Christian Gellerts Last Christmas | Page 4

gets his salary without any trouble, sits in a warm room,
has no care in the world; and I must slave and torment myself."
Strange to say, his very next thought, that he would like to be made
local magistrate, he would in no wise confess to himself.
He sat still a long while; then he went back again to the sitting-room,
past the kitchen, where the fire was burning cheerily. He seated himself
at the table and waited for his morning porridge. On the table lay an
open book; his children had been reading it the previous evening:
involuntarily taking it up, he began to read. Suddenly he started, rubbed
his eyes, and then read again. How comes this verse here just at this
moment? He kept his hand upon the book, and so easily had he caught
the words, that he repeated them to himself softly with his lips, and
nodded several times, as much as to say: "That's true!" And he said
aloud: "It's all there together: short and sweet!" and he was still staring
at it, when his wife brought in the smoking porridge. Taking off his cap,
he folded his hands and said aloud:
"Accept God's gifts with resignation, Content to lack what thou hast not:
In every lot there 's consolation; There 's trouble, too, in every lot!"
The wife looked at her husband with amazement. What a strange
expression was upon his face! And as he sat down and began to eat, she
said: "What is the meaning of that grace? What has come to you?
Where did you find it?"
"It is the best of all graces, the very best,--real God's word. Yes, and all
your life you 've never made such nice porridge before. You must have
put something special in it!"
"I don't know what you mean. Stop! There 's the book lying there--ah!
that's it--and it's by Gellert, of Leipzig."
"What! Gellert, of Leipzig! Men with ideas like that don't live now;
there may have been such, a thousand years ago, in holy lands, not
among us; those are the words of a saint of old."

"And I tell you they are by Gellert, of Leipzig, of whom your brother
has told us; in fact, he was his tutor, and have n't you heard how pious
and good he is?"
"I would n't have believed that such men still lived, and so near us, too,
as Leipzig."
"Well, but those who lived a thousand years ago were also once living
creatures: and over Leipzig is just the same heaven, and the same sun
shines, and the same God rules, as over all other cities."
"Oh! yes, my brother has an apt pupil in you!"
"Well, and why not? I 've treasured up all he told us of Professor
Gellert."
"Professor!"
"Yes, Professor!"
"A man with such a proud, new-fangled title could n't write anything
like that!"
"He did n't give himself the title, and he is poor enough withal! and
how hard it has fared with him! Even from childhood he has been well
acquainted with poverty: his father was a poor minister in Haynichen,
with thirteen children; and Gellert, when quite a little fellow, was
obliged to be a copying office-clerk: who can tell whether he did n't
then contract that physical weakness of his? And now that he 's an old
man, things will never go better with him; he has often no wood, and
must be pinched with cold. It is with him, perhaps, as with that student
of whom your brother has told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must
read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is
far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one
hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other.
Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your
brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he does n't think at all
of himself; he always looks out for one still poorer than he is, and then

gives all away: and he 's always engaged in aiding and assisting others.
Oh! dear, and yet he is so poor! May be at this moment he is hungry
and cold; and he is said to be in ill-health, besides."
"Wife, I would willingly do the man a good turn if I could. If, now, he
had some land, I would plough, and sow, and reap, and carry, and
thresh by the week together for him. I should like to pay him attention
in such a way that he might know there was at least one who cared for
him. But his