And on 12th April of the same year he said: "Whether it be peace or war is absolutely the same to the minister of war. He is always ready. I will not repeat what I have said several times already, but the army can be put on a war footing in a week. I have nothing but an order to give." On the 16th August 1869, the Moniteur published the following note: whatever may be said now to the contrary, | in a position to attain it. We have an entertained substantially the same views excellent army, well instructed, full of before the war; the immense majority ardour, perfectly organized, and provided was convinced that France was irresisti- with everything. I do not know what ble. The opposition deputies went farther is generally felt in France, but, for my than any one in that belief; for they per- part, I regard with much philosophy the sistently asserted in the Chamber that no questions of war or peace which are regular army was required at all, and that, being discussed around us, and, if war "with liberty and a National Guard," were necessary, we are perfectly ready France would be a match for all possible for it." enemies. The government profited so eagerly by every possible opportunity to assure the nation of its strength, that it is worth while to give a few examples of the sort of talking it indulged in. Maréchal Randon, then minister of war, said, in April 1867: "What! a nation like France, which, in a few weeks, can assemble 600,000 soldiers round its flags, which has 8,000 field-pieces in its arsenals, 1,800,000 muskets, and powder enough to make war for six years, that nation is not always ready to sustain by arms its honour and its right? The army is not ready to commence a campaign when it counts in its ranks the veterans of Africa, of Sebastopol, of Solferino?-when it has to lead it these experienced generals and this crowd of young officers, prepared by the expeditions of Algeria and Mexico to exercise higher commands? What army is there in Europe which possesses such elements of experience and energy? Our infantry is not yet entirely armed with the needle-gun; but has the forward march of our voltigeurs ever been stopped, in our old wars, by the Tyrolese sharpshooters, armed with their rifled carbines, or by the English riflemen? Oh! then let us recall the military virtues of our fathers: they are worth more than needle-guns!" And this was proclaimed by a marshal of France in the year after Sadowa ! "An army of 750,000 men disposable for war; nearly 600,000 men of the Garde Mobile; instruction everywhere pushed on to a degree hitherto unknown; 1,200,ooo muskets manufactured in eighteen months; the fortresses ready; an immense matériel prepared for every eventtuality, of every kind, in such a situation France stands confident in her force. All these vast results have been attained in two years!" Such was the language held by the emperor, by his war-ministers, and by his government. The nation believed every word of it, not so much because the government said it—that, perhaps, was rather a reason for doubting-but because those wordy boastings about military power were exactly what it liked and wanted; because they fitted in exactly with its temperament and its wishes; because, in fact, it would have been indignant if such speeches had not been made. It imperatively required declarations of this sort from its government, and its government was weak enough to give them. On the 18th of January 1869, the emperor said to the Chambers: "Our improved armament; our arsenals and our magazines all full; our reserves well exercised; the Garde Mobile now forming; Since 1870 a great wake-up has taken ... our fortresses in perfect condition, place; but still France longs for the same give our power an indispensable develop- official assurances that she is great and ment. The military resources of powerful. There is no sign yet that the France are henceforth suited to her des-old spirit has been driven out, either tiny in the world." amongst the people or at the ministry of war; on the contrary, there is too much reason to believe that it continues to exist in both directions, in little-weakened strength. The events of 1870 supply a starting-point from which progress can be measured; that progress has commenced; in some respects it is both real and serious, in others it is scarcely perceptible: but though it will be recognized, after the story which has been told here, | sently through the panes, my shoemaker that there is room for it all round, it will Linsen stopped before his door with a indeed be wonderful if the ministry of sled full of wood he had gathered in the war does really shake off routine. Few city forest; and on the top of the sled lay people will venture to indulge the dream a green fir-tree. "Now just see that rasthat such a result can ever be realized; cal!" said I. "He ought to be making for most of us are convinced that Dr. me that other pair of boots, and instead of Chenu was right when he said, in his that he's gathering wood! I won't let the famous book on the mortality of the fellow work for me any longer." French army, that if an official of the ministry of war had been present at the creation, he would have cried out to the Creator, "Stop, stop! this will not do at all; you are disturbing chaos." And we English, have we nothing to learn from this woful story? Is it sure that none of its teachings apply to ourselves as well as to the French? HOW I WON A WIFE. TRANSLATED FROM THE PLATT-DEUTSCH OF FRITZ REUTER, BY M. S. After the marriage 'tis too late, Before the wedding tame your mate. MEANTIME I had become an old bachelor. I had wandered about the world hither and thither, had often laid my head on a soft pillow and often on a bundle of straw; but as I grew older the straw didn't suit me so well as at twenty, for one who is glad to eat turnips in childhood doesn't exactly despise roast goose in after years. People said "Get married," and I said, Consider," and circled around the holy estate of matrimony like a fox round a goose-pen, thinking, "You can doubtless get in; you can easily get in! But when you're once there, can you get out again?" But then when I thought of the inn-keeper's eternal roast pork and mutton, and that my room looked like the world before the first day of creation, and that one of my confounded old buttons was always coming off, I said “Get married," and then the stupid people said, "Consider." So I still remained between the tree and the bark, the years of consideration passed by, and my head was beginning to grow grey, when one day I stood by the stove, after lighting my pipe, and gazed at the weather. The snow fell gently from the sky; everything outside was silent, no carriagewheels were to be heard, only in the distance the ringing of sleigh-bells; and I felt so lonely, for it was the hallowed Christmas-eve. As I stood gazing abVOL. XII. 626 LIVING AGE. I was still standing there, when suddenly a shiver ran through my limbs, my flesh crept, and I said to myself, "Of course! A cold, a bad cold! And why not? My boots are worn out, and Frau Bütoun darns her own stockings with the yarn I gave her, while mine have no feet. It's all perfectly natural. I still stood in the same place till it grew dark, and when I wanted to light a lamp could find no match, and when I did find one the lamp wouldn't burn,- Frau Bütoun hadn't trimmed the wick; and when after a great deal of trouble I made it burn freely it suddenly went out,- Frau Bütoun had put in no oil. Under such circumstances, it's a fine thing to have somebody at hand to scold; but I had no one there, and what was I to do? I looked out of the window again. The shoemaker's over the way was brightly lighted, and there was a rapid moving to and fro accompanied by merry shouts; but I could distinguish nothing, for the curtains were tightly drawn. "Now just see that shoemaker!" said I. "He actually has curtains!" I had no curtains, Frau Bütoun didn't understand them; she once put some up for me which looked like "nothing on the earth or under the earth," and I tore them down when somebody asked me if I had children's shirts drying at my window. Of course I felt provoked with the shoemaker; the fellow hadn't made my boots and wanted to live like a lord, while I sat in the dark without curtains and a cold coming on. I started up and went down into the street, thinking, "Just wait! I'll give the fellow a good lesson!" When I entered the room, the fir-tree was standing on the table with lights burning around it, and the shoemaker's little boys Carl and Christian were blowing a fife and a trumpet, while the shouting and screaming was done by little Marie, who was stretching her tiny hands towards the lights and kicking merrily in her mother's lap, for she was not yet able to walk. The shoemaker's wife, who had put her spinning-wheel aside, tied on a clean apron, and donned her Sunday cap and Sunday face, was laughing at the children and wiping little Marie's mouth, when she | fifes squealing, stood between me and smeared it with gingerbread. The shoe- the Christmas gifts, and the thousand maker had covered up his work-bench, lights danced before my eyes, and when I put on his slippers, and was now sitting by the stove with a long pipe and mug of beer. Well, nobody could come in here with angry words. So I only said, "Good evening," and pretended I merely wanted to see what the fun was about. Everything was then shown me; the gingerbread and the apples, the strings of brightcoloured beans, the seven wheat rolls, and the one bit of candy that hung on the firtree. "Coveted prizes," said the shoemaker; we have now brought up three children safely, except for a blow from the tail of a hussar's horse, which hurt Christian a little, when his mother wasn't taking care yes, I mean you," he added, shaking his finger at the little fellow. 66 - "I won't take my work away from him," I said to myself, and felt very happy, though I had a most violent headache. But while Linsen was showing and explaining the masterpiece it was Adam and Eve before the Fall, beautifully modelled in gingerbread and coloured yellow with eggs and saffron - and the two little Linsens, standing on the right and left of our revered first parents, began to toot and blow the fife and trumpet, I felt exactly as if the old wheel-maker Langklas was boring with his silent awl-piano, forte, piano, forte in my head, till it buzzed and rattled, asking me meantime if that was not delightful? The shoemaker probably saw I was ill; for, when his two little cherubs had trumpeted me out of his paradise, he went across the street with me, wanted to light my lamp, and asked whether I had any matches. "I have everything," I answered, "but only our Lord and Frau Bütoun know where anything is to be found.” The shoemaker took off my boots and said, "Wet feet! And I haven't finished your other pair of boots!" helped me to bed, and added, "Wait a minute, my wife shall come over and make you some tea." This was done, but of what happened during the next fortnight I can tell very little. I lay in a heavy stupor. It seemed as if my whole room was full of fir-trees glittering with lights, and on each hung a beautiful cake representing Adam and Eve and all paradise; and when I stretched out my hand for it I held only a worn-out boot and a footless stocking, while Carl and Christian, with trumpets blowing and called out, "Let me alone! let me alone! I'll let your father make boots for me again!" and held out my hand for the beautiful cake, the words were shouted and trumpeted into my ears: them! Make boots, make them, make them, make Then the old red pipkin, that stood at the head of my bed, began to laugh all over its broad, shining face; and the whole room was filled with worn-out boots, which all thrust out their tongues, and shoemaker Linsen seized them one after another, tied them up in a bundle, and hung them at my window instead of curtains. At the foot of my bed two people were perpetually sawing wood,-one sawed fine wood, the other oak branches; and when the fine wood was sawed Frau Bütoun constantly danced her nightcap up and down before my eyes - up and down, up and down; and when the oak timber was sawed it seemed as if I saw a large red strawberry in a green wood, and I was not mistaken, for it was my Uncle Matthias' red nose peeping out over my green dressing-gown. Well, one night, when the oak timber was again being vigorously sawed, I felt as if I was coming out of the darkness into the light, and groped around me to discover where I was: I was lying in my bed, the night-lamp burned dimly, and in the arm-chair with the large stuffed back lay my Uncle Matthias, wrapped to the nose in my green dressing-gown, and snoring horribly. "Uncle Matthias!" I called. At first he did not hear, but finally stirred, and rubbed his eyes. "Uncle Matthias," I asked, "where is Linsen?" Boy," said my uncle - he always calls me boy," with about as much propriety as old neighbour Hamann always calls his twenty-two-years-old horse "that filly" "boy, are you beginning that all over again? What have you to do with Linsen, the shoemaker? The man does nothing for you." "Uncle," said I, as he stretched himself out again to attend to the sawing business, "is it true, or did I dream, that old bachelors have nothing to do with Christmas-trees?" "Stuff and nonsense!" said my Uncle Matthias. "Lie still!" "Have I been very sick?" I asked. "God knows you have," said my uncle, creeping out of the dressing-gown, taking the lamp, and holding it before my eyes. "But really, really, I believe you'll pull through, for you look quite different, here he patted me, "my little boy. Can you really see that I'm your Uncle Matthias, and that this is my nose, and not a strawberry? And will you stop your strawberry-picking now? Last night you dashed your fist into my face twice, when I was nodding a little." I promised to behave better, for I now had my senses again. "I know one," said I. "I don't yet know," I replied. "I suppose she's handsome," he said, winking one eye at me. "You can see her yourself. Unluckily, I can't go with you. She passes every afternoon, between three and four o'clock, through the gate near the mill; and you can't mistake her, for she's the prettiest of all who go there." "Of course," said my uncle. "And has a tassel on her cloak, and leads a little boy by the hand," I added. "Are you going to marry the child, too?” "What do you mean?" I cried, angrily. "It's her sister's child." "Heaven preserve us!" said my uncle. "Don't get into a rage. What do I know about it? She might be a young widow. Well, I'll take a look at her!" So saying, he left the room. And it was even so; the sickness was over, but my suffering now first began. I was so tired and faint that I could not stir; and if I turned my eyes Frau Bütoun stood before me, with the red-glazed pipkin in one hand and a spoon in the other, feeding and stuffing me with some kind of gruel as thick as bookbinder's paste, and very much like it in flavour, while she said, "Eat it! eat it! If you don't eat, you'll never get better." And during all this torment, the kind-hearted old creature had such a pitying look as she gazed over ⚫her pot of paste, that I was forced to swal-" low it, willing or not. Everything has an end, and a sausage has two. I got out of the bed, and sat for hours talking with Uncle Matthias, and discussing various subjects. "Uncle," said I one day, for the dream of the fir-tree and the old bachelor still lingered in my head, "uncle, we must really both get married." "Nonsense," said my uncle. "Do you suppose when I served as an Austrian sergeant in the Imperial army in the year. '13 I ought to have founded a petty Hungarian race?" "No," I replied, "I'm really talking about myself. You see, I think if I had a wife - that is, an orderly wife, and a good, and a-a pretty little wife, and you came to live with us About five o'clock in the afternoon he came in again, lighted his pipe, sat down, and said nothing at all. This naturally vexed me, and I also kept silence. We both smoked like chimneys. But I was too curious; so I rose, and, standing where he could not peer into my face, asked, Have you been to the gate?" "That I have," he replied. "Well?" I asked. "Well," said he. "Did you see her?" -- "I've seen her and talked with her." "The deuce you have!" said I, turning. "What did you have to say to her? I haven't spoken to her myself yet." "That's just it," said he. "One of us must make a beginning, and I suppose I can speak to my nephew's betrothed." "We haven't got so far as that yet." "But what is not, may be," said he, leaning back in the old leather arm-chair, and stretching out his legs. "I'll tell you all about it," he continued. "As I was walking along the street, she came behind me; and I prepared to take a good look at her, for she led a little boy by the hand. I couldn't see the tassel, because it hung on her back." "Yes, I understand. I suppose you looked very hard at her." "When I want to see anything, I open my eyes," said my uncle, "and I did so, and she cast hers down with a look as if she were drawing her bed-curtains together at night; and when she had passed by I saw the tassel too." "You doubtless stared at her finely, said I. "That I did, but it's none of your busi- | always say looks like a wheat roll dipped ness." "Did you like her?" in coffee.' Then she blushed scarlet, and I could not help laughing, and said, 'Yes, that was you.'" I too blushed scarlet, for I was very angry, and said to my uncle, "If you had nothing to do except to make your nephew ridiculous in other people's eyes, you would have done better to stay at home." "Oh, I had," said he, "but I wanted something more I wanted to find out whether she would marry you." "Oh, yes! She has several qualities that please me. In the first place she hasn't much wound around her head, and secondly she doesn't sweep up the street with her clothes; and these are two virtues, my son, which are of more importance than is generally supposed: for women who have so much on their heads usually have very little in them, and those who wear long dresses all have crooked legs, or, which is still worse, their shoes are shabby. My son, in choosing women and horses, you must always look first at the legs; if the gait is graceful the legs are all right, and if the shoes are neat you can depend upon industry, order, and cleanli-'No,' she said, 'perhaps you were a docness." 66 So you think -I asked. "I think nothing at all," he interrupted. "Let me first tell what has happened. As she walked before me towards the mill, and I followed her, I could not help saying to myself, Really! you are a pretty girl! Very likely your head may be a little turned, but that will do no harm; that's natural for a woman, but,' I thought to myself, 'how does she talk? That's the main thing! You must begin a conversation with her.' So, when she came back again, I stood with my back against a tree and pretended to be filling my pipe; and when she was only a few paces from me I took my tinder-box from my pocket, and seized the opportunity to pull out a little money with it-do you see, my boy? all done intentionally- so that the twogroschen pieces rattled on the frozen path. I stooped slowly down, as if it were very hard for me to collect them, and when she saw it she instantly told the little boy to help me pick them up, and gathered some herself. I thanked her, and we entered into conversation and walked back together to the gate." I "What did you talk about?" I asked. "Oh, nothing of any consequence. said I was your uncle, and asked if she did not know you you were always walking up and down here. She said she had not that pleasure; 'pleasure,' she called it. Then I asked if she had not seen a young man with a yellow-grey skin, a yellow-grey overcoat, yellow-grey trousers, and yellow-grey hair? No, she said; but she had seen an elderly gentleman in such clothes. 'Well,' I replied, the elderly gentleman was the young man of whom I spoke: that was you.' Then the little boy cried out,' Aunt, that's the gentleman you "Good heavens !" I exclaimed; “you didn't ask her?" "Boy," said my uncle, smoking furiously, "when I take a thing in hand I do it thoroughly, but delicately. So I asked her whether she knew what you were. tor.' 'Heaven forbid!' said I, 'how She grew "That would doubtless have been a fine question, too," I said, biting off the end of my pipe in my rage. "Oh, no," replied my uncle, "I only wanted to ask her whether she can cook fish well," and the old fellow looked as grave and important as if my marriage concerned him more than myself. A few days after, when I could walk a little, I did not go near the mill, for I felt ashamed to see her. "I'll ride up to the lake for a little while," I thought, "and look on at the skating and sleighing.' I did so; and, as I approached the building where beer, brandy, and punch were bought, I walked about a short time, and there was my Uncle Matthias putting an eight |