"Now things are all put to rights; and it isn't a trifle, either, to build yourself a house, and clear all your fields and turn them over for the first time, and no help or counsel nowhere from a living soul: but now it looks nicer here than at Buchmaier's. Our arms and legs get stiff now and then; but we're all in good health, and that's the best of it. Many of our countrymen are here, and worse off than at home, and have to work at the canals and railroads. There's lots of swindlers here, that tell you all sorts of stories when you first come into the country, until you've spent the last cent in your pocket, and then they're nowhere. There are great hypocrites here as well as there: the voyage cleans, out their stomachs, but their souls are as dirty as ever. But the steamboat-man in Mayence gave us a good introduction to a society of fine men,--all Germans,--who tell you where it's best to go and what's best to be done: so none of us were ruined. I want you to tell all those that talk of coming over not to trust anybody but that man and that introduction. At first, when I used to go away from my guide a little, and run about in New York, while we were waiting for Mat to come on, I used to feel just as if I'd got among a herd of cattle,--God forgive me!--they were men just as much as I am; but they jabbered together just like that French simpleton, Joe, in Frog Alley: he talks a sort of hotchpotchcomambulation too. But it's English what they talk to each other. I can speak it a little too by this time: it's just like German sometimes, only you must handle your mouth as if you'd got your teeth twisted round a green apple. We were a large company at first; but one's gone here and another there. That's all wrong: we Germans ought to stick together. I always used to think only the Wurtembergers were my countrymen; but here they call us all Dutchmen; and when I see one from Saxony I feel just as if he were from the Lower Neckar Valley. I guess I'm writing all sorts of things you don't want to read; but this sort of thoughts go about in my head so much that they pop out before I know what's what.
"Now, I must tell you something else.
Did you notice that I wrote 'Nordstetten' at the top of my letter? Yes; so it is, and so it shall be. I've put up a post not far from my house, with a board and with 'Nordstetten' marked on it in large letters. It won't be long before other people 'll come and settle here, and then they'll keep the name. Then we're going to build a church, just like the church at home: I've picked out the hill for it already, right opposite my barn: we call it the Church Hill now. Then we'll send for a parson from Germany. And my fields have just the same names they used to have at home. I and my Mechtilde often talk about it nights how it'll all come some time or other. If we don't live to see it, why, our children will; and then it'll all be my doing, after all. If one of the Nordstetten students would only come here and be our parson, he'd have a nice place of it; but he'd have to work in the fields some. We choose our own parsons here: we take those we like best, and none of your consistories has any thing to say to us. So the parsons are not the lords over us, neither: here all are equal; they're no better than we are, only that they've got learning and been ordained. Three hours' walk from here we have one: he was born in Rangendingen. The swallows have built nests around my house already. Last year I wrote on a bit of paper, 'God bless you all over there,' and my name under it, and tied it to one of their necks. I thought, in my foolishness, they'd fly to Nordstetten with it some day; but--lo and behold!--she came back again, and she had another bit of paper, with χαιρε [Greek: chaire] on it. Nobody can tell me what that means: it looks just like kaibe;[10] and that would be a shame, wouldn't it?"
"Do you know what it means, Ivo?" asked Maria.
"Yes, Chaire: it is Greek, and means 'Hail.'"
The women lifted up their hands in amazement at Ivo's learning.
"But where did the swallow winter?" asked Maria, again.
"Among the Firelanders, I suppose," answered Ivo; and after a pause he read on:--
"I never knew till I got away from home how finely the larks sing. Only think! there are no larks here at all, and no nightingales either: but a great many other fine birds there are, and splendid pine and oak trees, and the tallest sort of timber.