t, when I used to go away from my
guide a little, and run about in New York, while we were waiting for
Mat to come on, I used to feel just as if I'd got among a herd of
cattle,--God forgive me!--they were men just as much as I am; but they
jabbered together just like that French simpleton, Joe, in Frog Alley:
he talks a sort of hotchpotchcomambulation too. But it's English what
they talk to each other. I can speak it a little too by this time: it's
just like German sometimes, only you must handle your mouth as if you'd
got your teeth twisted round a green apple. We were a large company at
first; but one's gone here and another there. That's all wrong: we
Germans ought to stick together. I always used to think only the
Wurtembergers were my countrymen; but here they call us all Dutchmen;
and when I see one from Saxony I feel just as if he were from the Lower
Neckar Valley. I guess I'm writing all sorts of things you don't want
to read; but this sort of thoughts go about in my head so much that
they pop out before I know what's what.

[Illustration: I've put up a post with 'Nordstetten' marked on it.]

"Now, I must tell you something else. Did you notice that I wrote
'Nordstetten' at the top of my letter? Yes; so it is, and so it shall
be. I've put up a post not far from my house, with a board and with
'Nordstetten' marked on it in large letters. It won't be long before
other people 'll come and settle here, and then they'll keep the name.
Then we're going to build a church, just like the church at home: I've
picked out the hill for it already, right opposite my barn: we call it
the Church Hill now. Then we'll send for a parson from Germany. And my
fields have just the same names they used to have at home. I and my
Mechtilde often talk about it nights how it'll all come some time or
other. If we don't live to see it, why, our children will; and then
it'll all be my doing, after all. If one of the Nordstetten students
would only come here and be our parson, he'd have a nice place of it;
but he'd have to work in the fields some. We choose our own parsons
here: we take those we like best, and none of your consistories has any
thing to say to us. So the parsons are not the lords over us, neither:
here all are equal; they're no better than we are, only that they've
got learning and been ordained. Three hours' walk from here we have
one: he was born in Rangendingen. The swallows have built nests around
my house already. Last y