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
