This Spenersberg, about which Leonhard was not a little eager to know more when he shut the door of the apartment into which his host had ushered him—for he must remain all night—what was it?
A colony, or a brotherhood, or a community, six years old. Such a fact does not lie ready for observation every day—such a place does not lie in the hand of a man at his bidding. What, then, was its history? We need not wait to find out until morning, when Leonhard will proceed to discover. He is satisfied when he lies down upon the bed, which awaited him, it seems, as he came hither on the way-train—quite satisfied that Spener of Spenersberg must be a man worth seeing. Breathing beings possessed of ideas and homes here must have been handled with power by a master mind to have brought about this community, if so it is to be called, in six short years, thinks Leonhard. He recalls his own past six years, and turns uneasily on his bed, and finds no rest until he reminds himself of the criticism he has been enabled to pass on Miss Elise's rendering of "He is a righteous Saviour," and the suggestion he made concerning the pitch of "Ye shall find rest for your souls." The recollection acts upon him somewhat as the advancing wave acts on the sand-line made by the wave preceding. When he made the first suggestion, Sister Benigna stood for a moment looking at him, surprised by his remark; but, less than a second taken up with a thought of him, she had passed instantly on to say, "Try it so, Elise: 'He is a righteous Saviour.' We will make it a slower movement. Ah! how impressive! how beautiful! It is the composer's very thought! Again—slow: it is perfect!"
Was this kind of praise worth the taking? a source of praise worth the seeking? Leonhard had said ungrateful things about his prize-credentials to Miss Marion Ayres, and I do believe that these very prizes, awarded for his various drawings, were never so valued by him as the look with which priestly Benigna seemed to admit him at least so far as into the fellowship of the Gentiles' Court.
He would have fallen asleep just here with a pleasant thought but for the recollection of Wilberforce's letter, which startled him hardly less than the apparition of his friend in the moonlight streaming through his half-curtained window would have done. Is it always so pleasant a thought that for ever and ever a man shall bear his own company?
But this Spenersberg? Seven years ago, on the day when he came of age, Albert Spener, then a young clerk in a fancy-goods store, went to look at the estate which his grandfather had bequeathed to him the year preceding. Not ten years ago the old man made his will and gave the property, on which he had not quite starved, to his only grandson, and here was this worthless gorge which stretched between the fields more productive than many a famous gold-mine.
The youth had seen at once that if he should deal with the land as his predecessors had done, he would be able to draw no more from the stingy acres than they. He had shown the bent of his mind and the nature of his talent by the promptness with which he put things remote together, and by the directness with which he reached his conclusions.
He had left his town-lodgings, having obtained of his employer leave of absence for one week, and within twenty-four hours had come to his conclusion and returned to his post. Of that estate which he had inherited but a portion, and a very small portion, offered to the cultivator the least encouragement. The land had long ago been stripped of its forest trees, and, thus defrauded of its natural fertilizers, lay now, after successive seasons of drain and waste, as barren as a desert, with the exception of that narrow strip between the hills which apparently bent low that inland might look upon river.
Along the banks of the stream, which flowed, a current of considerable depth and swiftness, toward its outlet, the river, willows were growing. Albert's employer was an importer to a small extent, and fancy willow-ware formed a very considerable share of his importations. The conclusion he had reached while surveying his land was an answer to the question he had asked himself: Why should not this land be made to bring forth the kind of willow used by basket-weavers, and why should not basket-weavers be induced to gather into a community of some sort, and so importers be beaten in the market by domestic productions? The aim thus clearly defined Spener had accomplished. His Moravians furnished him with a willow-ware which was always quoted at a high figure, and the patriotic pride the manufacturer felt in the enterprise was abundantly rewarded: no foreign mark was ever found on his home-made goods.
But his Moravians: where did these people come from, and how came they to be known as his?
The question brings us to Frederick Loretz. In those days he was a porter in the establishment where Spener was a clerk. He had filled this situation only one month, however, when he was attacked with a fever which was scourging the neighborhood, and taken to the hospital. Albert followed him thither with kindly words and care, for the poor fellow was a stranger in the town, and he had already told Spener his dismal story. Afar from wife and child, among strangers and a pauper, his doom, he believed, was to die. How he bemoaned his wasted life then, and the husks which he had eaten!