In this history of my life I have now reached the point at which from
the first I intended to close the narrative. To be sure I said to
myself then, and still must admit, that in this way I shall not give
contentment to all. One will find that there is a certain regular and
not unsatisfactory progress in the story, and that he would not object
to read a few hundred pages further, if no better entertainment was at
hand; another will maintain that according to his experience (this is a
man of great experience) life begins to be truly interesting exactly at
the point at which I cut short my story. Youthful adventures, he says,
are like the maladies of children; every one must have them, sooner or
later, and therefore there is nothing of special interest about them;
only when the perfectly developed man takes his position in public
life, and undertakes his share in solving the problem of the age, or
when he, as a private man, has had the opportunity of proving his
character in those conflicts which are never wanting in wedded life,
and in the relations of parent to children, which always present trials
and difficulties--then only is it worth while to follow the story of a
life.
Profoundly do I feel the weighty nature of these criticisms; but I had
once for all made up my mind not to be guided by the wish to please
this one or that--nor, indeed, to please any, as it would now
appear--and to the one I can reply that with the least possible
trouble he can find a far more amusing book to while away his leisure
hours; and as to the other (the man of great experience) with the best
will in the world I cannot possibly satisfy his great requirements,
though I freely admit that he has a perfect right to make them. Did
I wish to make my story ever so interesting, I could find nothing to
tell of conflicts in wedded life, nor of domestic trials and
difficulties--or nothing that would be worth the telling; and if I--as
I sometimes flatter myself in moments of peculiar elation and
self-satisfaction--have done an honest day's work at the great task of
our time, and all things considered, have approved myself no despicable
workman, I would not willingly anticipate my wages; and I think that
there will in due time, perhaps, be found a good friend, who, either in
an elegant epitaph, or an elaborate obituary notice in the newspapers,
will award me my meed of praise in well-chosen words.
But in earnest, dear reader, who have grown to be my friend, or you
would not have read on so far--you for whom alone I have written, and
for whom alone I write this closing chapter--in earnest I think it will
be agreeable to both of us if I break off here. I do not know whether
you are a craftsman initiated into our art and mystery; and this is
what I should have to know in order to narrate to you the life of a
craftsman, such as I am, in such a way that in the one case it would be
satisfactory to you, and in the other not too wearisome: indeed I do
not even know whether you may not be a lady, who, despite your
excessive amiability and general loveliness, with all your other
accomplishments have no especial fondness for the discussion of
technical matters, and who, for the care with which I have hitherto
limited myself to merely touching the edge of these obscurities and
mysteries, have given me hearty thanks--thanks which for much I would
not forfeit now.
As I say, I know none of these things; but one thing I know, and that
is that you--to borrow the phrase of good Professor Lederer--are a
human being, to whom nothing that concerns humanity is alien; and as I
have hitherto, I trust, only told you what found a ready response in
your sympathies, because it concerned a man who was neither better nor
worse, wiser nor more foolish, more interesting nor more common-place,
than the average of his kind, and whose thoughts and feelings, whose
aims and endeavors, even whose errors you could readily understand, so
I think you, as a good man and my friend, must feel why I ask you to
depict for yourself the rest of my life's history, in accordance with
your friendly sympathy and amiable imagination, in bright and cheerful
colors.
And the words "bright and cheerful" you may take literally, for--and I
say this with a heart full of the deepest gratitude, and without fear
of "the envy of the gods" in which I do not believe--there has fallen
much, very much glorious sunlight across the path of my life. My
efforts have been crowned with amplest success, far beyond my boldest
expectations, and very far beyond my modest pretensions and moderate
wants; and, what is of far more importance, to arrive at these results
I have never had to deny the doctrines of my teacher, never had to be a
hard hammer to a poor much-tormented anvil, on the contrary, I am as
sure of it as of my own existence that I should not only not be the
cheerful man that I am, but I should also not be the rich man that I
am, had I not all my life long been a believer in the great and lovely
doctrine of mutual helpfulness, brotherhood, and the community of all
human interests.
This living, active, and inspiring faith has brought me blessings a
hundred and a thousand fold; and with the deepest conviction I
recommend it to all who aim at success, even those who are disposed to
attach no especial value to the possession of a good conscience, and
yet perhaps find that this little prized and contemptible thing, if one
only has it, contributes no little to the happiness of life.
You will willingly, I doubt not, my friend, spare me any further
exposition of these truths, since you have found them confirmed in your
own life; and you are quite ready to go on with the picture of my life
in the way I have indicated, and dispense with the narration of further
details concerning myself and my family, the number and ages of my
children, and whether the boys are strong and intelligent, and the
girls bright and handsome--you are already disposed to heap all those
excellences upon their young heads, when I simply say that they are,
without exception, fine children; but you think that what may be
sufficient for myself, my wife, and my children (although these last
nowhere appear in this narrative, and consequently have really no just
claims to any consideration), what may be sufficient for us, is in no
wise just to the other persons who have appeared in this story, and in
whose behalf you have a right to put forth decided claims; and you
would like before the close to know what has become of them, to one or
the other of whom you have perhaps taken a fancy.
Many a one, as you may well suppose, in the five and twenty years that
have passed has been taken away by death, whom neither entreaties nor
exertions can compel to relinquish his prey, however desperately the
survivors try to hold fast in their hands the vanishing threads of a
life so dear.
Thus you departed, dearest and best of mothers, and were changed for us
into a luminous picture of gentleness, kindness and patience, and at
the same time of calm, strong, self-sacrificing courage, to which we
have at all times been wont to turn with devotion, as to that of your
noble husband, and from whose memory we have often drawn counsel and
comfort.
And you too, brave old sergeant, faithful heart of gold, you too left
us, full of years, highly honored, and deeply wept, and by none more
deeply than our boys whom you taught to ride and to fence, and to speak
the truth, happen what might.
And you also, dear good Hans, last of an ancient race of heroes! Be not
vexed with me, dear friend, if I have allowed myself now and then a
sportive word at the quaint ways that clung to you as long as your
massive frame threw its broad shadow upon the ground. Believe me,
despite all, no one ever loved you as I loved you, perhaps because no
one was ever so near to you as I, and no one had the chance of knowing
how not one drop of faithless blood ever coursed through your great
noble heart, and how from crown to heel you were a true knight without
fear and without reproach.
You too, enthusiastic friend with the fantastic ways, with the affected
speech, and with sincere love in your soft and gentle soul, kindly
Fräulein Duff! I thank you for allowing us to have the care of your
declining years; and though your ardent wish to see all our daughters,
your pupils, married before your death, was not fulfilled, I think you
still lived to find what your loving and affectionate heart had sought
so faithfully.
Ah! yes; the ranks of the dear old familiar faces have been sadly
thinned; but we will be thankful that so many are still left us, so
many whom we never could replace.
For who could replace you, my brave Klaus, best of all foremen, and
yourself head-foreman after the worthy Roland with his smile under his
bushy beard had himself vanished into that primeval forest from which
no one has ever yet emerged, any more than all the treasures of the
archipelago which your Javanese aunt was to bring, could replace your
Christel, or your eight boys, who, since as boys they cannot compare
with their mother, try their best to be as like her as possible, and
have all her blue Hollander's eyes and blond hair. The old Javanese
aunt has not made her appearance yet, and I am afraid she never will.
But I fancy you have long forgiven her this misbehavior; and only once
were you really angry with her, and that was at the time when for your
friend George fifty thousand _thalers_ more or less were a matter of
salvation or ruin, and when you besought heaven to send you the aunt
quickly, even though she were an uncle.
And a few other friends are left still, and will remain, if it be
heaven's will, awhile longer, though one of them at least has been
expecting a stroke of apoplexy every day for the last fifty years----
"No, no, doctor; I will not finish the shameful sentence. You fly at
once into your altitudes that I should mention you in my book, as if
the history of my life could be anything but the history of my life,
and assert that after you have worn an honorable baldness for half a
century, I make a child's jest of you at last, and you can no longer
show yourself upon the street. Scold as much as you like, doctor, and
in the topmost notes of your highest register, if you like; I
understand you, and know that you will tune yourself down again
presently; and I further know that if everybody does not take off his
hat to you on the street, it is because everybody does not know you."
"And I do not wish to be known," cries the doctor, "nor to be exhibited
to the public as a curiosity of natural history, least of all by you
who have always seen me in a false light--if indeed a mammoth like you
can see anything in the right light. If I am to have my portrait taken,
it shall be by your wife, who ought to be ashamed, by the way, to
neglect her noble art so, out of mere idolatry of you and of her
children--or else by Oscar. _Apropos_, will you not include in your
book a thorough analysis of all Oscar's paintings, or at least of his
chief works, and thus cover yourself with ridicule, as you really know
nothing whatever about art? or will you not set forth in detail all
that Kurt has accomplished in our railroad undertakings, and his
inventions in various departments of machinery, and so, as he is
modesty itself, cover him with a garment of confusion? Or will you not
denounce Benno to the government because his agricultural school at
Zehrendorf which grows and flourishes so quietly, is a formidable rival
to the official country institutes?"
"Scold away, doctor: you have not an idea how admirably all you say
fits into my last chapter. I should like to let you have the last word
there, as everywhere else."
"That was all that was wanting!" cried the doctor in wrath, and ran out
of the door, the last of our guests.
This scene happened yesterday evening, and I said to Paula, "Was it not
a happy idea to leave the last word to my best, oldest, dearest friend,
to whom I owed more than I could ever find words to say."
"I could never know which was to be the last touch in my pictures until
I had given it," said Paula: "perhaps it will be the same way with your
book."
To-day, thinking it over in the early dawn, I find that Paula was
right. I feel that I must close, and yet have the feeling that I must
not stop yet; that I have forgotten or omitted something, I know not
what; that I owe the reader, despite my solemn disallowance erewhile,
information on a multitude of points.
For example, how it happens that I am sitting at my writing table "in
the early dawn," after having, as it seems, a little company of friends
with me yesterday evening: have I then been writing all night until
morning overtook me?
Nothing of the sort. The early dawn, that is to say, four o'clock in
winter, and in midsummer, as now, often two o'clock, has for years
found me in my office, reading, calculating, drawing, and now, since I
have had this book on hand, for the most part writing. I have all my
life been a good sleeper, so far that my sleep is very profound and
mostly dreamless: but I have long accustomed myself to do with half the
sleep that others find indispensable. The Doctor says I have too large
a heart, like most big good-natured fellows of rather limited
intelligence and with broad shoulders, whom nature has marked out for
carrying burdens and playing the part of anvil; but he smiles when he
says so, and I do not know if he be speaking in earnest or in jest.
I have been just now standing at the open window, after extinguishing
the lamp by which I have been writing. In the perfectly cloudless,
light-green, July sky stood the sickle of the waning moon, but the
stars had all faded from sight. Over my window, just under the eaves,
sat a swallow, and sang, rocking her little head from side to side and
looking towards the east where the sun would presently rise. I have
never heard a sweeter song, and even now while I write its melody fills
my whole soul. From one of the tall chimneys of the factory, whose main
building turns its front towards the villa, arose a column of dense
smoke springing slender and straight as a pine-shaft high into the
clear air. There is a great casting to be made to-day, and Klaus has
had his furnaces lighted early.
I see this picture, as I have endeavored to describe it, often and
often in the early morning, and it always inspires me with cheerfulness
and joy, and with a thankful heart I greet the rising sun.
There resounds a well-known sound, a welcome clangor the first blow of
the hammer on the anvil; the day which the swallow announced is here.
Farewell, my friend; we will both go to our work.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "Ordinarius," the professor charged with the especial
instruction of any class. "The Prima," or first form, corresponds to
the sixth or highest form in an English public school.--Tr.]
[Footnote 2: "Steuerrath," Councillor of Customs, the title of an
official, as is also "Commerzienrath," Councillor of Commerce, in the
next paragraph.--Tr.]
[Footnote 3: "Gnädigste," most gracious. A form of address to ladies of
rank.--Tr.]
[Footnote 4: "Rathhaus;" Council-house, or City Hall.--Tr.]
[Footnote 5: "Raubmördergalgenmässig."]
[Footnote 6: From this point the conversation is continued in the
familiar second person, which does not convey the same association in
English, and is therefore not adopted in the translation.--Tr.]
[Footnote 7: "Bierkaltschale," a beverage composed of beer, sweetened
with fruit sliced into it.--Tr.]
[Footnote 8: An old-fashioned table-compliment, meaning "may your
dinner do you good!"--Tr.]
[Footnote 9: "Die Liebe" is feminine in German.--Tr.]
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Hammer and Anvil, by Friedrich Spielhagen