Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/130

 measures the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.—I nowise grudge J. J. Rousseau his Flora Petrinsularis; but let him also allow our Quintus his Window-flora.—There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time enough to seek his Flescher (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast—so they called the sparrow—under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.—About three o'clock the old Gardener, whom neighbors must call the Professor of Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table; then as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his brother, "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole evening.

About eight o'clock—here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his letter-drawer—both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in