Ulrich Megerle-" Abraham a Sancta Clara"

The Donkey's Voice

A CERTAIN singer was most vain of his voice, thinking it so enchanting it might allure the very dolphins, or if not them, the pike, from out of the deep. But it is an old custom of the Lord to punish the vain ones of the earth, who like nothing better than praise. So the Lord made this man sing false at Holy Mass, and the whole congregation was utterly displeased. Close by the altar there was kneeling an old woman, who wept bitterly during the Mass. The conceited songster, thinking that the old woman had been moved to those tears by the sweetness of his voice, after Mass approached the dame, asking her, in the presence of the congregation, why she had wept so sadly. His mouth watered for the expected praise, when, "Sir," said the woman, "while you were singing I remembered my donkey; I lost him, poor soul, three days ago, and his voice was very natural, like yours. Oh, heavenly Father, if I could only find that good and useful beast!"—"Judas, the Arch-Rogue."

A Burdensome Wife

A MAN set sail from Venice for Ancona, with his wife, both being minded to offer their devotions at the shrine of Santa Maria di Loreto. But during the voyage there arose such a great storm that all thought the ship in extreme peril

of sinking. The owner of the ship therefore gave his command that each traveler should forthwith throw his most burdensome possessions into the sea, so that the vessel might be made lighter. Some rolled casks of wine overboard, and others bales of cloth; the man from Venice, who did not desire to be found tarrying behind the rest, seized his wife, exclaiming, "Forgive me, Ursula mine, but this day you must drink to my health in salt water!" and would throw her into the sea. The frightened wife making a commotion with her screams, others ran up, and scolded the husband, asking him the cause of his action. "The owner of the ship," said he, urgently commanded that we all should throw overboard our heaviest burdens. Now, throughout my whole life nothing has ever been so burdensome to me as this woman; hence I was gladly willing to make her over to Father Neptune."-"Hie! Fie!"

66

Christoph von Grimmelshausen

Origin and Rearing of Simplicius

In the present days, which many people believe to be the last, there is to be observed among common people a disease which manifests itself in the following manner: When the patients who suffer from it have scraped together or stolen enough for a dress in the newest fashion, tricked out with ribbons and spangles, straightway they would be thought noble and knightly persons of most ancient race; whereas, on the contrary, their forebears were usually day-laborers, hewers of wood and drawers of water, their present kinsmen are drivers of asses, their brothers executioners, their sisters and mothers witches of ill repute, and all their twoand-thirty ancestors equally filthy and degraded, even as the pots of the sugar-makers at Prague. Thus are these new noblemen ofttimes as black as though they had been born and bred in Guinea.

I would not be thought to be the like of such fools, although, truth to say, I have often enough imagined that I must be descended from some great lord, or, at least, some nobleman of meaner order, for I have ever felt a great liking, from my very nature, for the employments of noble youth, had I but had the wherewithal to get me the necessary accouterments. Yet, jest aside, my origin and breeding may not unfitly be compared to that of some lordly person, if one be but willing to pass over the difference. How? My father had a palace of his own, and a palace of such a kind as no king with his own hands could build, or would,

in all eternity. This palace was painted with clay, and, instead of barren slate, cold lead, or red copper, it was roofed with straw; and, in order that the nobility and wealth of my father be rightly apparent and visibly splendid, he Idid not have the wall about his castle built of stones, that are found by the wayside or dug from the waste places of the earth, far less with hastily baked bricks, that are heated and made complete in a brief space. Thus might others do; but he used for this purpose wood of the oaktree, which noble and useful tree (upon the which grow sausages and fat hams) needs a hundred years to arrive at its full age. Where is the monarch who has equaled my father in this? His halls of state, rooms, and various chambers he caused to be blackened by smoke, for this reason, namely, that this color is the most durable in the world, and takes a longer time to come to its full perfection than any pigment a painter could apply, or unite in his most remarkable masterpieces. The tapestries were of the most delicate sort, if not of the rarest, for they were supplied by that wise animal, the spider, which aforetime dared even to spin her loom in opposition to the goddess Minerva. He dedicated his windows to Saint Not-Glass, not because he had not glass, but merely because he knew that a window-pane woven of hemp or of flax takes far longer to perfect, and is far more useful, than the most translucent and transparent Venetian glass. It was my father's opinion that that which it takes longest to make is also the more desirable, and therefore the more fit, for lordly persons to use. Instead of pages, lackeys, and grooms, he had sheep, goats, and sows, all attired in their proper and natural livery. These servitors waited upon me in the meadow until it was time for me to drive them home. Our armory was richly furnished with

axes, plowshares, hoes, spades, and pitchforks, with which my father daily exercised himself, for to hoe and sow was his conception of military discipline, as it was the practise of the old Romans in time of peace. To span oxen under the yoke was his especial act of high command; to stack dung, his method of throwing up fortifications; to cleanse stables was his most noble pleasure and pastime.

In these various methods he contended with the whole earth, so far as it fell in his domain, and at the time of the yearly harvest season gained from her a sufficient booty. All these matters I mention only, as it were, in passing, nor make any boast thereof, in order that none may have reason to mistake me for any of your upstart nobility, for I consider myself to be not better than was my father before me, who dwelt in the merry Spessart forest, there where the wolves say good night to one another. And that I do not enter upon any lengthy explication of my father's origin, ancestors, extraction, kith, kin, race, or name, is done merely for the sake of brevity, for the reason that this is no deed of endowment needing an oath, and, finally, because it is sufficient here to record the fact that I was born in the Spessart.

And now, since it is clear in how noble and lordly a fashion my father's house was arrayed and his household carried on, you may imagine that my breeding was in harmony with these. Indeed, at the age of ten I had already mastered the principles of all my father's hereinbefore-described occupations. In regard to other studies, however, I might justly have been compared to that Amphistides of whom Suidas relates that he could not count above five. For my father, like many noble persons of this time, considered, in his high spirit, that such studies and school learning were unbecoming a true nobleman, who could indeed have his people for