A Romance
23
and whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the hammer, this giant’s head opens its great jaws and smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen head of Friar Bacon, it would say, "Time was; Time is; Time is past.” This figure is known through all the country round about as "The Man in the Kaufhaus”; and when a friend in the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead of saying, "How are all the good people in Coblentz?”—he says, "How is the Man in the Kaufhaus?” Thus the giant has a great part to play in the town. And thus ended the first day of Flemming’s Rhine-journey; and the only good deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor beggar woman, who lifted up her trembling hands and exclaimed:—
"Thou blessed babe!'
