I have inherited one of the best things from my father: I have a good mood.So who is my father?Well, it has nothing to do with being in a good mood!He was a fat man, round and fat.His appearance and heart are completely out of proportion to his profession.So, what is his occupation and social status?Yes, if it were written down and printed at the beginning of a book, there would be a good chance that many people would throw the book away as soon as they read it, saying, "This makes me feel really sick, I don't want to read stuff like that ’” But my father was neither an executioner’s valet nor an executioner.On the contrary, his profession puts him in the presence of the most dignified people in the city.This is his right and his position.
He had to go first, before the bishop, before the pure-blood prince, and he always went ahead--for he was a hearse-driver!
You see, I have spoken the truth!I can say that when people saw my father sitting high on the death traffic car, wearing a long and wide black cloak, and a three-cornered hat with black veil on his head, plus his With a smiling face as round as the sun, it is difficult for people to think of graves and sorrows.
His round face said, "Don't be afraid, it's better than you think!"
You see, I inherited his "good mood" and a habit of visiting graveyards frequently.If you go with a "good mood", it's quite a happy thing.Like him, I subscribe to The News.
I am not too young.I have neither wife nor children nor books.However, as said before, I subscribe to the "News".It is my favorite newspaper, and it is also my father's favorite newspaper.It has its merits, and there is everything a man needs to know in it—such as: who preaches in church, who preaches in new books; where you can find houses and servants, and buy clothes and food; Whoever is auctioning things is going bankrupt.One can also read many charitable things and innocent poems on it!There are also advertisements for marriage proposals, appointments and refusals - all very simple and natural!A man can live happily and go to his grave happily if he subscribes to the News.And at the end of his life he could have a pile of newspapers and sleep comfortably on them--if he didn't want to sleep on shavings.
The Newspaper and the cemetery are the two most stimulating pastimes of my mind, and the most comfortable baths of my good mood.
Of course anyone can read the "News".But please come with me to the graveyard.When the sun is shining and the trees are green, let's go to the graveyard.We can walk among the graves!Each tomb is like a book with its back facing up.Co-authored books - you only see the title.It explains what it says, but at the same time says nothing.But I know what it's about--I know it from my father and from myself.It is recorded in my "Grave Book", a book I have written myself for reference and recreation.Everything is written in it, and much more.
Now we have come to the cemetery.
Here, behind a white-painted fence, once grew a rose tree.It is gone now, but branches from a small patch of greenery adjacent to the grave seem to make up for the loss.Here lies a very unfortunate man; but, while he lived, he lived well, what is commonly called "well-off."He still has a little left over from his income.But he was too fond of caring about the world—or, more correctly, about art.When he sits in the theater at night enjoying the play with full energy, if the set man makes the lights on both sides of the moon a little too strong, or hangs the sky above the scene that should be placed behind the scene, or puts the palm tree He could not bear to put a cactus in a landscape of Amager, or a landscape of Tyrol, or a beech in northern Norway.What's the big deal, who cares about it?Who would be bothered by such trifles?This is nothing more than a play, the purpose of which is to entertain people.Sometimes the audience applauded loudly, sometimes only a few times.
"It's literally wet firewood," he said. "It won't burn at all tonight!"
So he looked around to see who the audience was.He noticed that they were laughing at the wrong time: they were laughing where they shouldn't be--and it made him upset, fidgety, and an unhappy man.Now he lies in the grave.
Here lies a very happy man, that is to say—a great man.He was of noble birth, and that was his fortune, otherwise he would have remained a small man forever.But nature has arranged everything so cleverly, and it gives us pleasure to think of it.He wore dresses embroidered front and back, and was often seen in salon society, like those pearl-encrusted bell-cord handles--which always had a thick, useful rope behind it to do the work for it.He also had a good thick rope behind him—a double—doing the work for him, and still doing the work behind another new handle studded with pearls.Everything is arranged so cleverly that it is easy to get a good mood.
Here lies—well, it hurts to think of it! —Here lies a man who spent sixty-seven years trying to utter a great thought.He lived to find a great mind.At last he believed he had found it.So he was glad that he finally died with this great thought.No one has had the benefit of this great idea, and no one has ever heard of it.Now I think that this great thought kept him from resting in his grave: for example, this good thought could only be effective when uttered at breakfast, and he, according to the popular opinion about ghosts, could only rise in the middle of the night. Get up and move around.Then his great mind is out of tune with the conditions of time.No one would laugh, and he had to take his great thought to the grave again.So this is a melancholy grave.
Here lies a prominent miserly woman.When she was alive, she used to get up at night and meow, convincing her neighbors that she had a cat—how stingy she was!
Here lay a young lady of a good family, who, when she was with others, always wished that they should hear her sing.She sang: "!" It was the only real thing in her life.
Here lies a girl of another type!When the inner canary sang, the fingers of reason came to plug her ears.The beautiful girl was always "almost on the verge of marriage."But—well, it's an old story... but it's just a little bit nicer.Let us let the dead rest.
Here lies a widow.Her mouth is full of the song of a swan, but her heart is full of the gall of an owl.She often goes to neighbors to hunt for their faults.It's a lot like the "cop friend" of old, running around trying to find a bridge over a gutter that doesn't exist.
Here is a family grave.Every member of the family believed that if the whole world and the newspapers said "so and so," and their kid came home from school and said, "That's what I heard," then his statement was the only truth, because He is part of the family.It is also well known that if a cock in the house crows at midnight, the people in the house say it is morning, though the watchman and all the clocks in the town say it is midnight.
The great Goethe said this at the end of his Faust: "It may go on." So did our walk in the cemetery.I come here often!If any friend, or foe, of mine should deprive me of life, I will come to this spot, pick a green spot, and dedicate it to him or her whom I intend to bury, and bury them at once.They lie there lifeless and powerless until they come alive in something new and better.I record their lives and deeds in my "grave book" according to my opinion, and use my set of views to study them.Everyone should do the same.When people do something so unkind, you shouldn't just be distressed, but bury them right away, while keeping yourself in a good mood and reading the "News"--the articles in which many Written, but with a hand there to pull the strings.
Someday, when it is time for me to put myself and my story in my grave, I hope people will write an epitaph like this:
"A good mood!"
This is my story.
① Amager is an island not far from Copenhagen.
② Tyrol (Tyrol) is a mountainous province in Austria.
① This is an Italian sentence whose literal translation means: "I just don't have a good voice."
