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 ON'S

PETERS

INE.

MAGAZ

PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY , 1869.

No. 1.

VOL. LV. " GOD'S

ACRE ."

BY THE AUTHOR OF " COBWEBS ," ETC., ETC.

the elder sister hung the wreath upon it. By this time both were crying bitterly. "Mother ," I heard the younger one say, why did you die ? Oh, mother ! dear mother ! 66 come back to your Gretchen !" And she wept as if her little heart would break. "Hush, darling !" said her sister , hardly able herself to speak. " Mother is happy now : she is literally God's acre. We never had this feeling so forcibly im- is with father ; and both are with the good God." pressed upon us, as when in Germany, in the I waited awhile, till the emotion of the orphans winter that followed the battle of Sadowa . It had partially subsided , and then , led by an irrehad been a wild day, with sleet and snow , and sistible sympathy , addressed them. though the snow had ceased , the wind still blew Their story was a simple one ; nor, alas ! was keen and fierce . Business had called us from it uncommon . Their father had served his time our hotel, and that we might make a short cut, in the army, as all Prussians are compelled to, we passed through the grave -yard attached to been dismissed into the reserve , had married , the old Kloster church . The edifice had been and settled . Neither he, nor any one else, had built in the middle ages , and was hoary with supposed he would be required to serve again ; But it was now occupied by a Protestant for fifty years had passed since the reserves had age.gregation, for the people in that part of But when the war with Auscon n calleed outh. Germany had, at the time of the Reformation, bee , bot the first and second reserves tria cam He was almost disadopted the Lutheran faith. were put into the field. As we crossed the burial -ground, our atten- tracted ; nor was his wife less so. They had tion was attracted by two children, apparently two children , these little girls , and had not yet sisters, very poorly , yet neatly , clad in mourn- been able to save anything. Their whole deing garments. The younger were a faded hood ; pendence was on the labor of the father, for the but the elder had no covering whatever for her mother was weakly, and half the time sick. If head. They struggled on, both holding an old, he went, starvation was imminent. When he tattered umbrella, which was stiff with sleet answered the summons , his wife and children and snow, and which the gale every moment went with him, in the wild hope that they might threatened to tear from their hands. On the persuade the officer to let him off. It was in arm of the elder hung a wreath, which was evi- vain. The officer, indeed, had no discretion .. dently destined to decorate some grave ; for it Thousands of other families were in the same was the custom here, as in most parts of contiSo the father marched erable condition .t nental Europe, thus to testify affection for the mis men ach h , and the mother, taking wit his det

Ir was a beautiful custom with our Saxon ancestors to call the church-yard "God's Acre ;" and it is a custom still observed in many parts of Germany. It seems to say that the little bit of land is holily set apart, not only to the dead , but to Him to whose bosom they have gone. It

dead. r orphans ," I said to myself, "they must " Poo have gone without a meal, perhaps, to buy the wreath . It is for a father or mother , it may be both." And sympathetically I followed them. They soon came to a lonely grave, without head -stone, or any other monument , except a little wooden cross ; and here , kneeling down ,

VOL. LV.- 2

her little ones, went home to die. The mother went home to die. The blow was too much for her. She struggled on till after Sadowa, all the time hearing no word from her husband, and hence fearing that he was already dead, but hoping against hope. But when the news of the great battle came, when the lists of 29