A roaring fire shone out hospitably as they came, and glorified the
pleasant room, dancing on ancient furniture and pictured walls till
the jolly old portraits seemed to wink a visible welcome. A
cheery-faced little woman, like an elder Dolly, in a widow's cap,
stood on the threshold, with a friendly greeting for the stranger,
which warmed him as no fine could have done.
If August Bopp had been an Englishman, he would have felt much, but
said less on that account; if he had been an American, he would have
tried to conceal his poverty, and impress the family with his past
grandeur, present importance, or future prospects; being a German,
he showed exactly what he was, with the childlike frankness of his
race. Having had no dinner, he ate heartily of what was offered him;
being cold, he basked in the generous warmth; being homesick and
solitary, he enjoyed the genial influences that surrounded him, and
told his story, sure of sympathy; for even in prosaic Yankeedom he
had found it, as travellers find Alpine flowers among the snow.
It was a simple story of a laborious boyhood, being early left an
orphan, with a little sister dependent on him, till an opening in
America tempted him to leave her and come to try and earn a home for
her and for himself. Sickness, misfortune, and disappointment had
been his companions for a year; but he still worked, still hoped,
and waited for the happy hour when little Ulla should come to him
across the sea.
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