Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/500

 of six years, who receives about thirty dollars per annum for his services.

E—— has two foresters appointed by an imperial forester, under whose control they are. These officers receive about forty-five dollars a year, and for this sum must decide all matters in regard to the cutting or planting of trees; must see that no wood is stolen, and during the wood-cutting season must prevent any one cutting more than his share, and see that only marked trees are cut. They must, moreover, preserve all the game in the forest for the use of that person to whom the right to kill game has been let.

The pastor of E—— is supported by the rental of two hundred and eighty acres of land, belonging to the church, and his income is also slightly increased by marriage, burial, and other fees. Since the minister is the only cultivated man in the village, he has of course great influence over all village affairs, and acts as peacemaker in all disputes or quarrels. To him each farmer comes as occasion demands for advice or instruction, but he never visits his people, except when severe illness or death calls for his good offices, nor have I ever seen a peasant enter the parsonage, except when called there by business. This total separation of the pastor from his flock seemed to me to make the church a mere formal affair incapable of doing much good, yet I could not wonder at the refusal of an educated man to associate with the peasants. Village ministers are appointed by the church consistory, and hold their places for life, unless they break some church rule or preach false doctrine. They are always university men, and are generally well-read, but their views are apt to be narrow—Darwin being looked upon as an arch-fiend, and science, in so far as it does not agree with literal translations of the Bible, as "science falsely so called." They revolve in a little circle, independently of all the secular world, around some bishop or church dignitary. Their social life consists of an interchange of afternoon and evening calls, at which coffee is drunk, and the world, the flesh, and the devil, discussed in a very innocent way; occasionally this monotony is interrupted by a birthday party or a church celebration. The latter are, however, a delusion and a snare to outsiders, as each preacher goes with a sermon or two in his pocket and with his mind made up to read them. As a consequence of this, and of the German peasant's love for sermons, I once stood up in a crowded church from 7 to 5, with only an hour's intermission for dinner, listening to an endless series of sermons, varied only by a change of speakers! I left the church at five, but was afterward told that there was an evening session and that the preaching went on for three days.

The pastor is president of a board of trustees, consisting of four church-members, by whom all church expenses are audited, and also of a school board, of four electors and the teacher, which controls school matters. The members of these boards, with the exception of the