57 



EXTRACTS FROM A LANDSMAN'S LOG. 

 IV.-THE GERMAN SETTLER. 



CARLLudwig Hantz, a thick-set, pale, yellow-haired 

 fellow, of thirty-eight or thereabout, with his nose 

 indicating by the bloom on it a most teutonic predi- 

 lection for scnaaps, was born — by his own recital, on 

 the banks of the Elbe, just below Dresden. He now 

 phes the conjoint occupations of smith and farrier in 

 the little township of St. John's. The bellows in 

 this father's smithy was naturally at hand to give 

 the first rudiments of his education ; but Fate, 

 although she had foredestined him to ply the trade 

 of his ancestry in this remote corner, led him to it by 

 a route somewhat circuitous. First of all, she be- 

 guiled him from the paternal shed to become a lac- 

 quey at Jena ; when while his youug master imbibed 

 the learning which evaporates from segars and all in 

 that famed university, Ludwig Hantz would saunter, 

 in the joy of his heart, among the forges of his 

 brother craftsmen. On their return home at night- 

 fall, it were often difficult to say whether the German 

 student or his valet were in more smoaky condition. 

 From Jena he went back to his native village, and 

 thence soon after to Erfurth. Here, in a little shed, 

 close by the ruins of the identical monastery where 

 Luther threw his inkstand at the devil — who buzzed 

 about his ears in the shape of a blue-bottle fly — 

 Carl Hantz began to invoke the Asmodeus of his 

 art. Just before this our young smith had married a 

 pretty peasant girl with whom, while laying out the 

 Burgche's rix dollars in the market place at Jena, 

 he used to higgle for a kiss. What won her hand, 

 however, was a love-song he procured for her from 

 the great book fair held annually at Leipzig in 

 Easter week. Ludwig thought that fortune was 

 ri vetted to him for life ; nay so thriving were their 

 affairs that his young dame, with a vanity not alto- 

 gether confined to her peculiar sphere of life, had 

 serious intensions of adding Von to their surname — - 



VOL. VI. — 1835. H 



