Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 2).djvu/18

 which is to be kept according to reason and prudence, the nose is the best guide; and who would rather put on blinkers than be led aside by any odorous shrub or blooming meadow that grows by the way. It was, however, true that Peregrine had many things about him which people could not comprehend.

It has been already said that his father was a rich and respectable merchant; when to this is added that he owned a handsome house in the Horse-market, and that in this house, in the very same chamber where the little Peregrine had always received his Christmas-boxes, the grown-up Peregrine was now receiving them, there is no room to doubt that the place of the strange adventures to be narrated in this history is the celebrated city of Frankfort on the Maine. Of his parents little more is to be told than that they were quiet honest folks, of whom no one could speak any thing but good. The unbounded esteem which Mr. Tyss enjoyed upon 'Change he owed to two circumstances; he always speculated well and safely, gaining one sum after the other; while at the same time