The Tanners by Robert Walser Read Free Book Online

dutiful never quite succeed in fulfilling all their duties, indeed, that such
     individuals are the most likely of all human beings to disregard their foremost
     duties and only later—perhaps when it’s already too late—call them once more
     to
     mind. On more than one occasion Dr. Klaus felt sad about himself when he thought
     of the precious happiness that had faded from his view, the happiness of finding
     himself united with a young sweet girl, who of course would have to have been
     a
     girl from an impeccable family. At around the same time as he was contemplating
     his own person in a melancholy frame of mind, he wrote to his brother Simon,
     whom he genuinely loved and whose conduct in this world troubled him, a letter
     whose contents were approximately as follows:

    Dear Brother,

    It would appear you are refusing to tell me anything about yourself.
     Perhaps things aren’t well with you and this is why you don’t write. You are
     once more, as so often before, lacking a solid steady occupation—I’ve been sorry
     to hear this, and to hear it from strangers. From you, it seems, I can no longer
     expect any candid reports. Believe me, this pains me. So very many things now
     cause me displeasure, and must you too—who always seemed to me to hold such
     promise—contribute to the bleakness of my mood, which for many reasons is far
     from rosy? I shall continue to hope, but if you are still even a little bit fond
     of your brother, please don’t make me hope in vain for too long. Go and do
     something that might justify a person’s belief in you in some way or other. You
     have talent and, as I like to imagine, possess a clear head; you’re clever too,
     and all your utterances reflect the good core I’ve always known your soul
     possesses. But why, acquainted as you are with the way this world is put
     together, do you now display so little perseverance? Why are you always leaping
     from one thing to the next? Does your own conduct not frighten you? You must
     possess quite a stockpile of inner strength to endure this constant change of
     professions, which is such a disservice to yourself in this world. In your
     shoes, I would have despaired long ago. I really cannot understand you at all
     in
     this, but for precisely this reason—that after experiencing all too often that
     nothing can be achieved in this world without patience and goodwill—I’m not
     abandoning my hope of one day seeing you energetically seize hold of a career.
     And surely you wish to achieve something. In any case, such a lack of ambition
     is hardly like you, in my experience. My advice to you is: Stick it out, knuckle
     under, pursue some difficult task for three or four short years, obey your
     superiors, show that you can perform, but also show that you have character,
     and
     then a career path will open before you—and it will lead you through all the
     known world if you desire to travel. The world and its people will show
     themselves to you quite differently once you yourself are truly something: when
     you are in a position to mean something to the world. In this way, it seems to
     me, you will perhaps find far more satisfaction in life than even the scholar
     who (though he clearly recognizes the strings from which all lives and deeds
     depend) remains chained to the narrow confines of his study but nonetheless,
     as
     I can report from experience, is often not so terribly comfortable. There’s
     still time for you to become a quite splendidly serviceable businessman, and
     you
     have no idea to what an extent businessmen have the opportunity to design their
     existences to be the most absolutely liveliest of lives. The way you are now,
     you’re just creeping around the corners and through the cracks of life: This
     should cease. Perhaps I ought to have intervened earlier, much earlier; maybe
     I
     ought to have helped you more with deeds than with mere words of warning, but
     I
     don’t know, given your proud