Do they think of me? I am Old Otto, who goes out to
seek his fortune.
O.F."
Having concluded this quaint production, he put it where the children would
find it the next morning, and proceeded to prepare his bundle. He never
thought of entering a protest against the loss of his goods; like a child,
he submitted, and wept. He had been there eleven years, and it was hard to
go away. He spread open on the bed a blue handkerchief, and on it put one
by one the things he thought most necessary and important--a little bag of
curious seeds, which he meant to plant some day, an old German hymn-book,
three misshapen stones that he greatly valued, a Bible, a shirt and two
handkerchiefs; then there was room for nothing more. He tied up the bundle
tightly and put it on a chair by his bedside.
"That is not much; they cannot say I take much," he said, looking at it.
He put his knotted stick beside it, his blue tobacco bag and his short
pipe, and then inspected his coats. He had two left--a moth-eaten overcoat
and a black alpaca, out at the elbows. He decided for the overcoat; it was
warm, certainly, but then he could carry it over his arm and only put it on
when he met some one along the road. It was more respectable than the
black alpaca.
He hung the greatcoat over the back of the chair, and stuffed a hard bit of
roaster-cake under the knot of the bundle, and then his preparations were
completed.
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