"Dear mother, I wrote all this a week ago, and when I look over it I think I'm writing stuff and nonsense; but just now I feel as if I was sitting with you before Jacob the blacksmith's house at the well, and people passing by and saying, 'Ha' ye good counsel?' and my heart is so full that I don't know what I ought to say first and what last. We are all in very good health, thank God: we like what we eat and drink, and it feeds us well. We've had to widen all the clothes we brought with us from Germany. It's a good thing Mechtilde has learned to sew.
"Whenever I eat a good dinner I think how nice it would be if my poor mother was here: I could just lay out the best bits for her, and say, 'There, mother: that's for you to help yourself; there's a choice morsel;' and I know you would like living in our house.
"Our Bat is getting on finely: he never had any thing to ail him yet. Oh, if that dear little Maria was living yet! She would have been a year old next Michaelmas. She was a sweet little angel; she was only three weeks old, but when you called her by name she would look at you so cunning, and grab at your eyes. On All-Souls' day we are going to put an iron cross on her grave. Oh, my! oh, my! the dear child is in heaven now, and heaven is the real America, after all!
"I must write more about my household-matters. I oughtn't to think of the child so much; it works me too hard. I say, as the parson said, 'The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away: the name of the Lord be praised.'
"If the Lord will only keep us all in good health now! The Lord has always been very gracious to me: as far as the cattle go, I haven't lost one of them yet. There's nothing I like to think of more than that the cattle always have plenty to eat here. To the last day of my life I shall never forget what a misery it was when feed was so scarce, just the day before I went to Stuttgard, when there wasn't hardly a blade of grass on the ground. Do you remember what it used to be to get up in the morning and not give the poor beasts a quarter of a good breakfast, and then to see the flesh falling off their ribs? I often felt so unked I could have run away. Here the cows run about pasturing all the year round, and never know what it is to want; and yet I never had to kill one of them for having overeaten itself. Over there they stand in the stable all the year round, and then, when they do get into a clover-field, they eat till they burst. And just as it is with the cattle, so it is with men. Over there they have to stand in a stable, tied down by squires and clerks and office-holders, until their talons get so long that they can't walk any more, and the minute you let 'em out they go capering about like mad. This is what somebody was saying very finely in a public meeting the other day. Mother, it's a fine thing, a public meeting: it's just as if you were to go to church. And yet it isn't just so, neither; for everybody may speak there that can and likes: all are equal there. I want to tell you how they do it, and yet I believe I can't, exactly: only I must tell you that our Matthew is one of the principal speakers: they've put him on the committee two or three times, and the name of Matthew Schorer is one for which the people have respect. I have spoken in public once or twice too. I don't know how it is; at first my heart thumped a little, but then I just felt as if I was speaking to you, just free 'from the liver,' as we used to say in Germany. What they were disputing about was, a German, a Wurtemberger, or, as we say over here, a Swobe,[11] came here, and he'd been an officer, and the king had pardoned him; he'd got up a conspiracy among the military, and afterward he betrayed all his comrades: here he gave himself out for a friend of freedom; but a letter came from over there to say that he was too bad for the gallows, and the devil had kicked him out of his cart. So they disputed about it for a long time whether he could be an officer here or not, and at last I said, 'I can find a handle to fit that hoe. Let him show a letter from his comrades to say that he did the fair thing by them: I can't believe that any Wurtemberger could be so mean as to betray his king first and his comrades afterward.' And they agreed to do just what I told them; but, when I looked at the fellow's face again, I thought, 'Well, that trouble's for nothing: he looks as if he'd stolen the horns off the goat's head.'
"I'm an officer in the militia,--a lieutenant: they chose me because I was in the military over there and understand the business. We choose our own officers here, for here every thing is free. The squire in Nordstetten was only a corporal, after all. If I was to come home---- No; come to think of it, I wouldn't dress like an officer, neither. I'm a free citizen, and that's better than to be an officer or a general. I wouldn't swop with a king. Mother, it's a great country is America. You've got to work right hard, that's a fact; but then you know what you're working for: the tithes and taxes don't take the cream off your earnings. I live here on my farm, and no king and no emperor has any thing to say to me; and as for a presser, they don't know what that is hereabouts, at all. Good gracious! When I think how he used to travel through the village with the beadle, with a long list in his hand, while the people in the houses were weeping and wailing and slamming their doors; and then he would bring a pewter plate, a copper kettle, a pan, or a lamp, from a poor Jew's house to the squire! It is a shame there's so much suffering with us: it seems to me it might easily be done-away with. And yet I wouldn't coax anybody to come over. It's no trifle to be so far away from home, even if you're ever so well off. Every now and then something makes me feel so soft that, when I think of it, I am ashamed of myself; and then I want to bundle up right-away and go to Germany. I must see it once more while I have an eye open to look at it. I can't tell you how I feel: sometimes I almost go to pieces, and feel like howling as if I was a dog. I know that that would never do for a man, but then I can't help feeling so, and I needn't conceal any thing from you, you know. I think, after all, maybe it only comes of longing to see you so much. More than a thousand times I've said to myself, 'If only my mammy was here too,--my dear, good mammy; if she'd only once sit on that bench there!' How glad you'd be to see the big milk-pans! and, oh, to think of your seeing little Bat, and the one that's coming soon! If I have ever done you any harm, forgive me; for you may be sure there's not a living soul on earth that loves you more than I do.
"I have been resting a little, and now I'm going on. What a fine thing it is that we've learned to read and write properly! I'm always grateful to you for having made me learn it. But you mustn't think I'm out of spirits. To-be-sure, I'm not so full of fun as I sometimes was, years ago, but then I've grown older, and had a good deal of experience; but still, sometimes I am so glad, and feel so kindly for every thing in the world, that I begin to whistle and dance and sing. Sometimes I feel a little pang when I call something to mind; but then I say, 'Whoa!' and shake myself like a horse, and away with it. I and Mechtilde live as happy as two children, and our Bat has bones in him as strong as a young calf, and muscles like the kernel of a nut.
"On Sunday, when we go to church, we take salt with us, and what we need besides; and Mechtilde once said we get heavenly salt for it in the mass and the sermon, and salt our souls with it. Mechtilde often makes fine riddles and jokes. We've bought a story-book, too, about Rinaldo Rinaldini: it's a shuddersome story of knights and robbers, and we've read it move than ten times and the other day, when I overslept myself, she sang a song out of it and waked me. Talking of songs, I want to ask a favor of you, but you mustn't laugh at me.
"You see, when a fellow gets out alone into the world and wants to sing by himself, he finds out, all of a sudden, that of ever so many songs he only knows the beginning, and that the rest of it he has only just sung after somebody else; and then I want to pull my head off because it won't come into my mind; but it won't come in, nohow. There's a good many things just so you think you know them until somebody says, 'Now, old fellow, do it alone, will ye?'
"Now, I'd like to ask you--but you mustn't laugh at me--to please get the old schoolmaster to write down all the Nordstetten songs. I'll pay him for it well. You won't forget, will you? And then send it to me, or bring it when you come.