toothache, as one can see. It is quite amusing to read. This is only a small
part of what he wrote; there was a whole book and more besides. My
parents gave the student's landlady half a pound of green soap for it. This is
what I have been able to save of it.”
I borrowed it, I read it, and now I tell it.
The title was:
AUNTY TOOTHACHE
I
Aunty gave me sweets when I was little. My teeth could stand it then; it
didn't hurt them. Now I am older, am a student, and still she goes on
spoiling me with sweets. She says I am a poet.
I have something of the poet in me, but not enough. Often when I go
walking along the city streets, it seems to me as if I am walking in a big
library; the houses are the bookshelves; and every floor is a shelf with
books. There stands a story of everyday life; next to it is a good old
comedy, and there are works of all scientific branches, bad literature and
good reading. I can dream and philosophize among all this literature.
There is something of the poet in me, but not enough. No doubt many
people have just as much of it in them as I, though they do not carry a sign
or a necktie with the word “Poet” on it. They and I have been given a divine
gift, a blessing great enough to satisfy oneself, but altogether too little to be
portioned out again to others. It comes like a ray of sunlight and fills one's
soul and thoughts; it comes like the fragrance of a flower, like a melody that
one knows and yet cannot remember from where.
The other evening I sat in my room and felt an urge to read, but I had no
book, no paper. Just then a leaf, fresh and green, fell from the lime tree, and
the breeze carried it in through the window to me. I examined the many
veins in it; a little insect was crawling across them, as if it were making a
thorough study of the leaf. This made me think of man's wisdom: we also
crawl about on a leaf; our knowledge is limited to that only, and yet we
