I went to a farm where there was an unmarried daughter.  When you go a-courting among us, you pretend to mean to buy a horse.  That’s the fashion.  With us, a lie doesn’t wear French rouge.  The parents of Marianne (that was her name) made me welcome.  Brown Bess was brought from the stable, and her neck, legs, and teeth examined.  I showed my willingness to buy her, which meant as much as to say, ‘Your daughter pleases me.’  As proud as you please, I walked through the buildings.  Everything in plenty, all right, not a nail wanting on the harrow, nor a cord missing from the harness.  How I strutted!  I saw myself master, and I was tickled to death to be as rich as my brother.

“But I reckoned without my host.  On tiptoe I stole into the kitchen, where my sweetheart was frying ham and eggs.  I thought I might snatch a kiss.  Above the noise of the sizzling frying-pan and the crackling wood, I plainly heard the voice of my—­well, let us say it—­bride, weeping and complaining to an old house servant:  ’It’s a shame and a sin to enter matrimony with a lie.  I can’t wed this Michael:  not because he is ugly; that doesn’t matter in a man, but he comes too late!  My heart belongs to poor Joseph, the woodcutter, and I’d sooner be turned out of doors than to make a false promise.  Money blinds my mother’s eyes!’ Don’t be surprised, little sister, that I remember these words so well.  A son doesn’t forget his father’s blessing, nor a prisoner his sentence.  This was my sentence to poverty and single-blessedness.  I sent word to Marianne that she should be happy—­and so she was.

“But now to my own story.  I worked six years as farm hand for my rich brother, and then love overtook me.  The little housemaid caught me in the net of her golden locks.  What a fuss it made in our family!  A peasant’s pride is as stiff as that of your ‘Vous’ and ‘Zus.’  My girl had only a pair of willing hands and a good heart to give to an ugly, pock-marked being like me.  My mother (God grant her peace!) caused her many a tear, and when I brought home my Lotte she wouldn’t keep the peace until at last she found out that happiness depends on kindness more than on money.  On the patch of land that I bought, my wife and I lived as happily as people live when there’s love in the house and a bit of bread to spare.  We worked hard and spent little.  A long, scoured table, a wooden bench or so, a chest or two of coarse linen, and a few pots and pans—­that was our furniture.  The walls had never tasted whitewash, but Lotte kept them scoured.  She went to church barefoot, and put on her shoes at the door.  Good things such as coffee and plums, that the poorest hut has now-a-days, we never saw.  We didn’t save much, for crops sold cheap.  But I didn’t speculate, nor squeeze money from the sweat of the poor.  In time five pretty little chatterboxes arrived, all flaxen-haired girls with blue eyes, or brown.  I was satisfied with girls, but the mother hankered after a boy.  That’s a poor father that prefers a son to a daughter.  A man ought to take boys and girls alike, just as God sends them.  I was glad enough to work for my girls, and I didn’t worry about their future, nor build castles in the air for them to live in.  After fifteen years the boy arrived, but he took himself quickly out of the world and coaxed his mother away with him.”