Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/93

Rh shortly to call to Himself, and she would impart to him the method of healing such as suffered from rheumatism and gout. He obeyed, and learned how he was to recover them by stroking three times thrice the part affected, saying, "I strike you in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I expel the bodily pains and your distress of mind, I banish them from your limbs and from your blood, that they return no more."

There can exist no manner of doubt that Hänel did practise this method of cure with conspicuous success during many years. Here is one testimony out of many. The well-to-do peasant Zimmermann, aged forty, protested that he and his son for several years had suffered from severe rheumatic attacks, had been attended by doctors, who availed naught. Then, hearing of the cures effected by Hänel, he sent for him. "Hänel struck him three or four times, and the pains ceased and have not returned since." But the practice took too much out of Hänel, who was of a highly nervous temperament; and, as much as in him lay, he abstained from the exercise. He never asked for a fee. Some whom he cured gave him a few potatoes, or a groschen, very rarely one or more thalers, as his patients were for the most part poor people. Feeling intense pity for deserted children, he took some into his house, one sickening with smallpox, whom he attended assiduously, another was covered with sores, and with swellings; this child also he nursed till it was healed.

Hänel supported himself and his family by cobbling, colouring pottery and mending clocks; but in 1837, owing to a long and distressing sickness, he fell into abject poverty. No sooner was he recovered than with tottering feet he went into the forest, and falling on his knees implored the good spirits to come to his aid. Whilst thus engaged a Bohemian miner, named Joseph, approached him and informed him of a buried treasure that he hoped to obtain if Hänel would help him.

It must be understood that during the Thirty Years' War, when the country was overrun by the Swedes, who robbed churches and private houses, great numbers of those who had money and plate buried their articles of value, in the hopes of recovering them when peace ensued; and as peace was remote, and many died who had concealed their valuables before the war was over, it became a common belief among the peasantry that immense