CHAPTER XVI.

"The mathematics and the metaphysics,

Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.

No profit grows where no pleasure is ta'en.

In brief, study, Sir, what you most affect."-SHAKSPEARE.

A few days after the event of the pic-nic, a group of the pupils of Miss Ingemann's school were together in one of the recitation rooms, from which their new German teacher had just departed, leaving them at leisure for the rest of the afternoon.

"Have we not caught a Tartar now?" said Adelgunda Heiliger, who was given somewhat to indolence. "We shall have to tread the exact line with him I see, or there is no knowing what will come to pass. Dearee-me, where is my book? It frightens me to think how I shall have to study to come up to his high ideas of what can be done."

"Yes," said Freya, "and the cool way in which he says, 'you will read so far for the next lesson, and in six more you will have finished this; and in three months you will be able to do so and so,' is quite admirable for simple maidens to behold. It actually takes away my breath to think what a race in learning we are to run, to say nothing of my neck's aching at gazing upwards at such a mountainous height of superiority. A Tartar! say you, why he is Hercules himself, only instead of a club he wields the vocabularies of all the languages which scattered the people at the tower of Babel."

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"Nonsense," said Rinda. “The idea of trying to make a hero of nothing but a despised Jew. I wonder that Miss Ingemann should employ such a person. I do not think my papa will wish me to take lessons of him. He is very particular about my associates in every respect.”

"A despised Jew!" said Zoë; "how strange to speak so contemptuously of that nation of which the most perfect being that ever walked the earth-our adorable Lord-was one, to say nothing of lawgivers, prophets, and apostles, who gave glory to the race! I don't understand it."

"Did not the Jews crucify Jesus, and don't they deserve all the contempt and punishment that can be heaped upon them?" rejoined Rinda, in a coarse and angry tone.

"Our Saviour said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,' before he died, and even while suffering the death-agony; and it is not being much like him for men to harbor revenge and heap obloquy upon them eighteen hundred years after they committed the deed," said Zoë.

"Jew, or Christian, or Hottentot, I care not," said Hilda, "he is a splendid fellow. His forehead, eyes, and mouth are quite faultless. His nose, to be sure, might be chiseled a little more like Apollo's and not suffer in appearance."

"That is the remnant of the Jews' stiff-neckedness. It comes out in this shape, you may depend upon it," said Zoë. "Cosmopolitan as Mrs. Liebenhoff says he is in his sympathies, attainments, and power of adaptation to different circumstances, he can't surmount the strange prepossession the race have for that peculiar nose. For the rest, I have seen many pictures of the Christ, with a much lower ideal of the high-toned and spiritual than a copy of his face, when illuminated by its best expression, would present.

"You put me out of patience, talking in this style. You will be falling in love with him next, Hilda Strophel," said Rinda Brandt.

"I look like marrying Father Abraham and the patriarchs downwards, don't I?" said she, dancing around the room with great glee. "No, I am going to wed a North American Indian and live on a bluff, such as I read of at Mrs. Pendleton's, overlooking the prairies, with the sparkling rivers running through them like silvery threads; with lakes gleaming like diamonds in the desert; with oak openings here and there on their borders; and the rank prairie grass waving, and thousands of gold and crimson

flowers shining in the sunlight, through which sweep the herds of the terrible buffalo, and anon troops of mustangs make the welkin ring with the

sound of their galloping hoofs, and their neighings and snortings."

"I suspect you are too loud a thinker,' dear Hilda, to suit precisely the young brave by your side," said Zoë. “I should fall into his own mood more naturally. As we sat dreaming and gazing at the shadows of the passing clouds, or the flocks of wild pigeons, or the herds of deer, or mayhap were startled by the young Chippewa warrior flying across the plain on his way to fight with the Sioux, he would utter in bass the guttural ugh, and I in softer tenor would echo a--ugh, and then sink into silence and reverie again; and when the chambers of our imagery' were filled to overflowing, we would speak out of our hearts, one after the other."

"Yes," said Hilda, "he would say to you, 'O Zoë, life, with the drooping eye and raven feathered hair! I have stolen you from the bondage in which you were inclosed, to dwell with me upon the wilderness prairie; and when I have, with my eagle eye marked the young bison for prey and dragged him as conqueror at my saddle-bow to my wigwam, then, my life, you shall have your right, and cook for your brave the tender flesh which is to strengthen him for the conflict again.""

"And I will answer," said Zoë, “Yes, my brave ‘Eagle Plume,' joyfully will I share with you the toils of your way, and I will open the tender young corn from its sheath, and its sweet kernel shall delight and nourish your soul. And when together we have cared for the field and the wigwam, will we mount-you, your noblest wild horse; and I, my fleetest of mules, and the wind shall sigh after us as we leave it in the rear; and the hours shall speed to their swiftest the coursers of the sun, and yet lag behind; and the tempest shall in vain follow after us with its fury, for we will outspeed them all. And when we reach the bluff, I will descend from my daughter of the wild ass and mustang, who shall graze by my side, and I will weave with the

quills of the porcupine, the beautiful moccasin, while you scour the forest and prairie again for our winter's supply. And when, weary and drooping, you return to me, with no trophies it may be, to lay at my feet, then sweeter than the music of the birds of the forest, tenderer than the hush of the evening twilight, shall my voice be in soothing you to rest; or again more inspiring than the breeze from the north, telling you to test your fortunes again.'

"Ay, ay," said Hilda: "I could do all that as well as you. Give me the Indian, and you take the Jew. I think you are the very one foreordained for our teacher."

"He would not think so," said Zoë, "for he would have to hang his harp upon the willow again and sprinkle ashes upon his head anew, and wail for Zoë as well as Zion. No, no, I never shall marry."

"What absurdities are you dealing out?" said Rinda. "I should think you were both moonstruck. I declare I will tell Miss Ingemann if you don't hush.”

"Come," said Hilda, "let us go to Mrs. Liebenhoff's. You know she wished us to do so before the arrival of her friends from Iceland, and this is the last opportunity we shall have. You go first, Zoë, please, while I finish practising my music lesson, and then I will follow you. I know you will be glad of a tête-à-tête with her."

Zoë hastened to the parsonage.

6

"Please to walk into my ladies' chamber,'" said Mrs. Liebenhoff from the window, as she ascended the steps and entered the room. "How are you, dear? you look pale."

"I am not very well: we are pressing on with our studies very fast, as we have entered upon the last half of the term, and I am tired of them-that is all. Miss Ingemann would think it laziness and want of interest if I complained, so I say nothing."

"Did Mrs. Körner speak to Miss Ingemann with regard to changing the study of algebra for some other more congenial to the character of your mind?"