HANOVERIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 475 



minister and teacher, are chosen for six years by the votes of all the 

 male church-members. 



The schoolmaster unites in one person the duties of sexton, grave- 

 digger, and bell-ringer. All teachers must have jDassed an examination 

 held by the state, for which they are prepared by some years' study 

 at preparatory schools and a three years' course at one of the eight 

 normal schools in Hanover. In order to enter these schools, the appli- 

 cant must be eighteen years old and be able to pass an examination in 

 the elementary studies. Teachers earn from one hundred and seventy- 

 five to two hundred and twenty -five dollars a year. In E the 



teacher received eighty-seven cents a year from each of his one hun- 

 dred pupils, fifteen dollars a year from the church for his services as 

 sexton, besides fifty cents for each adult's and twenty-five cents for 

 each child's grave dug by him. From the state he got eighty-two 

 dollars, and from the village seven dollars and fifty cents a year, with 

 six acres of good farming-land and a house. All the books and maps 

 I saw were of the most old-fashioned sort, and the teacher was drunk 

 whenever he had money enough to buy schnapps. The church con- 

 sistory appoints and removes the village teachers throughout Hanover. 

 Teachers are not considered socially equal to nor do they associate 

 with ministers. With the teacher ends the list of village ofiicers, and 

 next come those communal servants for whom we in this country have 

 no equivalent. In what follows, the distinction between village elec- 

 tors and commune citizens or corporators must be borne in mind. 

 Those that I have called electors comprise all males over thirty who 



live in E , while there are only sixty-six citizens of the commune. 



Electors have no rights except that of voting for village ofiicers, while 

 village corporators possess many valuable privileges, a list of which I 

 have given above. Communal servants consist of a shepherd, a cow- 

 herd, who also looks after the swine, and a gooseherd, who, in addi- 

 tion, is town-crier, and runs on errands for the Bauermeister. All these 

 men are elected yearly at a meeting of the corporators. Such places 

 are much sought after, but do not descend from father to son. Each 

 full corporator may send out daily with these herders four cows, six 

 sheep without lambs, four pigs without shoats, and twelve geese. The 

 animals are collected every morning at stated hours by the herders, 

 who go through the streets playing peculiar airs on their horns, at the 

 sound of which those corporators who wish to send their animals out 

 turn them into the street to be collected. In the evening the animals 

 are brought back from the pasture by their herders, and turned loose 

 in the village to find their own way home. Sheep, however, are not 

 returned to their owners each night in this M^ay, but remain with the 

 herder during the summer season. For their labor the herders receive 

 very little ready money, most of their salary being paid in agricultural 

 products. Each of the herders receives a house and a quarter of an 

 acre of land from the commune. In addition, the shepherd has the 



