to a point, which he wore continually, his always friendly, merry face still gleams before me like a star.  There had been a time when he was the only mason in the place and the employer of from twenty to thirty journeymen, of whom many later set up as masters and took the work away from him.  At that time, so it was said later, he could have assured himself a future free from care if he had not visited the bowling alley too often, and loved a good glass of wine too well.  But whoever bore evil fortune as he did, could not be reproached for careless enjoyment of the good.  I cannot think of him without emotion; how would it be possible for me to do sot He once, at fair-time, presented my brother and me with a kettle-drum and a trumpet which he had, with the greatest difficulty, obtained on credit from the toy merchant, and as his poverty did not permit him to pay off the small debt until much later, he had to submit to being dunned for it years after, when I, already tall and knowing beyond my years, was walking at his side.  He was inexhaustible in inventing ways to amuse us, and as with children nothing is necessary but goodwill, he never failed to do so.  It was a source of great delight to us when he took a piece of chalk in his hand, sat himself down with us at his round table and began to draw-mills, houses, animals, and all sorts of other things.  At the same time he cracked the merriest jokes, which still resound in my ears.  Even the chief of his pleasures was not one for him if we did not share it.  It consisted in drinking slowly a half jug of brandy, in remembrance of better days, and in smoking a pipe at the same time, on Sunday morning after the sermon and before dinner.  We each had to have a thimble full of this brandy or he did not enjoy it himself.  The drink was certainly not the best thing for us, but the quantity was small enough to prevent disastrous consequences.  My father, however, forbade this kind of Sunday treat when he came to find out about it.  This troubled the good old man exceedingly, but did not prevent him, I am forced to add, from having us drink with him again; only this took place quite secretly, and he urgently recommended us to keep out of our father’s way, so that he should not have occasion to kiss one of us and thus discover the transgression.  It was a kiss, to wit pressed upon my father’s lips, that had betrayed the secret the first time.

Sometimes one or the other of his two unmarried brothers, who as a rule tramped around the country and were probably good-for-nothings, would spend the winter with him.  They always found a ready welcome and remained until the spring or hunger drove them away.  He never turned them out.  Small as his piece of bread might be he gladly divided it once again, but when he had nothing at all, then indeed he could not give away anything.  It was a regular treat for us when Uncle Hans or Johann arrived, for they brought news of the world to our nest.  They told us of woods and their adventures in them; of robbers and murderers whom they had escaped from with great difficulty; of the dark giblet stew which they had eaten in lonely forest-taverns, and of men’s fingers and toes which they pretended to have found at last in the bottom of the dish.