LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER
in a while there turned up a Franklin, an Ephrata or a Sower imprint. In this way I secured nearly all of my Schwenkfelder literature. Of the Reformers, Luther was a charcoal burner; Calvin was a peasant; and among them all the only man of long lineage and high culture was Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossing, a nobleman of Silesia. He taught a system of sweet and pure theology which, carried through the Mennonites of Holland to England, led to the origin of the Quakers. His treatises were published in quarto form, as they were written, from about 1526 to about 1560, and are much in demand in the libraries of Europe. But since nearly all of his sect came to Pennsylvania in 1734, these books are found here almost exclusively. In my library are over ninety of the original issues and almost all of them. The sect being comparatively few in numbers, their literature was almost entirely produced in manuscript after they came to Pennsylvania—neatly written, often beautifully illuminated, strongly bound and carefully preserved. The Schwenkfelders arrived on the 24th of September (1734), and set that day apart as an annual day of thanksgiving or “Gedächtniss Tag,” and they have maintained its observance ever since, and in this respect stand alone. Their books, their woolen spreads, their handsomely carved and inlaid furniture, and the sweet faces of the women in their plain caps and dresses all tell of inherited cultivation. At their sales all were invited to dinner, whether or not anything was bought, and everything on the table—from ham and eggs to molasses pies—was tempting. In the cities I have often seen people acting on the assumption, and even heard them boasting, of their ancestral achievement with very little evidence in proof, and I have gone to a Schwenkfelder home where lay on a table, without ostentation, a folio manuscript written by some learned and devout forefather three hundred years ago. Among them I found an early edition of Savonarola, an early edition of the
