Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/190

 Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still continues more unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it from being, by a Literary Ass-burial (sepultura asinina) publicly interred, in a short time, before half the world.

Only one thing grieved me by anticipation; the sorrow of my Berga, for whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival, and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's daughter?) have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier living honour than the last honours. Especially so good a lowly-born housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked goose of the neighbourhood.

It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. I therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her, one of the best of those titles, which our Courts in Germany (as in a Leipzig sale-room) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts, from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor; and once invested therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters stood when it had no money-bag, and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofrathship I shall before this have attained.