Little brother was silent, and bowed his snow-white head.  My heart felt as if the dead wife flitted through the room and gently touched the old fellow’s thin locks.  I saw him kneeling at her death-bed, heard the little girls sobbing, and waited in silence till he drew himself up, sighing deeply:—­

“My Lotte died; she left me alone.  What didn’t I promise the dear Lord in those black hours!  My life, my savings, yea, all my children if He would but leave her to me.  In vain.  ’My thoughts are not thy thoughts, saith the Lord, and My ways are not thy ways.’  It was night in my soul.  I cried over my children, and I only half did my work.  At night I tumbled into bed tearless and prayerless.  Oh, sad time!  God vainly knocked at my heart’s door until the children fell ill.  Oh, what would become of me if these flowers were gathered?  What wealth these rosy mouths meant to me, how gladly would they smile away my sorrow!  I had set myself up above the Lord.  But by my children’s bedside I prayed for grace.  They all recovered.  I took my motherless brood to God’s temple to thank Him there.  Church-going won’t bring salvation, but staying away from church makes a man stupid and coarse.

“But I am forgetting, little sister.  I started to tell you about my fifteen children.  You see I made up my mind that I had to find a mother for the chicks.  I wouldn’t chain a young thing to my bonds, even if she understood housekeeping.  I held to the saying, ’Equal wealth, equal birth, equal years make a good match.’  When an old widower courts a young girl he looks at her faults with a hundred eyes when he measures her with his first wife.  But a home without a wife is like spring without blossoms.  So, thinking this way, I chose a widow with ten children.”

Twirling his thumbs, little brother smiled gayly as he looked at me.  “Five and ten make fifteen, I thought, and when fifteen prayers rise to heaven, the Lord must hear.  My two eldest stepsons entered military service.  We wouldn’t spend all our money on the boys and then console our poor girls with a husband.  I put three sons to trades.  But my girls were my pride.  They learned every kind of work.  When they could cook, wash, and spin, we sent them into good households to learn more.  Two married young.  Some of the rest are seamstresses and housekeepers.  One is a secretary, and our golden-haired Miez is lady’s-maid to the Countess H——.  Both these girls are betrothed.  Miez is the brightest, and she managed to learn, even at the village school.  So much is written about education nowadays,” (little brother drew himself up proudly as he added, “I take a newspaper,”) “but the real education is to keep children at work and make them unselfish.  They must love their work.  Work and pray, these were my rules, and thank Heaven! all my children are good and industrious.