As a novelist Freytag is often compared with Charles Dickens, largely on account of the humor that so frequently breaks forth from his pages.  It is a different kind of humor, not so obstreperous, not so exaggerated, but it helps to lighten the whole in much the same way.  One moment it is an incongruous simile, at another a bit of sly satire; now infinitely small things are spoken of as though they were great, and again we have the reverse.

It is in his famous comedy, The Journalists, which appeared in 1853, that Freytag displays his humor to its best advantage.  Some of the situations themselves, without being farcical, are exceedingly amusing, as when the Colonel, five minutes after declaiming against the ambition of journalists and politicians, and enumerating the different forms under which it is concealed, lets his own ambition run away with him and is won by the very same arts he has just been denouncing.  Again, Bolz’s capture of the wine-merchant Piepenbrink at the ball given under the auspices of the rival party is very cleverly described indeed.  There is a difference of opinion as to whether or not Bolz was inventing the whole dramatic story of his rescue by Oldendorf, but there can be no difference of opinion as to the comicality of the scene that follows, where, under the very eyes of his rivals and with the consent of the husband, Bolz prepares to kiss Mrs. Piepenbrink.  The play abounds with curious little bits of satire, quaint similes and unexpected exaggerations.  “There is so much that happens,” says Bolz in his editorial capacity, “and so tremendously much that does not happen, that an honest reporter should never be at a loss for novelties.”  Playing dominoes with polar bears, teaching seals the rudiments of journalism, waking up as an owl with tufts of feathers for ears and a mouse in one’s beak, are essentially Freytagian conceptions; and no one else could so well have expressed Bolz’s indifference to further surprises—­they may tell him if they will that some one has left a hundred millions for the purpose of painting all negroes white, or of making Africa four-cornered; but he, Bolz, has reached a state of mind where he will accept as truth anything and everything.

Freytag’s greatest novel, entitled Soll und Haben (the technical commercial terms for “debit” and “credit"), appeared in 1856. Dombey and Son by Dickens had been published a few years before and is worth our attention for a moment because of a similarity of theme in the two works.  In both, the hero is born of the people, but comes in contact with the aristocracy not altogether to his own advantage; in both, looming in the background of the story, is the great mercantile house with its vast and mysterious transactions.  The writer of this short article does not hesitate to place Debit and Credit far ahead of Dombey and Son.  That does not mean that there are not single episodes, and occasionally a character, in Dombey and Son that the German