"Illustrious sir, you know not, but I do,—not a player in your Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's Prodigal Son, three nights running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the year. In Prussia, invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made invalids." .…
But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts; but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of betrothment,—this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed. For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a—purse was to be come at; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial torch than for his bridal one.
For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered states, as little permitted to marry as the soldiery. In Conringius de Antiquitatibus Academicis, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now cloisters, and consequently we endeavor to maintain in our teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows.
were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title of Dog-post-days, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair, 1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.
