The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; the Boy and the Book; and Crystal Palace

by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

Can English boys and girls living now in the nineteenth century, carry their minds back so far in time as to the period when our Henry the Fourth was reigning in England, and can they travel in thought so far distant as to the country called Germany, and picture to themselves the life of a little boy at that time and in that country? If so, we will tell them something of the life of Hans Gensfleisch, the only son of a poor widow, who lived about the beginning of the fifteenth century, not far from Mainz, or Mayence, a city built on the banks of the river Rhine, about half-way between its source and the sea. The father of Hans had been a dyer, and had at one time carried on rather a thriving business in Mainz; but after his death Frau[^[1]] Gensfleisch had gone with her son to live at a little village called Steinheim, about three miles from the city walls, where, on a few acres of land, bought with her husband's savings, and laid out partly as garden, and partly as field and vineyard, she contrived to live with this, her only child. Hans and his mother cultivated the little garden, sowed their own crops of barley and flax in their little fields, and tended and trained the vines in their small vineyard. Strong and active, and fond of employment, the life of the little Hans was one long course of busy industry, from the sowing of seeds in Spring to the gathering in of their small vintage late in the Autumn. And in the long winter nights, there was always too much to do within the cottage walls, by the light of their pine wood fire, for him ever to find the time hang heavy on his hands. One night he would be busy helping his mother to comb and hackle her little store of flax; on another he would mend the net, with which he at times contrived to catch his mother a river fish or two for supper; and it would be play to him when nothing else was wanting his help, to go on with the making of a cross-bow and arrows with which he intended some day to bring down many a wild duck or wood-pigeon.

The principal occupation of Hans was, however, to assist his mother in carrying on some part of her husband's former trade; she having become acquainted with many of the secrets of the art by which colors could be extracted from plants and mineral substances, so as to give to wool, flax, and silk, bright and unchanging colors. In those days such operations, instead of being carried on in large factories and workshops, and by wholesale as it were for the manufacturer of the material, were often done just as people wanted any one particular article of dress to be of a particular color. For instance, a woman who had fashioned for her husband a rudely knitted vest of wool of her own spinning; would bring the rather dingy garment to Frau Gensfleisch to have it made red or blue, so that, worn under his brown leather jerkin, it might look smart and gay;—or the young hunter, on going to the chase, would come to her to have the tassels of his bow or horn made scarlet or yellow;—or the knight equipping himself for war would send to her the soiled plume of his helmet, to be made of a brilliant crimson—to say nothing of the knight's lady, who, as she sat at home in her dismal castle, with little else to amuse her but the embroidery frame, would be forever sending down her maidens and serving-men into the valley with skeins of wool and silk, to be dipped into Frau Gensfleisch's dye-pots, and brought back to her of every color of the rainbow. In this way Hans' mother continued to make a comfortable living, and Hans himself was a very important help to her, in the carrying on of her little art.

It was Hans' business to collect the numerous herbs and plants that his mother required for the different colors. He not only knew well which plants would produce certain colors, but knew where they could be found, and at what seasons they were fit for use. Of some he carefully collected the blossoms when fully expanded in the mid-day sun—of others the leaves and stalks—while in many the coloring matter was to be extracted from the roots, which Hans would carefully dig up, knowing well by the forms of the leaves above ground, the kind of root that grew beneath the soil.

This kind of knowledge which Hans had been picking up ever since he was a very young child, made him at twelve years old a most useful little personage, and although he had never learned to read or write, or even been in a school, yet he could not by any means, be called ignorant, for he not only observed and remembered all that came in his way, but he turned his knowledge to the best account, by making it of use to himself and others.

We say that Hans could neither read nor write, but it must not therefore be thought that such acquirements were not valued in those days; on the contrary, it was considered at that time one of the very best and most desirable things in the whole world to be able to read, and one of the cleverest things in the world to be able to write; while he who was so happy as to be the possessor of a book, was esteemed one of the most fortunate of human beings.

This may seem strange to you little girls and boys, my readers, who ever since you were born have been surrounded with books of all sizes and shapes, and on all sorts of subjects, from the books of grown-up people that you could not understand, down to your most favorite story book that you do understand and like so well as to read again and again.

We must, however, remind you, that books in those days were very different things from what they are now, and their great value arose from the fact that they were all written with pen and ink upon parchment; for although a kind of paper had been made at that time, it was not commonly used; and it was only after weeks and months of careful labor, that one of these written books could be produced, so that it is no wonder that a great value was set upon them. A book too was so prized, that people liked to ornament it as much as possible, and many of these written or manuscript books, which means written by hand, had not only beautiful pictures in them, but were bound in rich bindings, sometimes silk embroidered with gold and silver thread, and sometimes even the backs were of beautifully carved ivory, or adorned with filagree work, and pearls, and precious stones.

We value books in our time, but we do not ornament them so very much, because we would rather have twenty interesting books on our shelves to read by turns, than one precious volume locked up with clasps, and kept in a box only to be taken out on particular occasions; and instead of a man spending half his life over the writing of such a book, letter by letter, word by word, and page by page, a man who in the course of a little time has set the small metal letters together, which we call printing types, so as to form a number of pages, can print those pages if he likes on ten thousand sheets of paper, which will form a part of ten thousand books of the same kind, and which when finished can be read by ten times ten thousand human beings!

But we will return to little Hans. We have said that he lived not far from the town of Mainz, in Germany, and we must mention that one of the most pleasant things he had to do in his little life was to pay a visit occasionally to this great town and see all the busy and wonderful things that were going on there. Mainz was a rich and important town at that time, and was governed by an Archbishop, who was called an Elector, because he was one of those who had the right of choosing an Emperor for Germany, when one was wanted. Many Princes had also this right, but the Archbishop of Mainz had the particular privilege of setting the crown on the new Emperor's head, when he was crowned in the neighboring city of Frankfort. Besides seeing all that was going on at Mainz, and purchasing the different things that his mother wanted in the market, Hans' great delight was to pay a visit to an uncle, who lived in the monastery of St. Gothard, near the great cathedral.

This uncle was a monk, and called Father Gottlieb, and was considered at that time a very learned man. He was good as well as learned, and full of kindness to his little nephew Hans, who, from having so early lost his own parent, looked up to Uncle Gottlieb as a real father, and loved him as one.