"Speak to your brother, and get him to give you a note to him."

"No, no; say nothing to my brother; but it might be possible for me to
meet him in the street. Give me my Sunday coat; it will come to no harm
under my cloak."

When his wife brought him the coat, she said: "If, now, Gellert had a
wife, or a household of his own, one might send him something; but your
brother says he is a bachelor, and lives quite alone."

Christopher had never before so cheerfully harnessed his horses and put
them to his wood-laden wagon; for a long while he had not given his hand
so gayly to his wife at parting as to-day. Now he started with his
heavily-laden vehicle through the village; the wheels creaked and
crackled in the snow. At the parsonage he stopped, and looked away
yonder where his brother was still sleeping; he thought he would wake
him and tell him his intention: but suddenly he whipped up his horses,
and continued his route. He wouldn't yet bind himself to his intention--
perchance it was but a passing thought; he doesn't own that to himself,
but he says to himself that he will surprise his brother with the news
of what he has done; and then his thoughts wandered away to the good man
still sleeping yonder in the city; and he hummed the verse to himself
in an old familiar tune.

Wonderfully in life do effects manifest themselves, of which we have no
trace. Gellert, too, heard in his dreams a singing; he knew not what it
was, but it rang so consolingly, so joyously! ... Christopher drove on,
and he felt as though a bandage had been taken from his eyes; he
reflected what a nice house, what a bonny wife and rosy children he had,
and how warm the cloak which he had thrown over him was, and how well