the boss. Often, as I sat with my back bent in the dingy shop, I decided to give notice that I was going to quit. On one occasion I actually did so, but the boss took no notice of it, and the next time I was again sitting near him and sewing.
"How happy I was when I woke up after such weary hours! And I then resolved that, if this dream came intruding again, I would throw it off with energy and would cry aloud: 'It is only a delusion, I am in bed, and I want to sleep.'...And the next night I would be sitting in the tailor shop again.
"Thus years passed with dismal regularity. While the boss and I were working at Alpelhofer's, at the house of the peasant where I began my apprenticeship, it happened that he was particularly dissatisfied with my work. 'I should like to know where in the world your thoughts are?' cried he, and looked at me gloomily, I thought the most sensible thing for me to do would be to get up and explain to the boss that I was with him only as a favour, and then leave. But I did not do this. I submitted, however, when the boss engaged an apprentice, and ordered me to make room for him on the bench. I moved into the corner, and kept on sewing. On the same day another tailor was engaged; he was bigoted, as he was a Czech who had worked for us nineteen years before, and then had fallen into the lake on his way home from the public-house. When he tried to sit down there was no room for him. I looked at the boss inquiringly, and he said to me, 'You have no talent for the tailoring business; you may go; you are free.' My fright on that occasion was so overpowering that I awoke.
"The morning gray glimmered through the clear window of my beloved home. Objects of art surrounded me; in the tasteful bookcase stood the eternal Homer, the gigantic Dante, the incomparable Shakespeare, the glorious Goethe—all shining and immortal. From the adjoining room resounded the clear little voices of the children, who were waking and prattling with their mother. I felt as if I had found again that idyllically sweet, that peaceful, poetical, and spiritual life which I have so often and so deeply conceived as the contemplative fortune of mankind. And still I was vexed that I
