And round thee could my strong arm cling,
    Might I to thee life consecrate,
  Loud jubilees my heart would sing,
    And these to thee I’d dedicate.

The first interview presents decidedly a comical side.  By a confidential attendant Mirza-Schaffy was introduced on the roof disguised in female costume, his face and flowing beard modestly covered with a long veil.  Luckily, he was not doomed long to such undignified concealment, for he soon managed, through his beauty and genius, to win favor in the eyes of the lady’s mother, and she promised to intercede in his behalf with the stern old father.  The latter, however, having eyes neither for beauty nor poetry, thought only to demand what means of support the bold intruder had to offer his daughter, and when he learned how small these were, withheld his consent until the suitor could secure a professorship in some institution of learning.  Although loath to renounce his freedom, Mirza-Schaffy determined for Hafisa’s sake to make application, as he had often been advised to do, at the Tiflis Gymnasium for the position of teacher of Tartaric.  But, alas! there was prepared for our poor Mirza a humiliation second only to the bastinado.  His reply was a portentous document in the Russian language, of which he could not read a word.  Hafisa’s father demanded sight of it, had it interpreted by a learned mullah, and it proved to be a summons for the applicant to appear at an appointed hour for examination.  This was too much.  Mirza-Schaffy, the first wise man of the East, the pride of his race, the pearl in the shell of poetry, to be examined in his own language!  Hafisa’s father declared his belief that the mirza’s wisdom was as doubtful as his fortune, and the wise man himself began to wonder whether his wisdom had not gone “pleasuring in the dusk of the evening.”  Moreover, during the conference with the mullah certain revelations came to light concerning the lack of orthodoxy in the mirza’s belief and the frequent slurs it was his wont to cast on the powerful mullahs; and this set the old father hopelessly against him, causing him to revoke all promise of possible consent.  Such being the case, Mirza-Schaffy had no heart to brave the humiliation of an examination.  Shortly after, however, he was honored with a call to the new school at Gjaendsha, and Hafisa’s father dying about the same time, all obstacles were removed to a union with the maiden of his choice.  And so with his bride he returned to his native place, and felt that the summit of earthly bliss was attained.

Friedrich Bodenstedt has been a very prolific author, having published several volumes of poetry, besides numerous romances, tales and miscellaneous works.  He is one of a committee of poets and men of learning appointed not long since to retranslate the works of Shakespeare.  At present he is adding to his well-earned laurels through his volume Aus dem Nachlasse Mirza-Schaffys.  The book is divided into seven parts, the first of which is dedicated to love.  Then there are songs of earthly pleasure, songs of consolation, sayings of wisdom, stories in rhyme of Eastern romance, a series of problems and a “bouquet of cypresses and roses.”