stimulates very forceful counterattacks. Books attract discussions, and these sometimes end in such a fury that the book must die and its writer despair of it all.
I hope no estrangement will ensue if I say that I am writing all these I trust pretty and delicate lines with a quill from the Imperial High Court of Justice. Hence the brevity, pregnancy, and acumen of my language, at certain points well enough perceptible, at which now nobody need wonder any more.
But when shall I come at last to the well-earned banquet with my Frau Aebi? I fear it will take quite a time, as considerable obstacles must first be put aside. Appetite in unstinted abundance has been long enough present.
As I went on my way, like a better sort of tramp, a vagabond and pickpocket, or idler and vagrant of a sort finer than some, past all sorts of gardens planted and stuffed full with placid, contented vegetables, past flowers and fragrance of flowers, past fruit trees and past beansticks and shrubs full of beans, past towering crops, as rye, barley, and wheat, past a wood-yard containing much wood and wood shavings, past juicy grass and past a gently splashinglittle waterway, rivulet, or stream, past all sorts of people, as choice trade-plying market women, tripping past, and past a clubhouse decoratively hung with banners flying for a celebration, or for joy, and also past many other good-hearted and useful things, past a particularly beautiful and sweet little fairy apple tree, and past God knows what else in the way of feasible things, as, for example, also strawberry bushes and blossoms, or, even better, gracefully past the ripe red strawberries, while all sorts of more or less beautiful and pleasant thoughts continued to preoccupy me, since, when Iâm out walking, many notions, flashes of light, and lightning flashes quite of their own accord intrude and interrupt, to be carefully pondered upon, there came a man in my direction, an enormity, a monster, who almost completely darkened my bright and shining road, a tall, lanky beanpole of a fellow, sinister, whom I knew alas only too well, a very curious customer; namely the giant
TOMZACK
In any other place and on any other road but this dear yielding country road I would have expected him. His woeful, gruesome air, his tragic, atrocious appearance, infused me with terror and took every good, bright, and beautiful prospect, all joy and gaiety away from me. Tomzack! It is true, dear reader, is it not, the name alone has the sound of terrible and mournful things? âWhy do you persecute me, why need you meet me here in the middle of my road, you miserable creature?â I cried to him; but Tomzack gave me no answer. He turned his great eyes upon me; that is, he looked down from high up on me below; for he surpassed me in length and height by very considerable degrees. Beside him, I felt like a dwarf, or like a poor weak little child. With the greatest of ease the giant could have trodden me underfoot and crushed me. Oh,I knew who he was. For him there was no rest. Restlessly he went up and down in the world. He slept in no soft bed, and could live in no comfortable homely house. He was at home everywhere and nowhere. He had no home country, and of no state was he a citizen. Without motherland and without happiness he was; he had to live completely without love and without human joy. He had sympathy with no man, and with him and his mopping and mowing no man had sympathy. Past, present, and future were to him an insubstantial desert, and life was too small, too tiny, too narrow for him. For him there was nothing which had meaning, and he himself in turn meant something to nobody. Out of his great eyes there broke a glare of grief in overworlds and underworlds. Infinite pain spoke from his slack and weary moments. A hundred thousand years old he seemed to me, and it seemed to me that he must live for eternity, only to be for eternity no living being. He died every instant and yet he could not
I hope no estrangement will ensue if I say that I am writing all these I trust pretty and delicate lines with a quill from the Imperial High Court of Justice. Hence the brevity, pregnancy, and acumen of my language, at certain points well enough perceptible, at which now nobody need wonder any more.
But when shall I come at last to the well-earned banquet with my Frau Aebi? I fear it will take quite a time, as considerable obstacles must first be put aside. Appetite in unstinted abundance has been long enough present.
As I went on my way, like a better sort of tramp, a vagabond and pickpocket, or idler and vagrant of a sort finer than some, past all sorts of gardens planted and stuffed full with placid, contented vegetables, past flowers and fragrance of flowers, past fruit trees and past beansticks and shrubs full of beans, past towering crops, as rye, barley, and wheat, past a wood-yard containing much wood and wood shavings, past juicy grass and past a gently splashinglittle waterway, rivulet, or stream, past all sorts of people, as choice trade-plying market women, tripping past, and past a clubhouse decoratively hung with banners flying for a celebration, or for joy, and also past many other good-hearted and useful things, past a particularly beautiful and sweet little fairy apple tree, and past God knows what else in the way of feasible things, as, for example, also strawberry bushes and blossoms, or, even better, gracefully past the ripe red strawberries, while all sorts of more or less beautiful and pleasant thoughts continued to preoccupy me, since, when Iâm out walking, many notions, flashes of light, and lightning flashes quite of their own accord intrude and interrupt, to be carefully pondered upon, there came a man in my direction, an enormity, a monster, who almost completely darkened my bright and shining road, a tall, lanky beanpole of a fellow, sinister, whom I knew alas only too well, a very curious customer; namely the giant
TOMZACK
In any other place and on any other road but this dear yielding country road I would have expected him. His woeful, gruesome air, his tragic, atrocious appearance, infused me with terror and took every good, bright, and beautiful prospect, all joy and gaiety away from me. Tomzack! It is true, dear reader, is it not, the name alone has the sound of terrible and mournful things? âWhy do you persecute me, why need you meet me here in the middle of my road, you miserable creature?â I cried to him; but Tomzack gave me no answer. He turned his great eyes upon me; that is, he looked down from high up on me below; for he surpassed me in length and height by very considerable degrees. Beside him, I felt like a dwarf, or like a poor weak little child. With the greatest of ease the giant could have trodden me underfoot and crushed me. Oh,I knew who he was. For him there was no rest. Restlessly he went up and down in the world. He slept in no soft bed, and could live in no comfortable homely house. He was at home everywhere and nowhere. He had no home country, and of no state was he a citizen. Without motherland and without happiness he was; he had to live completely without love and without human joy. He had sympathy with no man, and with him and his mopping and mowing no man had sympathy. Past, present, and future were to him an insubstantial desert, and life was too small, too tiny, too narrow for him. For him there was nothing which had meaning, and he himself in turn meant something to nobody. Out of his great eyes there broke a glare of grief in overworlds and underworlds. Infinite pain spoke from his slack and weary moments. A hundred thousand years old he seemed to me, and it seemed to me that he must live for eternity, only to be for eternity no living being. He died every instant and yet he could not
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