Panpan took my hand in his, and, with a gentle pressure that went to my very heart, exclaimed: “I do believe it was the brass button after all. I hope to God it was not an English button!”
I can’t say whether it was or not. But, as to poor Père Panpan, we buried him at Bicêtre.
CHAPTER XXVII.
some german sundays.
Of how Sunday is really spent by the labouring classes in some towns in Germany, I claim, as an English workman who has worked and played on German ground, some right to speak. It is possible that I may relate matters which some do not suspect, and concerning which others have already made up their minds; but, as I shall
tell nothing but truths, I trust I may not very much disconcert the former, nor put the latter completely out of patience; nor offend anybody.
To begin with Hamburg. I spent seven months in this free, commercial port. I came into Hamburg on a Sunday morning; and, although everything was new and strange to me, and a number of things passed before my eyes which could never be seen in decorous London, yet there were unmistakable signs of Sunday in them all—only it was not the Sunday to which I had been born and bred. The shops were closed, and there was stillness in the houses, if not in the streets. I passed by the fore-courted entrance to a theatre, and its doors were shut; but one could easily guess by the bills at the door-posts that it offered histrionic entertainment for the evening. Wandering through some beautifully-wooded walks which encircle the city, I met many promenaders, trim, well-dressed, and chatty; and when I turned back into the city, was once or twice absorbed in the streams of people which flowed from the church doors. One thing was certain; the people were not at work. It struck me at once; for I met them at every turn in their clean faces and spruce clothes—the veritable mechanic may be known in every country—and there was the happy look and the lounging gait in all, which told that they had laid down their implements of trade for that day, and were thoroughly at leisure. When I came to be domiciled and fairly at work, I learned to discriminate more clearly between many apparently irreconcilable things; and will here roughly set down what we did, or did not, on Sundays, in the emporium and outlet of Northern Germany; which, it will be well to remember, is thoroughly Lutheran-Protestant in its faith.
There was a church not far from our workshop—I think the Jacobi-Kirche—which had the sweetest set of Dutch bells that ever rung to measure, and these played at six o’clock in the morning on every day in the week; but, to our minds, they never played so beautiful a melody as when they woke us on the Sunday morning, to the delightful consciousness of being able to listen to them awhile, through the drowsy medium of our upper feather bed. Once fairly roused, properly attired, and breakfasted with the Herr, what did we next? Sometimes we worked till mid-day, but that was a rarity; for our ordinary day’s labour was thirteen hours,
with scarcely a blink of rest at meal-times, and often we had not stirred from the house during the whole week, but had worn out the monotonous hours between bed and workboard. When, however, orders pressed, we did work; but this again was no new thing to me, for I had done the same thing in London; had toiled deep into the Saturday night, and had been up again to work on the Sunday morning, because some gentleman or lady who was engaged, I dare say, in their morning devotions, could not bide the ordinary time for their trinkets. If we did work, which as I have said was a rarity, our ordinary pay of two schillinge, scarcely twopence per hour, was increased to three.
Sometimes we went to church; and we always found a goodly congregation there. The service was in good honest German; and the preacher—quaintly conspicuous to an English eye by his velvet skull-cap, and a wonderfully plaited frill which bristled round his neck—was always earnest and impressive, and often eloquent. Among other religious services, I well remember that of the Busse and Bet-Tag (day of Repentance and Prayer); the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic; and a remarkable sermon preached on St. Michael’s Day, and of which I bought a copy after the service of a poor widow who stood at the church door. If the weather were fine, we strolled along the banks of the beautiful Alster, or made short excursions into the country; and here again all was repose, for I recollect having once had pointed out to me as a matter of wonder a woman who was toiling in the field. Or, if the weather were stormy and wet, we stayed in the workshop and read, or made drawings, or worked in the manufacture of some favourite tool. Often, again, we had especial duties to perform on that day in the shape of visiting some sick craftsman in the hospital, to pay him his weekly allowance, or convey him a book, or some little creature comforts. The Sunday morning was an authorised visiting time, and the hospital was usually crowded—too crowded with patients, as we thought—and each had his cluster of cheering friends. Or we paid friendly visits to fellow workmen; smoked quiet pipes, and told travellers’ stories; or listened to the uncertain essays of our brethren of the Männergesangverein as they practised their part music. There was one piece of business transacted on the Sunday morning which may have been sinful, although we did not view it in that light. We paid our tailors’ bills on the Sunday morning if we had