"His old what, sir!" cries Fitz-Boodle, jumping up from his seat. "Klingenspohr's wife old!—is he married again?—Is Dorothea, then, d-d-dead?"

   "Dead!—no more dead than you are, only I take her to be five-and-thirty. And when a woman has had nine children, you know, she looks none the younger; and I can tell ye that when she trod on my corruns at a ball at the Grand Juke's, I felt something heavier than a feather on my foot."

   "Madame de Klingenspohr, then," replied I, hesitating somewhat, "has grown rather—rather st-st-out?" I could hardly get out the OUT, and trembled I don't know why as I asked the question.

   "Stout, begad!—she weighs fourteen stone, saddle and bridle. That's right, down goes my pipe; flop! crash falls the tumbler into the fender! Break away, my boy, and remember, whoever breaks a glass here pays a dozen."

   The fact was, that the announcement of Dorothea's changed condition caused no small disturbance within me, and I expressed it in the abrupt manner mentioned by young Blake.

   Roused thus from my reverie, I questioned the young fellow about his residence at Kalbsbraten, which has been always since the war a favorite place for our young gentry, and heard with some satisfaction that Potzdorff was married to the Behrenstein, Haabart had left the dragoons, the Crown Prince had broken with the —— but mum! of what interest are all these details to the reader, who has never been at friendly little Kalbsbraten?

   Presently Lynch reaches me down one of the three books that formed his library (the "Racing Calendar" and a book of fishing-flies making up the remainder of the set). "And there's my album," says he. "You'll find plenty of hands in it that you'll recognize, as you are an old Pumpernickelaner." And so I did, in truth: it was a little book after the fashion of German albums, in which good simple little ledger every friend or acquaintance of the owner inscribes a poem or stanza from some favorite poet or philosopher with the transcriber's own name, as thus:—

   "To the true house-friend, and beloved Irelandish youth.

   "'Sera nunquam est ad bonos mores via.'

   "WACKERBART, Professor at the Grand-Ducal Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickelisch Gymnasium."

   Another writes,—

 Prev. P 34/66 next