I got yet a morgage on der house! Dees time here
der vater come again--till I vish it vas last year
vonce! Unt now all I safe is my vife, unt my son
his vife, unt my leedle grandchilderns! Else
everding is gone! All--everyding!--Der house gone--unt--unt--der
morgage gone, too!" And then the
old Teutonic face "melted all over in sunshiny
smiles," and, turning, he bent and lifted a sleepy
little girl from a pile of dirty bundles in the depot
waiting-room and went pacing up and down the
muddy floor, saying things in German to the child.
I thought the whole thing rather beautiful. That's
the kind of an old man who, saying good-by to
his son, would lean and kiss the young man's hand,
as in the Dutch regions of Pennsylvania, two or
three weeks ago, I saw an old man do.

Mark Lemon must have known intimately and
loved the genteel old man of the city when the once
famous domestic drama of "Grandfather Whitehead"
was conceived. In the play the old man--a
once prosperous merchant--finds a happy home in
the household of his son-in-law. And here it is
that the gentle author has drawn at once the poem,
the picture, and the living proof of the old
Wordsworthian axiom, "The child is father to the man."
The old man, in his simple way, and in his great
love for his wilful little grandchild, is being
continually distracted from the grave sermons and
moral lessons he would read the boy. As, for