The Silver Dial (Complete‪)‬

Long ago, there lived in the city of Strassburg a worthy burgher named Christian Dasipodius. Very highly esteemed was this man by his fellow-citizens, and there were few among them who had not an approving word for him. This was a little remarkable, inasmuch as Christian was by no means a rich man. It is true that he had a goodly house of his own, and wore his fur-bordered gown of stout murrey-cloth with the best of them, and held his head high among the wealthiest of his merchant brethren, looking every inch the honest trader in skins and furs that he was. Still, comparatively, Christian Dasipodius was poor; he had not contrived, after the wont of so many of his fraternity, to lay up much goods for many years. In earlier life he had met with one or two heavy pecuniary losses; and afterwards, when Fortune did smile on him, and everybody said that now Christian really bade fair to be a rich man, there began to develop in him some rather rare characteristics. He found it, for example, so utterly impossible to pass unheeding by a distressed fellow-creature, or to withhold any help it was in his power to afford strugglers up the hill of life. If some poor but honest young apprentice, whose years of servitude had just expired, chanced to cross his path, and Christian saw him painfully toiling to amass the little capital necessary for setting himself up in his craft, he immediately began to think of his own once meagre purse, and how to him, in early days, a friend in need would have been a friend indeed; and then he would come forward with a word of encouragement on his lips, and nice little gold pieces in his hand, which the recipient was to repay only at some date quite convenient to himself.

Now and then it happened this convenient date was so long a coming, that Christian knew he would have to bid farewell for ever and a day to his gold pieces; but then he always consoled himself with the reflection that if his generosity had been misplaced, or went otherwise unrequited, it was far oftener his privilege to see those to whom he had afforded such timely aid pushing on with a lighter heart and better courage. It is, perhaps, needless to reiterate that Christian’s generosity had not made him a richer man by so much dross sterling; but it did make the pure metal of his nature shine out through his eyes, and in his kindly smile; and perhaps there was not to be found in all Strassburg a happier, more thoroughly contented-minded man than Christian; but this was before his great sorrow fell upon him, a sorrow in whose presence all his pecuniary trials and losses faded to nothingness,—the death of his wife. Christian, who was a handsome fellow, and might have chosen pretty nearly where he would from among the maidens of his native city, had with that perversity innate in the masculine mind, chosen to fall in love with a beautiful Lorraine woman, whom he married. One son was born to them. This boy while inheriting his father’s tall, well-knit figure and manly features, was endowed also with much of his mother’s soft, intelligent beauty; and as the boy, whom they christened Conrad, grew up, it was small wonder that the parents were very proud of their only child.

At an unusually early age, Conrad evinced a talent for figures and geometry, and an affection for Euclid which mightily astonished his schoolmates. His mother, marking the bent of the boy’s mind, bade her husband mark it too; and Christian, with something of a sigh—for he would so infinitely have preferred to discover in him a talent for skin-dressing, said: “Good—let it be so, then; and I will spare nothing that Conrad may learn all he seems to have such a fancy for. Mathematics is a grand science, and has made men famous and honourable—only he must work.” And Conrad did work; and his mother watched him with a proud, thrilling heart, longing earnestly for that day when her son should take his place among the great and learned of their city. But years—many years ere that day could come, the mother’s heart had ceased to throb, and her marvellously beautiful eyes were closed in death. A sharp, brief illness carried her away from Christian and her child, and the two were left alone to fight their life’s battle together.