"In the year 1529, my mother being pregnant, wished to have a scouring and washing before her confinement, as is customary with women. Now my parents had at this time a servant-maid who was possessed with an evil spirit; it had hitherto not shown itself, but now, when she had to scour the numerous kitchen utensils, and took down the kettle and saucepan, she threw them on the ground in a dreadful way, and cried out, with a loud voice, 'I will away!' When therefore they found the reason of this, her mother, who dwelt in the Patinenmacher Strasse, took her home, and she was taken several times in a Riga sledge to the church of St. Nicholas. When the sermon was ended, the spirit was exorcised; and it appeared from its confession, that her mother having bought a fresh sour cheese, and placed it in the cupboard, the maiden had gone there in her absence and eaten of the cheese. Now when the mother saw that some one had been to the cheese, she had wished that person possessed of the evil spirit, and ever since, he had dwelt in the maiden. When he was then asked how he could have remained in the maiden, as since then she had received the sacrament, he answered, 'A rogue may lie under a bridge whilst a good man is passing over;' he had meanwhile been under her tongue. He was not only exorcised and expelled, but each and every one present in the church knelt down and prayed diligently and devoutly. He however, loudly scoffed at the exorcism, for when the preacher conjured him to go away, he said he would depart, he must forsooth give up the field; but he demanded that he might be allowed to take away with him sundry things, and if this demand were refused, he would be free to remain. One of those present having his hat on whilst praying, the evil spirit begged of the preacher to allow him to take off this hat; he would then depart, and carry it away with him. I feared that, had it been permitted him by God, the hair and scalp would have gone with the hat. At last, when he perceived that his time for vexing the maiden was passed, and that our Lord God listened mercifully to the prayers of the believers present, he demanded mockingly a square of glass from the window over the tower clock, and when a pane was granted to him, it loosed itself visibly with a great clang, and flew away. After that time nothing evil was observed in the maiden. She got a husband in the village, and had children.
"I went to school, and learnt as much as my wildness would allow me: of intelligence there was sufficient in me, as may be observed, but steadiness there was none. In the summer I bathed with my companions on the sea-shore; this my uncle saw from his garden behind his barn, and told it to my father, who came in the morning with a good rod into the room, in front of my bed, whilst I was asleep; he worked himself up into a rage, and spoke loud in order to awake me. When I awoke, and saw him standing before me, and the rod lying on the next bed, I knew well what was in the wind, and began to pray and entreat--weeping bitterly. He asked what I had done? I swore I would never again, all my life long, bathe in the sea. 'Yes, sir,' he said (when he called me 'sir,' I knew well that matters stood badly between us), 'if you have bathed, then I must use the mop.' Thereupon he seized the rod, threw my clothes over my head, and gave me my deserts. My parents brought up their children well. My father was somewhat hasty, and when his temper got the upper hand, he knew no moderation. Once when he was in a rage with me,--he was standing in the stable, and I in the doorway,--he caught hold of the pitchfork and threw it at me. I sprang aside, but it had been thrown with such violence, that the prongs stuck deep into one of the oaken tubs of the bathroom, and it required great strength to draw it out. Thus the merciful God hindered the evil designs of the devil against me and my father. But my mother, who was exceedingly gentle and tender, sprang forward in such cases, saying, 'Strike harder, the good-for-nothing boy has well deserved it!' But at the same time she would lay hold of the hand in which he held the rod, so that he might not strike too hard.
"My father's house was still very unfinished, and an outhouse was built against it, with its entrance close to the well. A miller dwelt therein named Lewark-Lark,--who had many naughty children that cried day and night. At daybreak these young larks began to chirp, and continued the whole day, so that one could neither see nor hear until my father drove out the old larks with their young ones, pulled down the outhouse, and set to work in earnest to finish the whole house at great cost of labour and money. My parents received from Greifswald a considerable amount of cash; for my mother had been obliged to turn everything into money, so that many called him the rich man of the Vehr Strasse. But in a few years this appeared very doubtful, for my parents had great anxiety and loss of money, and also hindrance to the hoped-for happiness of their children as well as other detriment.
"For there were then in Stralsund two women who might not unjustly be called swindlers; the one was named Lubbe Kesske, the other Engeln; they both dwelt in the Altbüsser Strasse. They bought divers kinds of cloth from my father, which they again sold to others, but it was not known to whom. Sometimes they paid part of the money for the cloth; but whenever they gave a hundred gulden, they straightway bought to the amount of two hundred or more. When, however, his claim upon them became very large, the women only being able to pay twenty gulden, he inquired what had become of his property; he found that his goods to the amount of seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden had gone to the wife of the tailor Hermann Bruser, who had a considerable traffic in cloth, being able to sell it cheaper in retail than other cloth merchants; and that his eight hundred gulden had found their way to the mother of Jacob Leweling. When my father called to account the two women and the wife of Bruser, the latter and her husband, Hermann Bruser, offered to pay: Bruser assured my father under his hand and seal that at fixed terms he would make the payment. See what happened! The first term was due at the time of the uproar of Burgomaster Herr Nicholaus Smiterlow, and Hermann Bruser, who was one of the principal ringleaders, thought it was now all over with my father, as well as with the burgomaster; so he disclaimed his bond, refused payment, and began a lawsuit with my father which lasted more than four-and-thirty years; my father came to terms with the heirs of Bruser, who had to pay for one and all a thousand gulden. The debt itself had amounted to seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden, and my father's costs to upwards of a thousand more. Thus my father was deprived of his money for forty years; great inconvenience accrued to both parents and children. I thereby lost my studies and my brother, Magister Johannes, even his life, so that one may in truth say, that Hesiod's words, 'The half is more than the whole,' may well be applied to a lawsuit, particularly to one at the Imperial court, so that it would be more profitable to be satisfied with the half in the beginning than to obtain the whole by the sentence of the Imperial court.
"During the lawsuit my brother Johannes became Magister at Wittenberg, where he was the first among thirteen, and my parents summoned him home. Before his departure from Wittenberg, he begged of Dr. Martin Luther to write to my father, as the latter, on account of his lawsuit with Hermann Bruser, had abstained for some years from the Lord's table.[[50]] The letter was thus worded:--
'To the honourable and discreet Nicholaus Sastrow, burgher of Stralsund; my kind and good friend, Gratia et Pax.
'Your dear son Magister Johannes has made known to me with touching lament, my dear friend, how you have abstained from the Sacrament for so many years, giving a scandalous example to others, and he has begged me to exhort you to give up such a dangerous practice, as we are not sure of life for a moment. So his filial, faithful care for you his father has moved me to write to you, and I give you my brotherly and Christian exhortation (such as we owe to one another in Christ) to desist from such a practice, and to consider that the Son of God suffered far more and forgave his crucifiers. And finally, when your hour comes, you will have to forgive as does a thief on the gallows. If your cause before the court lingers on, let it proceed, and wait for your right. Such things do not prevent us from going to the Sacrament, else we and also our princes could not attend, as the cause betwixt us and the Papists still lingers on. Commit your cause to justice, and meanwhile make your conscience free, and say, "Whoever shall be judged in the right, let him be considered so, in the mean time I will forgive those who have done the wrong, and go to the Sacrament." Thus you will go not unworthily, because you desire justice and are willing to suffer wrong, however the judge's sentence may fall. Take kindly this exhortation which your son has so earnestly begged from me. Herewith I commend you to God. Amen. Wednesday, after Miser., A.D. 1540.
'Martinus Luther.'
"My children will find the original of this letter in its place with other important documents, and will no less carefully than myself preserve it as an autograph of that highly enlightened, holy, dear, and of the whole world praiseworthy man, and will love, and value, and keep it as a pleasant remembrance for their children and children's children.
"This letter my brother brought home to my father, and in order that his parents might see that their money had not been spent in vain, he brought with him also some of his Latin poems which had been printed. In the following years he applied himself with industry at home to his private studies. For besides other poems at Rostock, he published at Lubeck an elegy on the Christian martyr Dr. Robert Barns,[[51]] which had a tragical result for both the printer and himself. For the poem came to the knowledge of the king of England, who sent an envoy to the city of Lubeck with bitter complaints and threatenings, as the poem had been published by their printer Johann Balhorn. The dignitaries of Lubeck made excuses for the author, although he did not dwell there nor belong to their jurisdiction, as he was only a young fellow who wished to give proof of his learning; but the publisher, Johann Balhorn, was sent out of the city, and had to leave it by break of day. They thereby appeased the king's anger, and after some months allowed Balhorn to return to the city.