As soon as you have said this, the elves will leave you, and with you all the wealth they have used to entice you, which will now be yours.

But should you either answer, or accept of their offers, you will from that moment become mad.

On the night of one Christmas Eve, a man named Fusi was out on the cross-roads, and managed to resist all the entreaties and proffers of the elves, until one of them offered him a large lump of mutton-suet, and begged him to take a bite of it.  Fusi, who had up to this time gallantly resisted all such offers as gold and silver and diamonds and such filthy lucre, could hold out no longer, and crying, “Seldom have I refused a bite of mutton-suet,” he went mad.

ERNST MORITZ ARNDT

(1769-1860)

Sprung from the sturdy peasant stock of the north, to which patriotism is a chief virtue, Ernst Moritz Arndt first saw the light at Schoritz, Island of Ruegen (then a dependency of Sweden), December 29th, 1769.  His father, once a serf, had achieved a humble independence, and he destined his clever son for the ministry, the one vocation open to him which meant honor and advancement.  The young man studied theology at Greifswald and Jena, but later turned his attention exclusively to history and literature.  His early life is delightfully described in his ‘Stories and Recollections of Childhood.’  His youth was molded by the influence of Goethe, Klopstock, Buerger, and Voss.  After completing his university studies he traveled extensively in Austria, Hungary, and Northern Italy.  His account of these journeys, published in 1802, shows his keen observation of men and affairs.

[Illustration:  ERNST ARNDT]

He began his long service to his country by his ’History of Serfdom in Pomerania and Sweden,’ which contributed largely to the general abolition of the ancient abuse.  He became professor of history in the University of Greifswald in 1806, and about that time began to publish the first series of the ‘Spirit of the Times.’  These were stirring appeals to rouse the Germans against the oppressions of Napoleon.  In consequence he was obliged to flee to Sweden.  After three years he returned under an assumed name, and again took up his work at Greifswald.  In 1812, after the occupation of Pomerania by the French, his fierce denunciations again forced him to flee, this time to Russia, the only refuge open to him.  There he joined Baron von Stein, who eagerly made use of him in his schemes for the liberation of Germany.  At this time his finest poems were written:  those kindling war songs that appealed so strongly to German patriotism, when “songs were sermons and sermons were songs.”  The most famous of these, ’What is the German’s Fatherland?’ ‘The Song of the Field-marshal,’ and ’The God Who Made Earth’s Iron Hoard,’ still live as national lyrics.