132 FRIENDS OF THE STEANGER.

girls were busy with their needles, altering winter
clothes for the younger brothers. The brothers them-
selves were playing with Ponto, or trimming sticks for
their kites, or perhaps mending their bridles. The
farmer generally had on his steel-rimmed spectacles,
and was toiling through his newspaper, before reading
in Henry’s Commentary, which he always looked at
before going to bed. Dr. Smith and Mary Brewer had
little chats in the shady part of the room; but when
Carl’s well-known rap was heard at the door, they
usually made a place for him. Then the conversation
was sure to turn on something which might cheer up
the little German, and make him feel at home. There
is a great difference in people as to this. I have
known some who seemed to take a pleasure on always
speaking of those things which tended to revive the
remembrance of sorrows and mortifications. Not so
Smith and Mary. They respected and loved the clever
young Prussian; and they talked with pleasure about
the things which he knew better than they.

Carl, however, was not so entirely engrossed with
these instructions and useful acquirements, as to find
no leisure for the recreations and amusements fitted to
his youth; and it excited no surprise, but only sincere
pleasure in the mind of Mary Brewer, when, on going
down to the river-side with her basket of linen to be
washed in the stream, she found Carl Adler, with fish-
ing-rod in hand, as eagerly watching the dip of the