MAY 27.

I find I have fallen into raptures, declamation, and similes, and
have forgotten, in consequence, to tell you what became of the
children. Absorbed in my artistic contemplations, which I briefly
described in my letter of yesterday, I continued sitting on the
plough for two hours. Toward evening a young woman, with a basket
on her arm, came running toward the children, who had not moved
all that time. She exclaimed from a distance, "You are a good
boy, Philip!" She gave me greeting: I returned it, rose, and
approached her. I inquired if she were the mother of those pretty
children. "Yes," she said; and, giving the eldest a piece of
bread, she took the little one in her arms and kissed it with a
mother's tenderness. "I left my child in Philip's care," she said,
"whilst I went into the town with my eldest boy to buy some wheaten
bread, some sugar, and an earthen pot." I saw the various articles
in the basket, from which the cover had fallen. "I shall make
some broth to-night for my little Hans (which was the name of the
youngest): that wild fellow, the big one, broke my pot yesterday,
whilst he was scrambling with Philip for what remained of the
contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she bad scarcely time
to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the
meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked
a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter
of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey
into Switzerland for some money a relation had left him. "They
wanted to cheat him," she said, "and would not answer his letters;
so he is gone there himself. I hope he has met with no accident,
as I have heard nothing of him since his departure." I left the