THE

LADIES' CABINET

OF

FASHION, MUSIC, AND ROMANCE.

LUCK GIVES WIT.

CHAPTER I.

Ir seemed as if May had put on her gayest attire to welcome young Simon cordially back to his father's dwelling: for every tree and flower was in blossom, and the whole garden seemed in its fresh verdure like a single fragrant nosegay. The young man, the vicar's son, sped with renovated feelings over the field and meadow, reclined in the shade of the thick-woven foliage, listened with devout emotion to the humming bees under the tall lindens before his father's door, and enjoyed, after an absence of two years, the charms of rural life, with all the keener relish for having been so long obliged to forego them, while occupied in a petty town with engrossing and tedious business.

The mother was delighted to witness the extasy of her son, but his more serious father had expected that he would approach the scene of his childhood with more of the air of a man of business. He did not reflect that he himself so many years older, was more accustomed to everything around him, and could not therefore participate in the delight experienced by his son, whom he wished to exhibit a prouder, colder, and more imposing bearing to the world, which his youthful joyous aspect was not likely to impress with very great reverence, much less awe. The father, a proud and a vain man, had hoped that in this son the splendour of his family should be revived anew; and therefore he had obliged him to study the law, although Simon in his childhood, and his youth, had shown more aptitude for retirement, and, had his own incliMARCH, 1843.

nations been consulted, would more gladly have passed his days, like his father, as a minister, in his own quiet peaceful little village. The old man had always before his eyes the venerable figure of his own grandfather, who, as a renowned criminal judge, had led a life of high consideration in the capital, although he too had been the son of a country clergyman. The son of this worshipful juris-consul had been endowed with fewer talents, or favoured less by fortune, and had devoted his offspring, Simon's father, to the clerical profession. Through his influence, for he occupied a counsellor's post, though one of inferior rank, he had procured for him this snug vicarage in a beautiful neighbourhood; and Baering (this was the vicar's name) might have been happy, had he not continually suffered from the feeling, that he was born for higher things, and had missed his true vocation through complaisance to his father. He was resolved therefore that his eldest son, Simon, should make good all these pretensions, and assume that place in society from which his father's want of spirit had for ever excluded himself.

Simon himself was ambitious enough, but after a different fashion. He was cautious and deliberate, and his father was blind to his timidity, only because it was necessary that the son should put forth talent, and skill, and boldness, to raise up his own fortune, while he from his safe retirement should look on and enjoy the prosperous youth's distinguished career. The mother, on the other hand, trembled for her darling, and could neither understand the cruelty of the father, as she called this strenuous incitation, nor the compliant temperament of the son, who was in a few days to encounter the decision of his fate in the capital.

She now sought him in the garden to talk with him cordially and affectionately, but he had gone out again to indulge his excitement, and was not to be found in the garden or the orchard. She returned to the house, and as she was passing the nursery door, she was rooted to the spot with astonishment, at hearing loud curses and a violent uproar in the room in which her two little boys and her little girl should have been quietly engaged with their lessons or their play. “Himmelkreuz donner welter!" cried some one again in a deep voice, striking the table with his fist. "I'll teach you manners, you devil's imps. Fire, and flame, and a murrian on ye, you must whistle another tune, or may the blue lightning, thundering son of a gun of a Cossack corporal, turn everything topsy-turvy!'' Lost in amazement, who the enraged unknown

could be, who was storming so frantically in the nursery, the mother opened the door, and, speechless with astonishment, saw no one but her eldest son, the fair-faced bashful Simon, who was standing with fiery visage in the middle of the room, while the two boys, pale and terrified, had squeezed themselves into the farthest corner, and stood mute, with their eyes rivetted on their books, and little Sophy was crouched under the stone, and crying piteously.

When the mother entered, the scene changed, the children gathered round, caressing and kissing her, while Simon went abashed to the window, and turned his back to the others, to hide his confusion. "What is the matter then ?" said the mother. "Brother Simon wants to educate us," said Ernest, the elder boy," and says it must be done with severity, otherwise nothing can be made of us." "Yes," said Sophy, still crying, "Simmy even made his hand bleed, he was so cross with us and the table there."

The mother quieted the children, and then led the eldest, blushing purple with shame, into the garden. "I do not know thee again," she said, looking earnestly at him, "thou art usually mildness itself; thy father scolds thee for thy softness, which he would gladly see altered, and now I find thee, storming and cursing, and the children terrified, though the poor things do not seem to have done anything to thee. What can be the matter between you?"

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My dear mother," replied the stammering youth, “I am so confused, I do not know what answer to make. You must know that, feeling clearly with what reason my strongminded father says I am yielding and timid, and being in few days about to encounter so difficult and agitating a trial, I have been accustoming myself, this year past, to be rude, and passionate, and boisterous, so as to rub off some of that boyish softness, which looks like meanness in the eyes of men, above all, in those of my superiors, and through which every. body, however insignificant, obtains so much the mastery over me. I tremble before every one, and not a soul can make an imposing impression upon."

My dear boy," replied his mother, "thou seemest to have taken a strange method to harden thyself, and acquire a manly appearance. Dost think thy father would approve of it? Such ungodly imprecations in a clergyman's house, and before children too !"

"You are right," answered the son, "my father would not allow it, and so I have not ventured to enter on this kind of

exercise above there with Michael, because my father's room is too near, and Michael himself, who nursed and took care of me when I was a boy, might perhaps not give in to the practice. But I must by all means frequently recruit my strength in this way, otherwise I shall be put utterly out of countenance. In town my servant was used to this sort of thing." "And did the man quietly submit to be cursed and abused by thee?" said the mother.

ever,

"I made him an allowance for it in his wages," was the answer of the young assessor, and so I had the credit in the neighbourhood, of being a terribly bad master. Once, howthe block head forgot our agreement, and thought I was in earnest. I abused him rather too sharply, perhaps, for the burgomaster was present, and I wished to make some figure before him, having heard the old man did not give me credit for much force of character. But the stupid servant took the matter in dudgeon, and roared louder than I, so that I never was so put to shame in all my life. He excused himself afterwards, saying, I had been too hard with him, and that it was impossible to make amends by any remuneration, for such cutting language. I thought myself very well off that he had not laid hands on me, for it was indeed the first time I had even gone the length of giving him a box on the ear."

The mother could not comprehend this narration, nor the extraordinary behaviour of her son: As she remained obstinate in her unbelief, and maintained that this Spartan fashion of ill-treating helots was quite as useless as it was immoral, Simon exclaimed with great vehemence: "Dear mother, you utterly annihilate my very last hope. Only think of my situation brought up here in solitude, afterwards sent to a school in the little town, where I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with mankind, and where my natural timidity gathered more strength, what good did I derive from the university, where my bashfulness kept me apart from the students and from all noisy society? Well, I leave the university, and must assume the character of a man, and one learned in the law. I return again for a while to you, and then go to estabblish myself in the little town as an assessor. During the two years I passed yonder, I saw no society, nothing of the manners and customs of the world, and was abashed before the very cowherds as they drove their cattle along. I am now told to hope, I shall be made a counsellor. I must be examined, must betake myself to the great and formidable capital, and, as my friend and school-fellow Schwebus writes me, the