was more rapid than could have been hoped for. At the end of a fortnight it had progressed so far that he was able to sit up a few hours and, though with...

Day had long since dawned over the great city, and the little house in the Dorotheen-strasse prided itself upon remaining no whit behind its more aristocratic neighbors in this...

The ground floor of the house where Edwin and Leah had lived four years, was arranged in the simplest manner; three little rooms and a chamber for the maid-servant, or, as Edwin...

When Edwin entered Toinette's room that afternoon, he found her seated on the sofa, evidently absorbed in thought, for she did not look up till he called her by name. A small bo...

Several slender tawny greyhounds came bounding toward them and completed the illusion that they were entering a banqueting hall of the _rococo_ times. The room was spacious and...

The clock struck seven as he left the dwelling, and night had closed in. The house whose number was written on the card, stood at the eastern end of the city, and he felt somewh...

First of all came the dinner in her parents' great sitting-room, at which, as usual, the journeymen and apprentices were present. Madame Feyertag insisted that, before coming to...

A few years ago, in the Dorotheen-strasse, in the midst of the Latin Quarter of Berlin, whose quiet, student-like appearance threatens to become effaced by the growing elegance...

So he had lost her--his brave little wife, his good comrade, the friend who sympathized with all his moods and thoughts, all his feelings and wishes! The right hand must do with...

When Marquard paid his usual visit to the "tun" the following morning, he found everything in the household exactly the same as usual. In spite of the late hour at which Reginch...

It was a singular coincidence that on the very same day and almost at the self-same hour another of the friends placed the decision of his happiness or misery in a woman's hands...

Mohr, who had insisted that Franzelius must exchange with him and give him the night watch, again sat at the window through all the long dark hours uttering not a word, his eyes...

About the same time that these things were occurring in the back building, the master of the house was in the shop talking with a customer, who had just brought to be mended a p...

When Marquard visited Edwin the following morning, he found him at his desk, holding his pen in his right hand and resting his head on the left. A sheet of paper lay before him.

About thirty years before, their father, during a holiday excursion, had made their mother's acquaintance; he was then a young law-student from Silesia, and she the beautiful da...

His first glance fell upon Toinette, who sat on the sofa in the full light of the candles. Evidently surprised, but without losing his self-control, he paused on the threshold a...

It was high noon when Edwin turned the last page of this confession, and meantime the maid-servant had brought his dinner, which stood untouched on the little table. Even now he...

Meantime Lorinser had only crept down one flight of stairs and stopped before the door on the second story. He read the name on the small sign, listened a few minutes, and then...

"Don't be repelled by the first impression," she added in an undertone. "I too was obliged to conquer a slight prejudice, but all trees do not have the same bark. This man's goo...

The same day, toward dusk, the little artist was seen hurrying along the street in which Frau Valentin lived. Any one who had seen him in his studio that morning, would scarcely...

His first errand was to a hatter, his second to a ready made clothing store. When, though the October sun was shining warmly, he took his way toward the Rurfuersten Bridge in hi...

but difficult to realize it. After Mohr had sung all the verses in his best style, and Edwin at the conclusion had only remarked absently, that the air was very gay--a recogniti...

The new comer was a tall and very broad-shouldered young man, who carried a travelling-satchel and a shawl thrown over his shoulder; unceremoniously tossing a faded brown felt h...

Day had scarcely dawned, when the door of the tun was softly opened and Heinrich Mohr's herculean figure appeared on the threshold; he took leave of Edwin with a silent pressure...

It was Sunday. The bells that rang at nine o'clock to summon the people to church, roused the sleeper. It was a long time before he remembered how he happened to be in his own b...

The room to which Edwin was conducted, was situated in a wing of some considerable length, a modern addition to the old castle, which had completely destroyed the symmetry of th...

Leah was seated at the table in her little sitting room; before her was the tea urn, and a closed book but she seemed to have been occupied with neither, but entirely absorbed i...

The Frau Professorin Valentin lived in a pretty new house, and occupied large neat rooms, which however, to an artistic eye, with all their tidiness had a somewhat gloomy, cheer...

He hastily lighted a candle, took a small portfolio out of his traveling satchel and wrote a few lines to inform Mohr where he was to be found, in case his friend did not prefer...

Meantime Leah, absorbed in grief, was still sitting at the window, from which in the pale morning light she had waved a farewell to her departing husband. As soon as he had disa...

As soon as the artist had left the room, Mohr, who had remained gloomily standing at the door, approached the astonished Frau Valentin and said in the tone of a foot-pad, who de...

At this same late hour the boudoir of the singer, whose acquaintance we made at the Pagoda, looked very bright and cheerful. A candelabrum with five candles was burning on the d...

On the morning of the third day the funeral took place. Franzelius, who had undertaken to attend to all the sorrowful details, insisted that this last duty should be performed a...

When, late in the evening Edwin returned home, he found Balder lying dressed upon his bed, with the little lamp, by which he seemed to have been reading, beside him. His face wa...

Why was he so much more hopeless after her frank confession, than before? He now knew that his feelings had not deceived him, that the equivocal circumstances in her position ha...

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, and his sad, honest face brightened, as he held out both hands to Edwin--"you again walk among the living. It's pleasant that you instantly remember y...

"I've been making up a little more fire," replied the youth, bending toward the flames to conceal his blushes. "It's beginning to grow cold. Franzel went out a short time ago, p...

This conversation had this favorable result, that when Papa Feyertag came to Leah's house in the evening, he seemed completely transformed; or rather like the man his friends ha...