After the death of her best-beloved lord the young widow was overcome with brooding melancholy from which nothing could rouse her.  At that time you, my Margery and Agnes, her daughters, clung to me as to your own father; and when, at the end of three years, your mother was healed of that melancholy, it had come about that you had learned to call me father while I had sported with you and loved you in “your” mother’s stead, and taught you to fold your little hands in prayer and led you out for air walking by your side.  Your mother had heeded it not; but then, when she bloomed forth in new and wondrous beauty, and I beheld that Hans Koler and the Knight Sir Henning von Beust, who had likewise remained unwed, were again her suitors, the old love woke up in my heart; and one fair May evening, out in the forest, the question rose to my lips whether she could not grant me the right to call you indeed my children before all the world, and her. . . .

But to what end touch the wound which to this day is scarce healed?

In this world and the next she would never be any man’s but his to whom her heart’s great and only love had been given.  But from that evening forth I, the rejected suitor, must suffer that you children should no longer call me father, but Uncle Kunz; and when afterwards it came to be dear little uncle you may believe that I was thankful.  She no less rejected the suit of Koler and of von Beust; but the last-named gentleman made up for his dismissal by marrying a noble damsel of Brandenburg.  At a later time when he came to Nuremberg he was made welcome by Margery, and then, meeting with Ann once more, he showed himself to be still so youthful and duteous in his service to her, in despite of her grey hairs, that for certain it was well for his happiness at home that he should have come without his wife.

Not long after Ann’s rejection I confessed to Margery what had befallen, and when she heard it, she cast her arms about my neck and cried:  “Why, ne’er content, must you crave a new home and family?  Are not two warm hearths yours to sit at, and the love and care of two faithful house-wives; and are you not the father and counsellor, not alone of your nephews and nieces, but of their parents likewise?” All this she said in an overflow of sisterly love; and if it comforted me, as I here make record of it, by reason that I sorely needed such good words, if I here recall how sad life often seemed to me.

Nay, nay!  It was sweet, heavenly sweet, and worthy of all thanksgiving that I, who of the three Schopper links was so far the most humbly gifted, was suffered by Fate to be of some use to the other two, and even to their children and grandchildren, and to help in adding to their well-being.  In this—­insomuch I may say with pride—­in this I have had all good-speed; thus my life’s labor has not been in vain, and I may call my lot a happy one.  And thus I likewise have proved the truth of old Adam Heyden’s saying, that he who does most for other folks at the same time does the best for himself.