DR. EINBOHRER AND HIS PUPILS.

CHAPTER I.- PERSONAL, MERELY.

DR. JECOVAS EINBOHRER was led into the New World by an aspiration; that aspiration was for Peace. It was thus: Just after he had retired from the University of Frankfort-on-theMayne, where he had been for seven weeks Professor of Comparative Anatomy, he had taken up his residence near a secluded village, where he thought to pursue his speculations and researches without interruption. But the Eumenides are averse to Science. The very next year came on the wars of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Doctor found himself unhappily near them. This wise man was generally so abstracted that he might never have discovered that any conflict was going on had it not been for the following untoward circumstances:

Dr. E. had been engaged for a month on an essay concerning the probable results of Volta's galvanic experiments. Such essays of his were never written the best things can not be written. This wonderful man sat when composing, composed; motionless; gazing into his fire the only sign of life being an ever-ascending column of smoke from his pipe. The form which this cloudy pillar assumed on such occasions was symbolic of the inner emotion of the man in respect of quickness, force, height, and volume. At this time Einbohrer had risen by the stairway of beautiful reasons to a New World of Hope. He had so pressed probabilities that, instead of seeing the Voltaic pile merely causing supple-jack motions in a frog or an executed malefactor, he saw it blessing those who were neither frogs nor malefactors; he saw a day when "some poor fellow who had died," so he beautifully said, "from accidental drowning or loss of breath, should be restored to his afflicted friends, not alone kicking — which was all Volta had yet made frogs and malefactors do- but verily alive and kicking!" He was just questioning whether it might not have been the action of some such force amongst the ancients that had accomplished sundry things transmitted as miraculous; whether it was not this which restored the widow's son on whom Elijah stretched himself (a powerful battery), until he came again to life. From this he had gone on to imagine the happiness of widows, generally,

should such powers be discovered—not omitting the suspicion that many would be very unhappy amongst both widows and widowers should such restorations become fashionable. Thus, I say, his speculations had been evolved in fine curls and convolutions out of that profound meerschaum-brain of his, when bang! went the gun of an insurgent, beneath his window, who had awaited in ambush of that peacefulest spot the expected passage of an aristocrat, whom he had been appointed to shoot. Whether he slew the man hath not transpired: our business is with Einbohrer. In a moment fancies, smoke-castles, spiritualized Voltaic piles perished, as Alcastar's China-ware perished by the motion of his foot in spurning his anticipated wife. A mild despair settled on the good Doctor's face. He did not rise from his seat, but, with emphasis, knocked the ashes from his meerschaum, which was as significant of what was in him as the eruption of ashes from nature's meerschaums, Vesuvius or Etna, testify seething inner commotions. Frau Einbohrer heard this knock from the room adjacent, and knowing what fearful emotions could alone bring Einbohrer to knock the ashes from his meerschaum before dinner-time at which time she was accustomed to clean it herselfcame in with deep anxiety on every line of her excellent face. "My wife," he said, solemnly, "the creations of a most favored hour have thus been shot down. You see what experience (erfahrung) and reason (vernunft) certify, that in such a social state as this nothing can be expected for that Specialty which wears no epaulettes. Look at me, madam," he continued, so severely that the dear Frau shed two tears, "am I a soldier; madam, do I look like one? If I am not, why am I to be disturbed by these shooting bipeds? I see that in this land it must be for some months years, perhaps lustra- the odious gunpowder-smoke of unreason and unrest, and not the pure meerschaum-smoke of philosophy and the imagination. Know then that to-morrow we set out for America. I want peace; and I hear their Congress passes Peace-measures every year: Mistress Einbohrer! I will smoke the pipe of peace, though it be with the Indian on the remotest peak of the Rocky Mountains!" Thus divinely did Dr. Jecovas Einbohrer deliver himself, and an additional tap of the meerschaum on the chimney showed it decisive.

Thus was it that this dove, as one might say, flew over the great waters in search of the olive branch. It would appear,

however, that an ardent longing for peace implies the most restless life to reach it. The Doctor's personal history amply attested this; all the titles attached to his European reputation made manifest that the law of change had not overlooked him. It was always" Dr. Jeco. Einbohrer, late Prof. Geology at Göttingen ". "late Pres. of Royal Ichthyolog. Soc."-" late of Frankfort". late of every thing, and now about to be late of Europe. How this happened to be the case may be inferred from a recital of the good Doctor's earliest experience after his arrival in America. By some accident it was discovered that we had an Einbohrer among us, and he was straightway called to the chair of Natural History in the Jerusalem Institute. He took the said chair, though the back was not quite high enough, and sat there teaching, like Socrates, improved by a meerschaum. In a few months the trustees of this institution made their annual visitation thereto. According to immemorial custom, they had to converse with the various instructors on high theological topics. This was a very wise provision of the Institute, because it is becoming too common to find tendencies in seats of learning to leave the old stand-points of faith, and more than one instance is on record where heresies the most soul-destroying, affecting vital truths, such as the local reality of hell-fires, the personality of the Devil, the Trinity, etc., have been allowed students unpunished!

These visitors, who were of the reverend clergy, came at length to Einbohrer's room. They found him, after some little trouble, since as Venus clothed Eneas with a cloud, so had his adored meerschaum enveloped the professor. They were solemnly nodded to seats. The Doctor came out of the cloud sufficiently to exclaim: "Friends, ye have lost your neckerchiefs!" but on being assured that they were only white ones, he retired into himself. The Rev. M. Y. Dox, D. D., opened the conversation. "Dr. Einbohrer," he said, we rejoice to think that there is but a formal necessity of inquiring if you believe that most consoling doctrine, the Trinity?" "My dear sir," replied the Doctor, innocently, "I believe I have with me some specimens of that whereof you speak." The Rev. brothers were aghast. Trinity specimens! Whilst they wondered if, indeed, science were about to give the irresistible seal to faith, he brought his Herbarium and turned to some specimens of the Trifolium arvense, called in his own land Trinity-grass. When told of his misapprehension, and

that they referred to his views of the tri-personal nature of the Godhead, he retired into himself more profoundly, and after several clouds had risen as genii from their meerschaum-casket, such as made the Rev. M. Y. Dox, D.D., cough again, he replied, "That if they would wait some score or so of years he thought he should then be called out into the Eternal Hereafterwards, where he would endeavor to obtain specimens of the Godhead, as they called it; hitherto he had seen none, alive or fossil, and could not answer." This speech was deemed irreverent and heathenish ; and Dr. Jeco. Einbohrer became late of Jerusalem Institute.

It was a change nowise disagreeable to this good man; for, to say nothing of overmuch genuflexion at chapel prayers, to which he was unused, he had already perceived a small cloud of unrest such as had ever pursued him, in the gigglings of sundry youngsters who attended his lectures, at the throne of smoke whereon he sat, the Jove-like glory of which their eyes could no more entertain than a bottle could Niagara.

He now retired to a country place, where he took a few young men as pupils. Not that he needed them from pecuniary motives, Providence had provided his pipe forever, he used to say expressively, but this mysterious man, as we have seen, wrote nothing, and he wished doubtless to have some human molds near wherein he might pour the seething ores of his brain-furnace.

One of these pupils the writer hereof had the happy fortune to be. Having been deprived of that inestimable privilege for a year or two, he now proposes to restore from his notes and etchings taken at the time the lectures and incidents which cast a halo around that rural home of Göthe's "extraordinary generous seeking." These lectures were discursive, but relate chiefly to Natural History or Physiology. Our editorial notes shall be as brief as possible, and are only designed as stage-lights,- valuable for the light they cast on the scene, themselves the better the less they are seen. In this first paper we can do little more than give miniatures of the Doctor and his pupils amidst their Arcadian life—a an interest in these being of the first importance to those who would follow them in their search for knowledge.

The Doctor himself, then, was about five feet,-but, no! such a man as Einbohrer ought not to be described in prose; and being myself no poet, I will just invade Mr. Robert Browning's English copyright so far as to quote his description of another German

Professor, which portrays ours to some extent, and may be found in the "Christmas Eve : "

Hist! a buzzing and emotion !

All settle themselves, the while ascends
By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,
Step-by-step, deliberate,

Because of his cranium's overfreight,
Three parts sublime to one grotesque,
If I have proved an accurate guesser,

The hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned Professor.
And when each glance was upward sent,

Each bearded mouth composed intent,

And a pin might be heard drop a half a mile hence,

He pushed back higher his spectacles,

Let the eyes stream out as lamps from cells,

And giving his head of hair-a hake

Of undrest tow for color and quantity

One rapid and impatient shake,

The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
Broke into his wonderful discourse.

Three subtractions, and you might think Browning had seen the very man 1. He never was known to give his head a rapid or slow shake; 2. He wore no spectacles; 3. His nose was not a hawk-nose. Opinions differ about his nose.

The portraits of the pupils must be given very succinctly. Van Chunk and Van Stammer had known the Professor at Frankforton-the-Mayne, and had accompanied him ever after, even to America, saying, "Entreat us not to leave thee nor to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest we will go; and where thou lodgest we will lodge: thy people shall be our people," and so forth. Their faces always said this plainly, as they sat on either side of him in the lecture-room, wing-like.

Van Chunk consisted of florid flesh and blood; head and face constituting an exact sphere; moon-like; three-fourths in eclipse by reason of hair and whiskers (red). His body was generally spherical, and his walk suggestive of diurnal revolutions.

Van Stammer was of a long meagre body, sore-eyed, flaxenhaired, wan with a cough; suspected of having a Mephistophelian tendency to metaphysics and midnight oil-burning. A rumor existed that he had once been heard to speak of the Absolute.

Erasmus House was not at all suspected of any dealings with