L'NDINE. 13
" We now had another care weighing upon our minds, and one that caused us no small perplexit}' and uneasiness. We of course very soon determined to keep and bring up the child we had found, in place of our own darling that had been drowned ; but who could tell us whether she had been baptised or not? She herself could give us no light on the subject. When we asked her the question, she commonly made answer, that she well knew she was cre- ated for God's praise and glory, and that she was willing to let us do Avith her all that might promote His glory and praise.
" Mj' wife and I reasoned in this waj^ : ' If she has not been baptised, there can be no use in putting oif the cere- mony ; and if she has been, it still is better to have too much of a good thing than too little.'
" Taking this view of our difficulty, we now endea- voured to hit upon a good name for the child, since, while she remained without one, we were often at a loss, in our familiar talk, to know what to call her. We at length agreed that Dorothea would be most suitable for her, as I had somewhere heard it said that this name signified a gift of God, and surely she had been sent to us by Provi- dence as a gift, to comfort us in our misery. She, on the contrary, would not so much as' hear Dorothea mentioned ; she insisted, that as she had been named Undine by her parents. Undine she ought still to be called. It now oc- curred to me that this was a heathenish name, to be found in no calendar, and I resolved to ask the advice of a priest in the city. He would not listen to the name of Undine ; and yielding to my urgent request, he came with me through the enchanted forest, in order to perform the rite of baptism here in my cottage.
"The little maid stood before us so prettily adorned, and with such an air of gracefulness, that the heart of the priest softened at once in her presence ; and she coaxed him so sweetly, and jested with him so merrily, that he
