3755 Gabbett watched to snatch the weapon from his companion, and make the odds even for once and forever. In the daytime they traveled on, seeking each a pretext to creep behind the other. In the night-time when they feigned slumber, each stealthily raising a head caught the wakeful glance of his companion. Vetch felt his strength deserting him, and his brain overpowered by fatigue. Surely the giant, muttering, gesticulating, and slavering at the mouth, was on the road to madness. Would the monster find opportunity to rush at him, and braving the bloodstained axe, kill him by main force? or would he sleep, and be himself a victim? Unhappy Vetch! It is the terrible privilege of insanity to be sleepless. On the fifth day, Vetch, creeping behind a tree, takes off his belt, and makes a noose. He will hang himself. He gets one end of the belt over a bough, and then his cowardice bids him pause. Gabbett approaches; he tries to evade him, and steal away into the bush. In vain. The insatiable giant, ravenous with famine and sustained by madness, is not to be shaken off. Vetch tries to run, but his legs bend under him. The axe that has tried to drink so much blood feels heavy as lead. He will fling it away. No he dares not. Night falls again. He must rest, or go mad. His limbs are powerless. His eyelids are glued together. He sleeps as he stands. This horrible thing must be a dream. He is at Port Arthur, or will wake on his pallet in the penny lodging-house he slept at when a boy. Is that the deputy come to wake him to the torment of living? It is not time-surely not time yet. He sleeps and the giant, grinning with ferocious joy, approaches on clumsy tiptoe and seizes the coveted axe. On the northeast coast of Van Diemen's Land is a place called St. Helen's Point, and a certain skipper, being in want of fresh water, landing there with a boat's crew, found on the banks of the creek a gaunt and blood-stained man, clad in tattered yellow, who carried on his back an axe and a bundle. When the sailors came within sight of him he made signs to them to approach, and opening his bundle with much ceremony, offered them some of its contents. Filled with horror at what the maniac displayed, they seized and bound him. At Hobart Town he was recognized as the only survivor of the nine desperadoes who had escaped from Colonel Arthur's "natural penitentiary." 3756 MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS (1740-1815) ATTHIAS CLAUDIUS, best known as "the Wandsbecker Bote » M (the Messenger from Wandsbeck), was born at Reinfeld in Holstein, August 15th, 1740. He was of excellent stock, coming from a long line of clergymen. It was said that scarcely. another family in Schleswig-Holstein had given to the church so many sons. There is but little to record of the quiet boyhood passed in the picturesque stillness of the North German village. At the outset the education of Claudius was conducted by his father, the village pastor. From beginning to end his life was simple, moderate, and well ordered. After finishing his school days at Ploen, he entered the University of Jena (1759), with the intention of studying theology, in order to follow the traditions of the family and enter the ministry. This idea he was soon obliged to relinquish on account of a pulmonary weakness, and he turned instead to the study of jurisprudence. His strongest attraction was towards literature. He became a member of the literary guild in Jena; and later, when he had attained fame as the "Wandsbecker Bote," he was intimately associated with Voss, F. L. Stolberg, Herder, and others of the Göttingen fraternity. His first verses, published in Jena in 1763, under the title "Tändeleien und Erzählungen (Trifles and Tales), gave no indication of his talents, and were no more than the usual student efforts of unconscious imitation; they have absolutely no poetic value, and are interesting only as they indicate a stage of development. In editing his works in later years, Claudius preserved of this early poetry only one song, 'An eine Quelle (To a Spring). MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS After leaving the university in 1764, he took a position as private secretary to Count Holstein in Copenhagen; and here, under the powerful influence of Klopstock, whose friendship was at this time the most potent element of his life, and in the brilliant circle which that poet had drawn around him, Claudius entered fully into the life of sentiment and ideas which conduced so largely to his intellectual development. Some years later, after a fallow period spent in the quiet of his father's house at Reinfeld, he settled at Wandsbeck, near Altona (1771), where in connection with Bode he published the Wandsbecker Bote, the popular weekly periodical so indissolubly associated with his name. His contributions under the name of "Asmus" found everywhere the warmest acceptance. 1775, through Herder's recommendation, Claudius was appointed Chief Land Commissioner at Darmstadt; but circumstances rendering the position uncongenial, he returned to his beloved Wandsbeck, where he supported his family by his pen until 1788, when Crown. Prince Frederick of Denmark appointed him revisor of the Holstein Bank at Altona. He died in Hamburg, January 1st, 1815, in the house of his son-in-law, the bookseller Perthes. In A collection of his works, with the title Asmus omnia sua secum portans, oder Sämmtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Boten' (The Collected Works of the Wandsbeck Messenger), appeared at Hamburg, 1775-1812. These collected works comprise songs, romances, fables, poems, letters, etc., originally published in various places. The translation of Saint Martin and Fénelon marked the pietistic spirit of his later years, and is in strong contrast to the exuberance which produced the 'Rheinweinlied' (Rhine Wine Song) and 'Urian's Reise um die Welt' (Urian's Journey around the World). Claudius as a poet won the hearts of his countrymen. His verses express his idyllic love of nature and his sympathy with rustic life. The poet and the man are one. His pure and simple style appealed to the popular taste, and some of his lyrics have become genuine folk-songs. A SPECULATIONS ON NEW YEAR'S DAY From the Wandsbecker Bote HAPPY new year! A happy new year to my dear country, the land of old integrity and truth! A happy new year to friends and enemies, Christians and Turks, Hottentots and Cannibals! To all on whom God permits his sun to rise and his rain to fall! Also to the poor negro slaves who have to work all day in the hot sun. It's wholly a glorious day, the New Year's Day! At other times I can bear that a man should be a little bit patriotic, and not make court to other nations. True, one must not speak evil of any nation. The wiser part are everywhere silent; and who would revile a whole nation for the sake of the loud ones? As I said, I can bear at other times that a man should be a little patriotic: but on New Year's Day my patriotism is dead as a mouse, and it seems to me on that day as if we were all brothers, and had one Father who is in heaven; as if all the goods of the world were water which God has created for all men, as I once heard it said. And so I am accustomed, every New Year's morning, to sit down on a stone by the wayside, to scratch with my staff in the sand before me, and to think of this and of that. Not of my readers. I hold them in all honor: but on New Year's morning, on the stone by the wayside, I think not of them; but I sit there and think that during the past year I saw the sun rise so often, and the moon,-that I saw so many rainbows and flowers, and breathed the air so often, and drank from the brook,- and then I do not like to look up, and I take with both hands my cap from my head and look into that. Then I think also of my acquaintances who have died during the year; and how they can talk now with Socrates and Numa, and other men of whom I have heard so much good, and with John Huss. And then it seems as if graves opened round me, and shadows with bald crowns and long gray beards came out of them and shook the dust out of their beards. That must be the work of the "Everlasting Huntsman," who has his doings about the twelfth. The old pious long-beards would fain sleep. But a glad new year to your memory and to the ashes in your graves! RHINE WINE ITH laurel wreathe the glass's vintage mellow, WITH Through farthest Europe, know, my worthy fellow, Nor Hungary nor Poland e'er could boast it; And as for Gallia's vine, Saint Veit the Ritter, if he choose, may toast it, We Germans love the Rhine. Our fatherland we thank for such a blessing, And many more beside; And many more, though little show possessing, Not everywhere the vine bedecks our border, That harbor in their bosoms foul disorder; Thuringia's hills, for instance, are aspiring But that is all; nor mirth nor song inspiring, And other hills, with buried treasures glowing, Though iron ores and cobalt there are growing, The Rhine,- the Rhine, there grow the gay plantations! Oh, hallowed be the Rhine! Upon his banks are brewed the rich potations Of this consoling wine. Drink to the Rhine! and every coming morrow And when we meet a child of care and sorrow, |