The Moluccas of Scheehau.--Röper.--Beata.--Medical Female Attire.--Oefel.
I should be doing and writing foolishly,--inasmuch as we all, readers as well as inhabitants of this biography, have so near an interest in Scheerau; since Gustavus, its hero, is going thither as cadet; as I, his tutor, come from there; as Fenk, the Doctor, is already there, and as Fenk may yet be of importance in this history,--if, in defiance of all these reasons, I should not insert three papers of Dr. Fenk's. I refer to two newspaper articles and one letter, which were written by the Pestilentiary.
I am well aware that it is known to a few eminent strangers who have traveled through the higher circles of Scheerau, that the Doctor writes a periodical, which is not printed, namely, a written gazette, or nouvelles à la main, such as several capitals possess. Villages have printed newspapers, small towns oral, capital cities manuscript ones. The paper is Fenk's Marforio and Pasquino, who give out his satirical medicines.
His first newspaper article I weave in, if only on account of the journal for Germany. This so flat and wordy journal--for else it were written neither by nor for Germany--refused to insert a good treatise of mine which I sent in, on the extraordinarily flourishing state of trade in Scheerau, because, perhaps, no government in Germany is less known than that of Scheerau. Verily one would think this principality were hiding itself like a whale under the icy crust of the Polar seas, so unknown are the most weighty pieces of intelligence regarding it; such, e. g., as this, that we Scheerauers since the new dynasty have drawn to ourselves the whole East Indian trade, and annexed the Moluccas, whence we now ourselves fetch our spices, which the Government, by an autographic order, imports from Amsterdam. But this is just what appears in the first newspaper article: