Page:Monthly scrap book, for March.pdf/19

 SCRAPBOOK. 19 the whole of them. No man can enjoy one of the lights of burgher-ship, without acquiring burgage qualification, and the very first step towards the attainment of this, is enrolment amongst the guards. As none but citizens are permitted to open an account with the Hamburgh bank, all commercial men trading with the city and keep- ing counting houses in it, are compelled to submit to this odd ordeal, and the first thing a mercantile stranger does on his arrival, is to notify his residence to the commandant of his district, and receive orders to be drilled. The corporal, a return for one of old Turnpenny's considera- tions, indulges his recruit by attending him at his house or counting-house, and enabling him to per- fect himself in the accomplishment of a soldier in a quiet and gentlemanly way. The exercise, how- ever, does not end here, and the recruit speedily finds it is no joke to play at soldiers in Germany. During a great part of the year, the whole force is called out for public training, and certainly a most odd figure do its men make. Upon any one their strange dress would sit but queerly; and it may be judged how the stiff middle blue trowsers, with black stripe down the outer side seams, blue tight jacket, high narrow cap and towering feather, be- tween those worthy burghers, the most of them showing, by a huge capacity of paunch, that wheth- er or not they know any thing of the art of taking away life, they are tolerably well acquainted with the method of keeping it in. North Germany, has never been famed for handsome men, and the low long-stricken traders of the Elbe, naturally incline