imploringly. "Be still: I shall feel that I am but beginning to live,
if thou wilt promise to live with me."

'"Live, then!" said she, in blushing embarrassment, and gave him her
hand.

'He took her hand, and at the same time clasped his bride to his
bosom, that heaved with unwonted emotion. She wept on his breast in
silent joy.'

We would fain, if we had room, add to this the marriage sermon,
preached by the bridegroom, and well preached too; for Jonas had
knowledge, although, as he said himself, he never found half so much
in books as is lying everywhere about the road.

Martha was just the wife for the honest, sensible hand-worker; and as
it frequently happens with such characters, his affairs prospered
from the date of his marriage. He took a larger house in a
better situation for trade; and having presented the useless
'master-piece'--which nobody would buy--to the prince, he was rewarded
by the dignity of 'Master-girdler to the Court.' But still 'uprightly
and hardily the court-girdler lived with his wife, just as before;
active in the workshop and warehouse, at markets and at fairs. Year
after year fled, though, before the last guilder could be paid off, of
the debt on the house. Days of joy and of sorrow succeeded each other
in turn. They were all received with gratitude to God--these as well
as those.'

We now come hastily to the third generation; for Jonas had a son
called Veit, who was first apprenticed to his father, and then sent to