swung themselves through life as through a ball-room! There was no sorrow
in a single look I met, no burden on any shoulder, perhaps not even a
clouded thought, not a little hidden pain in any of the happy souls. And
I, walking in the very midst of these people, young and newly-fledged as I
was, had already forgotten the very look of happiness. I hugged these
thoughts to myself as I went on, and found that a great injustice had been
done me. Why had the last months pressed so strangely hard on me? I failed
to recognize my own happy temperament, and I met with the most singular
annoyances from all quarters. I could not sit down on a bench by myself or
set my foot any place without being assailed by insignificant accidents,
miserable details, that forced their way into my imagination and scattered
my powers to all the four winds. A dog that dashed by me, a yellow rose in
a man's buttonhole, had the power to set my thoughts vibrating and occupy
me for a length of time.

* * * * *

What was it that ailed me? Was the hand of the Lord turned against me? But
why just against me? Why, for that matter, not just as well against a man
in South America? When I considered the matter over, it grew more and more
incomprehensible to me that I of all others should be selected as an
experiment for a Creator's whims. It was, to say the least of it, a
peculiar mode of procedure to pass over a whole world of other humans in
order to reach me. Why not select just as well Bookseller Pascha, or
Hennechen the steam agent?

As I went my way I sifted this thing, and could not get quit of it. I
found the most weighty arguments against the Creator's arbitrariness in
letting me pay for all the others' sins. Even after I had found a seat and
sat down, the query persisted in occupying me, and prevented me from