Arthur looked at the clergyman, and said quietly:
"These ideas were held by the German race who settled in Pennsylvania, in the time of William Penn. Driven, from Germany by the hands of Protestant priests, they brought with them to the New World, the 'French ideas' of the New Testament."
"The Germans who settled Pennsylvania—a stupid race," observed Herman, in calm derision; "Look at some of their descendants."
"The Germans of the present day—or, to speak more distinctly,—the Pennsylvania Germans, descendants of the old stock, who came over about the time of Penn, are a conquered race!—"
"A conquered race?" echoed Herman.
"Conquered by the English language," continued Dermoyne. "As a mass, they are not well instructed either in English or in German, and therefore have no chance to develop, to its fullest extent, the stamina of their race. They know but little of the real history of their ancestors, who first brought to Pennsylvania the great truth, that God is not a God of hatred, pleased with blood, but a God of love, whose great law is the progress of all his children,—that is, the entire family of man, both here and hereafter. And the Pennsylvanian Germans are the scoff and sneer of Yankee swindler and southern braggart; but the day will come, when the descendants of that race will rise to their destiny, and even as the farms of Pennsylvania now show their physical progress, so will the entire American continent bear witness to their intellectual power. They are of the race of Luther, of Goethe, and of Schiller,—hard to kill,—the men who can work, and the men whose work will make a people strong, a nation great and noble."
"You are of this race?" asked Herman, pulling his cloak gently with his delicate hand.
"My father, (I am told, for he died when I was a child,) was a wealthy farmer, whose wealth was swallowed up by an unjust lawsuit and a fraudulent bank. My grandfather was a wheelwright; my great-grandfather a cobbler; my great-great-grandfather a carpenter; and his father, was a tiller of the field. So you see, I am nobly descended," and a smile crossed the lips of Dermoyne. "Not a single idler or vagabond in our family,—all workers, like their Savior,—all men who eat the bread of honest labor. Ah! I forgot;" he passed his hand over his forehead—"there was a count in our family. This, I confess, is a blot upon us; but when you remember that he forsook his countship in Germany, to become a tiller of the fields in Pennsylvania—about the year 1680—you will look over the fault of his title."
Herman burst into a fit of pleasant laughter.
"You have odd ideas of nobility!" he ejaculated.