Free Selected Stories by Robert Walser

morning world spread out before my eyes appeared as beautiful to me as if I saw
     it for the first time. Everything I saw made upon me a delightful impression of friendliness,
     of goodliness, and of youth. I quickly forgot that up in my room I had only just a
     moment before been brooding gloomily over a blank sheet of paper. All sorrow, all
     pain, and all grave thoughts were as vanished, although I vividly sensed a certain
     seriousness, a tone, still before me and behind me. I was tense with eager expectation
     of whatever might encounter me or cross my way on my walk. My steps were measured
     and calm, and, as far as I know, I presented, as I went on my way, a fairly dignified
     appearance. My feelings I like to conceal from the eyes of my fellow men, of course
     without any fearful strain to do so—such strain I would consider a great error, and
     a mighty stupidity. I had not yet gone twenty or thirty steps over a broad and crowded
     square, when Professor Meili, a foremost authority, brushed by me. Incontrovertible
     power in person, serious, ceremonial, and majestical, Professor Meili trod his way;
     in his hand he held an unbendable scientific walking stick, which infused me with
     dread, reverence, and esteem. Professor Meili’s nose was a stern, imperative, sharp
     eagle- or hawk-nose, and his mouth was juridically clamped tight and squeezed shut.
     The famous scholar’s gait was like an iron law; world history and the afterglow of
     long-gone heroic deeds flashed out of Professor Meili’s adamant eyes, secreted behind
     his bushy brows. His hat was like an irremovable ruler. Secret rulers are the most
     proud and most implacable. Yet, on the whole, Professor Meili carried himself with
     a tenderness, as if he needed in no way whatsoever to make apparent what quantities
     of power and gravity he personified, and his figure appeared to me, in spite of all
     its severity and adamance, sympathetic, because I permitted myself the thought that
     men who do not smile in a sweet and beautiful way are honorable and trustworthy. As
     is well known, there are rascals who play at being kind and good, but who have a terrible
     talent for smiling, obligingly and politely, over the crimes which they commit.
    I catch a glimpse of a bookseller and of a book shop; likewise soon, as I guess and
     observe, a bakery with braggart gold lettering comes in for mention and regard. But
     first I have a priest, or parson, to record. A bicycling town chemist cycles with
     kind and weighty face close by the walker, namely, myself, similarly, a regimental
     or staff doctor. An unassuming pedestrian should not remain unconsidered, or unrecorded;
     for he asks me politely to mention him. This is a bric-à-brac vendor and rag collector
     who has become rich. Young boys and girls race around in the sunlight, free and unrestrained.
     “Let them be unrestrained as they are,” I mused. “Age one day will terrify and bridle
     them. Only too soon, alas!” A dog refreshes itself in the water of a fountain. Swallows,
     it seems to me, twitter in the blue air. One or two elegant ladies in astonishingly
     short skirts and astoundingly fine high-colored bootees make themselves, I hope, certainly
     as conspicuous as anything else. Two summer or straw hats catch my eye. The thing
     about the straw hats is this: it is that I suddenly see two hats in the bright, gentle
     air, and under the hats stand two fairly prosperous-looking gentlemen, who seem to
     be bidding each other good morning by means of an elegant, courteous doffing and waving
     of hats. The hats at this occasion are evidently more important than their wearers
     and owners. Nevertheless, the writer is very humbly asked to be wary of such definitely
     superfluous mockery and fooling. He is called upon to behave with sobriety, and it
     is hoped that he understands this, once and for all.
    As now an extremely splendid, abundant book shop came pleasantly under my eye, and
     I felt the impulse