Part 30 (1/2)

Comes there no bill my needs to better?

Have I at play my money lost?

My maiden, writes she not a letter!

Come grievous tidings by the post?

Then drink I, from anxiety, A br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s Crambambulli.

Ah! if the dear old folks but knew it, How we young Gents, their sons, were stead, How we must pinch and sorely rue it, They'd weep till their old eyes were red.

Whilst make themselves the Filii So bene by Crambambuli.

And has the Bursch his cash expended?

To sponge the Philistine's his plan.

And thinks it folly all extended, From Burschen unto Beggarman.

Since this is the philosophy In spirit of Crambambulli.

Shall I for fame and freedom stand then; For Burschen weal the sword lift free?

Quick blinks the steel in my right hand then, A friend will stand and second me.

To him I say, Mon cher ami, Before a gla.s.s Crambambuli.

It grieves me sore, ye foolish-hearted, That ye love not, and drink not wine; To a.s.ses are ye now converted, And might be angels all divine.

Drink water like the cattle free, And think it is Crambambuli.

Crambambuli, it still shall cheer me, When every other joy is past, When o'er the gla.s.s Friend Death draws near me, And mars my pleasure at the last.

I'll drink with him in companie The last gla.s.s of Crambambulli.

Then who 'gainst us, Crambambulisten, His spiteful mouth with envy screws, We hold him for no kind of Christian, Since he G.o.d's blessings doth abuse.

I'd give him, though for life cried he, No single drop Crambambuli.

During the singing the rum has burnt out, and the beverage, of a syrupy consistence, is ladled into the gla.s.ses. At eleven o'clock at night, which is the hour of the police, the kneips are closed. For some years it has been the practice in Heidelberg that a bell should be rung at this hour, which should be the signal for all landlords to close their houses. At first this order received much opposition from the students, and they endeavoured to make it ridiculous. As the order was, that at eleven the bells should be rung, on its first appearance in the Heidelberg wochenblatt (newspaper), at this hour all the dogs of the students ran about the city with bells hung to their necks, and their masters, to fulfil the order to the letter, began, to the terror and amaze of the inhabitants, to set all the bells of the private houses in full swing.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

The year's last hour retreating, Peals out with solemn sound; Drink brothers! your last greeting, And wish him blessings round.

'Tis gone! with gray years blended, That are for ever ended.

It brought much gladness, many woes, And leaves us nearer to our close.

_Voss_.

The last evening of the year had arrived. It found the two friends Hoffmann and Freisleben in the room of the latter, where the friends were accustomed gladly to a.s.semble. ”Shall I light the lamp?” asked Freisleben. ”No! let us sit in the dark. When the eye does not distract itself with outward objects, it then turns with delight to those images which memory brings before the mind.” So the two sate; and they thought over all which this year had given and taken away; on all, after which they had striven, and which they had achieved; and on much, after which they had desired to strive and accomplish. Each was lost in this internal review, and the silence was only broken by one of the friends being so powerfully seized with the recollection of the past, that he must communicate his feeling to the other. ”So then,” said Freisleben, ”another year of this beautiful university life is over! and when I call to mind that this year is a quarter, or a fifth of the whole, the words of a German writer are irresistibly forced upon me:--'The world may easily roll on, as it has. .h.i.therto done, yet for a million years; and in that period, five thousand years would be exactly proportionate to a quarter of a year in the life of a man of fifty,--scarcely a twelfth of our university life!' What have I done in the last quarter of a year? Eaten, drunken, electrified, made a calendar, laughed over the tricks of a kitten, and so are five thousand years of this little world run out, in which I move!”