CHAPTER XVI
John B. Pennepacker
Sketch from Life
I AM quite sure this will be found to be one of the most interesting and informing chapters in the Autobiography. The German people who, two hundred years ago, settled within twenty-five miles of Philadelphia, have held on to their land and preserved their language, habits and traditions and methods of thought down to the present time. This life is now all rapidly disappearing. The railroad, trolley and automobile and the approach of the city and its people, have compelled the old ways to succumb, and one of the most romantic and attractive of features of Pennsylvania life, such as exists in no other state, will soon be lost. I have endeavored to draw a pen picture in order to preserve and illustrate, as far as possible, the customs, dialect and manner of thought of these people. The gentleman whose name heads this chapter was selected solely because he is the most perfect survival of the old time to be found in the neighborhood. The incidents were written down on different occasions as they occurred. If I have not succeeded in making plain the keen, native intelligence, the generous spirit and the innate worth of my subject, which lie beneath the surface, then to that extent this chapter is a failure.
It was seven o'clock in the evening and the shades of the coming night were beginning to gather. For a moment I leaned over the lower half of the stable door and watched him scattering the straw for the beds of the horses.
“Is that you, John?”
“Yes, diese is Chon. Com in vonce.”
