Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/67

 company a juggler appeared, as for example the great “Janchen of Amsterdam,” who on the farms of that region enjoyed the reputation of being a true sorcerer, we would stand transfixed until he was gone. Then we ran to the booths on the village street with their honey-cakes, cheap toys and little roulettes, and in the evening we went “to the music.” From the dance the older people as well as the children usually retired early—the older people to begin their game of cards, which frequently lasted until sunrise next day—and the children to go to bed. Even this going to bed was a festivity. As the house on such occasions always had many more guests than beds, a room for the boys was fitted out with straw, blankets, linen sheets and pillows laid on the floor. When such a sleeping apartment was offered to a dozen or more boys as their domain for the night, the main frolic of the day began, which was continued with boisterous hilarity until one boy after another sank down utterly overcome by fatigue.

To us children in Liblar the greatest day of the year was Whitsun Monday, when the annual bird-shooting, “the Schützenfest,” took place. How grand appeared to me this “Fest,” which in truth could hardly have been more modest! Such excitement! On the Saturday afternoon before Whitsuntide five or six men were seen striding through the village, bearing upon their shoulders a pole forty or fifty feet long, at the point of which a wooden bird was fastened. The village youth joined the procession, which slowly moved up the street to a meadow shaded by elms and linden-trees. The wooden bird was decorated by the children with flowering broom-twigs, and then the pole was hoisted upon one of the trees and lashed to the branches with ropes and chains. As this was done by hand, it was hard work not without danger. We children always watched it with no little