“It always effects me to relate that adventure,” he remarked, returning the handkerchief to his pocket. “Ingratitude — base, vile ingratitude — is recalled by it. That man, that man, who but for me would have perished in the pathless wilds of Russia, that man in the hour of my adversity forsook me.” The German looked up. “Yes,” said Bonaparte, “I had money, I had lands, I said to my wife, ‘There is Africa, a struggling country; they want capital; they want men of talent; they want men of ability to open up that land. Let us go.’

“I bought eight thousand pounds worth of machinery — winnowing, ploughing, reaping machines; I loaded a ship with them. Next steamer I came out — wife, children, all. Got to the Cape. Where is the ship with the things? Lost — gone to the bottom! And the box with the money? Lost — nothing saved!

“My wife wrote to the Duke of Wellington’s nephew; I didn’t wish her to; she did it without my knowledge.

“What did the man whose life I saved do? Did he send me thirty thousand pounds? say, ‘Bonaparte, my brother, here is a crumb?’ No: he sent me nothing.

“My wife said, ‘Write.’ I said ‘Mary Ann, NO. While these hands have power to work, NO. While this frame has power to endure, NO. Never shall it be said that Bonaparte Blenkins asked of any man.’”

The man’s noble independence touched the German.

“Your case is hard; yes, that is hard,” said the German, shaking his head.

Bonaparte took another draught of the soup, leaned back against the pillows, and sighed deeply.

“I think,” he said after awhile, rousing himself, “I shall now wander in the benign air, and taste the gentle cool of the evening. The stiffness hovers over me yet; exercise is beneficial.”

So saying, he adjusted his hat carefully on the bald crown of his head, and moved to the door. After he had gone the German sighed again over his work —

“Ah, Lord! So it is! Ah!”

He thought of the ingratitude of the world.

“Uncle Otto,” said the child in the doorway, “did you ever hear of ten bears sitting on their tails in a circle?”

“Well, not of ten, exactly; but bears do attack travellers every day. It is nothing unheard of,” said the German.

“A man of such courage, too! A terrible experience that!”

“And how do we know that the story is true, Uncle Otto?”

The German’s ire was roused.

“That is what I do hate!” he cried. “Know that is true! How do you know that anything is true? Because you are told so? If we begin to question everything — proof, proof, proof, what will we have to believe left? How do you know the angel opened the prison-door for Peter, except that Peter said so? How do you know that God talked to Moses, except that Moses wrote it? That is what I hate!”

The girl knit her brows. Perhaps her thoughts made a longer journey than the German dreamed of; for, mark you, the old dream little how their words and lives are texts and studies to the generation that shall succeed them. Not what we are taught, but what we see, makes us, and the child gathers the food on which the adult feeds to the end.