Eight days ago, this family had removed from the country into the handsome house opposite to me; and it had never yet occurred to me to ask who they were, or whence they came.  What need was there for me to-night to make myself acquainted with their domestic concerns in an illicit manner?  How could it interest me?  I was in an ill-humor; perhaps, too, I felt some little heartache.  But for all that, true to my resolution, not to give myself up to anxious thoughts when they could do no good, I seized the pen with stiff fingers, and, in order to dissipate my vexation, wished to attempt a description of domestic happiness, of a happiness which I had never enjoyed.  For the rest, I philosophized whilst I blew upon my stiffened hands.  “Am I the first who, in the hot hour of fancy, has sought for a warmth which the stern world of reality has denied him?  Six dollars for a measure of fir-wood.  Yes, prosit, thou art not likely to get it before December!  I write!

“Happy, threefold happy, the family, in whose narrow, contracted circle no heart bleeds solitarily, or solitarily rejoices!  No look, no smile, remains unanswered; and where the friends say daily, not with words but with deeds, to each other, ’Thy cares, thy joys, thy happiness, are mine also!’”

“Lovely is the peaceful, the quiet home, which closes itself protectingly around the weary pilgrim through life—­which, around its friendly blazing hearth, assembles for repose the old man leaning on his staff, the strong man, the affectionate wife, and happy children, who, shouting and exulting, hop about in their earthly heaven, and closing a day spent in the pastimes of innocence, repeat a thanksgiving prayer with smiling lips, and drop asleep on the bosom of their parents, whilst the gentle voice of the mother tells them, in whispered cradle-tones, how around their couch—­

     “The little angels in a ring,
      Stand round about to keep
      A watchful guard upon the bed
      Where little children sleep.”

Here I was obliged to leave off, because I felt something resembling a drop of rain come forth from my eye, and therefore could not any longer see clearly.

“How many,” thought I, as my reflections, against my will, took a melancholy turn—­“how many are there who must, to their sorrow, do without this highest happiness of earthly life—­domestic happiness!”

For one moment I contemplated myself in the only whole glass which I had in my room—­that of truth,—­and then wrote again with gloomy feeling:—­“Unhappy, indeed, may the forlorn one be called, who, in the anxious and cool moments of life (which, indeed, come so often), is pressed to no faithful heart, whose sigh nobody returns, whose quiet grief nobody alleviates with a ’I understand thee, I suffer with thee!’

“He is cast down, nobody raises him up; he weeps, nobody sees it, nobody will see it; he goes, nobody follows him; he comes, nobody goes to meet him; he rests, nobody watches over him.  He is lonely.  Oh, how unfortunate he is!  Why dies he not?  Ah, who would weep for him?  How cold is a grave which no warm tears of love moisten!