I have forgotten the most
important of all."
The son turned his horse around, and when he got back to his mother, he
said, smiling:
"But mother--this is the last, eh?"
"Yes, and the best test of all. Ask the girl about the poor people in
her town, and then listen to what the poor people have to say about her.
A farmer's daughter who has not taken some poor person by the hand to
help her, cannot be a worthy girl--remember that. And now, God keep you,
and ride forth bravely."
As he rode off the mother spoke a prayer to speed him on his way, and
then returned to the farm.
"I ought to have told him to inquire about Josenhans's children, and to
find out what has become of them," said the mother to herself. She felt
strangely moved. And who knows the secret ways through which the soul
wanders, or what currents flow above our wonted course, or deep beneath
it? What made the mother think of these children, who seemed to have
faded from her memory long ago? Was her present pious mood like a
remembrance of long-forgotten emotions? And did it awaken the
circumstances that had accompanied those emotions? Who can understand
the impalpable and invisible elements that wander and float back and
forth from man to man, from memory to memory?
When the mother got back to the farm and found the father, the latter
said:
"No doubt you have given him many directions how to fish out the best
one; but I, too, have been making some arrangements.
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