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The second volume is even more incoherent in narration, and contains less genuine occurrence and more ill-considered attempts at whimsicality, yet throughout this volume there are indications that the author is awakening to the vulnerability of his position, and this is in no other particular more easily discernible than in the half-hearted defiance of the critics and his anticipation of their censure. The change, so extraordinary in the third volume, is foreshadowed in the second. Purely sentimental, effusive, and abundantly teary is the story of the rescued baker’s wife. In this excess of sentiment, Schummel shows his intellectual appreciation of Sterne’s individual treatment of the humane and pathetic, for near the end of the poor woman’s narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne’s creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves Schummel’s inability to follow Yorick, though its use shows his appreciation of Sterne’s peculiar genius. The visit of the author, the baker’s wife and her daughter (the former lady’s maid) to the graveyard is Yorickian in flavor, and the plucking of nettles from the grave of the dead epileptic is a direct borrowing. Attempts to be immorally, sensuously suggestive in the manner of Sterne are found in the so-called chapter on “Button-holes,” here cast in a more Shandean vein, and in the adventure “die ängstliche Nacht,” in the latter case resembling more the less frank, more insinuating method of the Sentimental Journey. The sentimental attitude toward man’s dumb companions is imitated in his adventure with the house-dog; the author fears the barking of this animal may disturb the sleep of the poor baker’s wife: he beats the dog into silence, then grows remorseful and wishes “that I had given him no blow,” or that the dog might at least give him back the blows. His thought that the dog might be pretending its pain, he designates a subtle subterfuge of his troubled conscience, and Goethe, in the review mentioned above, exclaims, “A
A full-grown baker’s apprentice was at their head; he was foaming with rage, and had taken the field, as I was told, in order to avenge his brother, whose eye had been knocked out in one of the late bickers. He was no slinger, or flinger, but brandished in his right hand the spoke of a cart-wheel, like my countryman Tom Hickathrift of old in his encounter with the giant of the Lincolnshire fen.
We never saw a lion in what is called his natural state, certainly; that is to say, we have never met a lion out walking in a forest, or crouching in his lair under a tropical sun, waiting till his dinner should happen to come by, hot from the baker’s.
Onward they go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to the baker’s stores, to the cook-shops, to the confectioner’s, to the druggists; nothing comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink, there are they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of conquest.
They were bedizened with ribbons and rags of various colours, and smeared over with paint. They had long hair like women, and turbans on their heads. They pushed their way to the head of the procession, being quite worthy of the post of honour, and, seizing the baker’s ass, put their goddess on the back of it.
By the time that they had got round again to the unlucky baker’s, the mob had been swollen to a size which even the area of the Forum would not contain, and it filled the adjacent streets.
The more our house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I came home from school at noon, to see a farm wagon standing in the back yard, and I was always ready to run downtown to get beefsteak or baker’s bread for unexpected company. All through that first spring and summer I kept hoping that Ambrosch would bring Ántonia and Yulka to see our new house.
Whilst I was in a blue study, up came chicken, ham, oysters, bread and butter, with the ale. I drew to the table and began with a keen West-country appetite, and for the first ten minutes forgot Lucy, baker’s horse, pound notes and gloves, and almost that it was growing dark, and that we were to sail by the next morning’s tide.
Self-preservation is the first law of man; trembling for the safety of his noble buildings, and considering that it was a bread riot, as it really was, the priest of the god came forward, rebuked the mob for its impiety, and showed the absurdity of supposing that there were loaves in his enclosure to satisfy its wants; but he reminded them that there was a baker’s shop at the other end of the Forum, which was one of the most considerable in Sicca.
She went nearer and scanned the titles, and at once there looked out to her from the rows of bindings a few familiar faces of books she had read and re-read. “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” “The Scottish Chiefs,” “Mysteries of Udolpho,” “Romance of the Forest,” “Baker’s Livy,” “Rollin’s History,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a whole row of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. She caught her breath with delight.
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