ime whether he could be an officer here or not, and at last
I said, 'I can find a handle to fit that hoe. Let him show a letter
from his comrades to say that he did the fair thing by them: I can't
believe that any Wurtemberger could be so mean as to betray his king
first and his comrades afterward.' And they agreed to do just what I
told them; but, when I looked at the fellow's face again, I thought,
'Well, that trouble's for nothing: he looks as if he'd stolen the horns
off the goat's head.'

"I'm an officer in the militia,--a lieutenant: they chose me because I
was in the military over there and understand the business. We
choose our own officers here, for here every thing is free. The
squire in Nordstetten was only a corporal, after all. If I was to come
home---- No; come to think of it, I wouldn't dress like an officer,
neither. I'm a free citizen, and that's better than to be an officer or
a general. I wouldn't swop with a king. Mother, it's a great country is
America. You've got to work right hard, that's a fact; but then you
know what you're working for: the tithes and taxes don't take the cream
off your earnings. I live here on my farm, and no king and no emperor
has any thing to say to me; and as for a presser, they don't know what
that is hereabouts, at all. Good gracious! When I think how he used to
travel through the village with the beadle, with a long list in his
hand, while the people in the houses were weeping and wailing and
slamming their doors; and then he would bring a pewter plate, a copper
kettle, a pan, or a lamp, from a poor Jew's house to the squire! It is
a shame there's so much suffering with us: it seems to me it might
easily be done-away with. And yet I wouldn't coax anybody to come over.
It's no trifle to be so far away from home, even if you're ever so well
off. Every now and then something makes me feel so soft that, when I
think of it, I am ashamed of myself; and then I want to bundle up
right-away and go to Germany. I must see it once more while I have an
eye open to look at it. I can't tell you how I feel: sometimes I almost
go to pieces, and feel like howling as if I was a dog. I know that that
would never do for a man, but then I can't help feeling so, and I
needn't conceal any thing from you, you know. I think, after all, maybe
it only comes of longing to see you so much. More than a thousand times
I've said to myself, 'If only my mammy was here too,--my dear, good
mammy; if she'd o