their fancies in imagining what would have happened to him if he
had. Not long afterwards he was reading in La Fontaine of a polite
man who drew out of his pocket whatever was asked for. Chamisso
thought, He will be bringing out next a coach and horses. Out of
these hints came the fancy of "Peter Schlemihl, the Shadowless Man."
In all thought that goes with invention of a poet, there are depths
as well as shallows, and the reader may get now and then a peep into
the depths. He may find, if he will, in a man's shadow that outward
expression of himself which shows that he has been touched, like
others, by the light of heaven. But essentially the story is a
poet's whim. Later writings of Chamisso proved him to be one of the
best lyric poets of the romance school of his time, entirely German
in his tone of thought. His best poem, "Salas y Gomez," describes
the feeling of a solitary on a sea-girt rock, living on eggs of the
numberless sea-birds until old age, when a ship is in sight, and
passes him, and his last agony of despair is followed by a triumph
in the strength of God.


"Alone and world-forsaken let me die;
Thy Grace is all my wealth, for all my loss:
On my bleached bones out of the southern sky
Thy Love will look down from the starry cross."


The "Story Without an End"--a story of the endless beauty of
Creation--is from a writer who has no name on the rolls of fame.
The little piece has been made famous among us by the good will of
Sarah Austin. The child who enjoyed it, and for whom she made the
delicate translation which here follows next after Chamisso's "Peter