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Show THE LAST LOVE-Wilhelm Easburger was a great muscular fellow of the village of A---,in Prussia, and an accomplished dancer and swordsman. He had, however, accommodated himself to the comparatively sleepy valley in which he lived, and needed a waking up. His father with an old crony and partner, Hans Hoferdahl, had made and mended watches in the old, dingy shop, where their fathers had filed and hammered before them. Their life was about as unvarying as the ticking of the flatfaced timepiece behind the cobwebs in the show-window. It chanced that various ripples were beginning to come into the valley to disturb the course of nature. It was rumored that the king was preparing for war, and such young men as Wilhelm would be needed for the army. Besides this, old Hans had caught the emigration fever to America, and had sold whatever he had to sell except his big pipe, his ?[unreadable] daughter Christine. He ????? share in his shop to Wilhelm's father. Christine wept at the departure, for the old village had been very dear to her, and her mother's grave was there. The effect on Wilhelm was such that he rubbed his great black eyes, and could scarcely realize that the whole thing was else than a dream. Pretty soon, however, Wilhelm took note of a gloomy difference in the ways of his father. The old man came to neglect his pipe, his beer and his work, and the neighbors said that Hans Hoferdahl had broken his old friend's heart by going away. The poor old man very soon died. To Wilhelm, after his father's death, the shop and everything in it became distasteful. He tried to work, but the very ticking of the watches was insufferably oppressive, and the absence of the two old men rendered confinement to the place insupportable. Wilhelm himself made sale of both house and shop, and when the sales were all completed, and the transfers duly made, he stood in the moonlight one evening and gazing at the home no longer his, soliloquized thus: "I think I could almost break my heart, for I did love that house. But I couldn't stay there with the empty places. There were too many voices there that didn't speak. Alas! What shall I do now?" His question was answered for him. Napoleon had determined, in his old age, that he must fight the Germans, and the king had made his call for troops. Wilhelm was sure he loved his "Vaderland," and so was ready to leave the sleepy old village, but not withstanding sadness for he had been so long in that locality, that it was not surprising he had learned to love it. There followed swift marching, comfortless camping, and a good deal of very hard fighting. Being big and strong and brave, and every day growing more and more intelligent, Wilhelm himself won glory-that is, three or four slight wounds, a medal, promotion, the compliments of his commanding officer and the envy of his comrades. The war was brief, and before a great while he found himself his own master again, though still within the scope and control of army regulations, for no German of Wilhelm's age is ever beyond them, and he said to himself: "Well, I loved the army. I know I could love glory with all my heart. I think it must have been growing a good deal during this war. There is more room in it than I knew of, and yet is always full. I will go and take a look at the old village, and the house and the shop, and will listen to see if I can hear Christine's voice; if I don't hear her, what then? Well, I think I will just ask my heart about it." All this time, old Hans Hoferdahl had known very little of what had taken place in the village they had left behind them. They had written home to their old neighbors, but very little information had come back to them. They had heard of old Easburger's death, and of Wilhelm's enlistment in the war, and that was nearly all. Hans had not landed on the shores? of the new world a pauper, and tried to settle down as a man of property and substance, and be happy "If poor old Ecsburger was with me," he said to Christine, "I would be so happy." Christine said very little but her bright American home became dreary enough at times, when she shut her eyes and let her thoughts go back to the old sleepy village. She listened very silently when her father said. "I believe Wilhelm behaved himself well in the armie. There's good blood in the Ecsburgers, and Wilhelm is a fine boy." "He must be a man by this time," said Christine. And then she thought what a very tall, fine-looking man he must be, and how well he would appear in his uniform. But when, after awhile, there was news of peace, and then they heard that the army was going home to be disbanded, old Hans Hoferdahl grew strangely thoughtful, and Christine tried in vain to arouse him. One autumn morning he said to her: "All the other soldiers are going home. I think it is pretty near time for me to go too." "To Germany, father?" exclaimed Christine, with a sudden light in her eyes. "No," slowly replied the old man; "Germany is not the only fatherland. I am a very old soldier, and think this is my last campaign." Christine understood him then. A few weeks later she found herself sitting alone in the house, while the chilling wind that whistled past the windows was freighted with the first white harbingers of winter. To her it seemed a cold, forlorn and empty sort of a world, and when her thoughts wandered to the village where she was born, she could but imagine the old shop as closed, and the snowflakes beating against the spider-webbed windows. The door-bell rang, but Christine did not hear it. The servant admitted somebody, but she did not know it, until she was conscious of a heavy step almost beside her, and then a clear, strong voice said to her: "Christine! Christine!" She looked up in the face of a tall, erect, noble-looking man, who wore upon his breast a medal of honor, and whose eyes were absolutely radiant. "Christine," he said again, "do you understand me? I have come." Her heart was overburdened with delight and it seemed as if the old German home had come with him. She arose and threw her arms around his neck, and said, with tears in her eyes, "O Wilhelm, I'm so happy! so glad you have come!" Some hours later, as they sat by the grate in the parlor, where the fire burned warm and cheerily, they exchanged stories of all that happened to them. At length Wilhelm said to her: "Ah, Christine, I did not know myself when you went away. I did not know that I had a heart; but I soon began to find it out. One love after another seemed to wake up and speak to me, to tell me it was there, until at last the biggest love of all came to life, and it grew and grew until it crowded out all the others and filled up everything, and then I had to come across the ocean and find you. But who would have dreamed that you would have kept anything for me, waiting all this time for me to come? I was terribly afraid about that." "Oh, I don't know." said Christine. "I don't understand it all. All the time it has seemed as if I were only waiting, and that if I waited long enough you would surely come." "And here I am," said Wilhelm, "only I think there is a great deal more of me, somehow, than in those dear old sleepy days at home." The scions of the old watchmakers became happily united, and on American soil grew in prosperous circumstances, with cheerful thoughts of "Vaderland," as it once appeared to them. |