refined inner feeling about life.  Miss Leipke looked at him with beguiling eyes.  He turned the conversation to art.  Then he turned the conversation to her legs; she said frankly that she too liked her legs.  She had lifted her morning-coat somewhat.  With his shy hands, Kuno Kohn carefully lifted it higher-That evening Kuno Kohn sat dreamily in his room.  He looked out through the hole made by the open window.  In front of him the gray inner wall of the house dropped a short distance.  With many quiet windows.  There was no sky, only shimmering evening air.  And a gentle, occasional breeze, which could scarcely be felt.  The wall with the windows was like a lovely, sad picture.  Kuno Kohn was surprised that it was not boring.  He stared steadily and deeply into the wall.  It seemed kind.  Friendly.  Full of loneliness.  Secretly he thought:  the wind against the wall is doing this.  He sang inwardly:  Come, be... loved—­a bell startled him.

The postman brought him a letter from the Clou Club.  The Clou Club requested Mr. Kohn to read from his works on a certain evening.

IV

Eight days before the appointed evening a placard went up on the city’s pillar for notices.  On it was written: 

Announcement

Kuno Kohn will read from his own works at the Clou Club.  Young girls and lawyers kindly requested not to attend.

As the evening approached, Kuno Kohn became increasingly agitated.  Two hours before he had himself shaved.  When the man asked whether the gentleman wanted powder, Kohn shook his head no, but said:  “yes.”  An hour before Kohn went into a police station and asked for ten five-pfennig stamps and a ten pfennig postal card. (tr.—­thinking that he is in the post-office).

When Kohn stepped on the podium, he became calmer than he had expected to be.  First he made a slip of the tongue, but then his voice gradually became firm and clear.  Very few people were in the little hall, but some critics from the large, influential newspapers were in attendance.  The next day one of them declared, in the widely circulated Alten Buergerzeitung, that the poems the poet Kohn, who enlists our sympathy because of his physical handicap, brought to the attention of a sparsely attended hall were not yet ready for publication; however, one might expect something from his muse when Kohn has matured.  Another declared, in the Journal for Enlightened Citizens:  the overall impression is pleasing, but the poems are not all of the same quality.  In addition, the poet had not read well.  But the first line of the first verse of the poem “The Comedian” was movingly pithy in expression and feeling.