Free Selected Stories by Robert Walser Page B

as follows:
    “It is, as I said, good that you have come. Only today we were about to communicate
     to you in writing what can now be communicated to you orally, namely something which
     will be for you without a doubt a gladdening piece of information, that we are instructed
     by a society, or circle, of what are evidently well-disposed, good-natured, philanthropic
     ladies, not to place to your debit but, on the contrary, and this will doubtless be
     fundamentally more welcome to you, to credit your account with
    One Thousand Francs,
    a transaction which we hereby confirm, and of which you, if you would be so good,
     will at once take mental or any other form of note which may suit you. We assume that
     this information pleases you; for upon us you make, we must confess, an impression
     such as tells us, if we may permit ourselves to say so, with almost excessive clarity,
     that you very definitely need alleviation of an equable and delicate nature. The money
     is at your disposal with effect from today. One can see that this very minute a great
     joy suffuses your features. Your eyes are shining; your mouth this minute has about
     it a trace of laughter, and this perhaps for the first time in many years, for pressing
     daily troubles of a hideous kind have forbidden you laughter, and you have been perhaps
     during recent times mostly in a sorrowful mood, since all sorts of evil and sad thoughts
     darkened your brow. Now rub your hands for joy, rub them! and be glad that some noble
     and kind benefactresses, moved by the sublime thought that to dam up a man’s grief
     is beautiful, and to allay his distress is good, conceived the idea that a poor and
     unsuccessful poet (for you are this, are you not?) might require assistance. On the
     fact that certain persons were found whose will was to condescend to remember you,
     and on this occasion of evidence that not all people regard with indifference the
     existence of a poet held repeatedly in contempt, we congratulate you.”
    “The sum of money so unexpectedly bestowed upon me, issuing from such tender and indulgent
     fairy or ladies’ hands,” I said, “I would like to leave without more ado in your charge,
     where it will surely be best preserved, since you have at your disposal the necessary
     fireproof and thief-tight safes, to keep your treasures from destruction, or from
     any abolition whatsoever. Besides, you pay interest. May I ask for a receipt? I assume
     that I have the liberty to withdraw, at any time according to my need or desire, from
     the large sum small sums. I would like to remark that I am thrifty. I shall know how
     to manage the gift like a steady and methodical man; that is, most cautiously. And
     I shall have, in a considerate and polite letter, to express my gratitude to my kind
     donators, which I think I shall do as soon as tomorrow morning, so that it does not
     get forgotten through procrastination. The assumption, which you just now voiced so
     frankly, that I might be poor, could however rest upon a basis of acute and accurate
     observation. But it suffices entirely that I myself know what I know, and that it
     is I myself who am best informed about my own person. Appearances often deceive, good
     sir, and the delivery of a judgment upon a man is best left to the man in question.
     Nobody can know as well as I do this person who has seen and experienced all sorts
     of things. Often I wandered, of course, perplexed in a mist and in a thousand vacillations
     and dilemmas, and often I felt myself woefully forsaken. Yet I believe that it is
     a fine thing to struggle for life. It is not with pleasures and with joys that a man
     grows proud. Proud and gay in the roots of his soul he becomes only through trial
     bravely undergone, and through suffering patiently endured. Still, on this point,
     one does not like to waste words. What honest man was never in his life without sustenance?
     And what human being has ever seen as the years pass his