734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was hardly worth while to give so much labor and matter to the proving 

 Caspar Ilauser to be an impostor, Ilerr von der Linde's volumes* will 

 interest those who would like to know how legends are started, how 

 they spread, and how they impose themselves on gossips, to whom the 

 wonderful is the more charming as it is less probable. 



On the 26th of May, 1828, there appeared in Nuremberg a stout, 

 short boy, sixteen or eighteen years old, of rustic appearance, having 

 light-chestnut hair, gray eyes, and a downy beginning of beard, and 

 wearing a large felt hat, a jacket of dai'k-gray cloth, with breeches of 

 the same, blue stockings, and hob-nailed half-boots. He had a letter 

 without signature, addressed to Herr Friedrich von Wessenig, major 

 in the sixth light cavalry, which read: "I send you a youth who 

 wishes to serve, like his father, in the light-horse. He was put into 

 my charge by his mother on the 7th of October, 1812. I am a poor 

 day's worker, with a family to take care of. I have brought the boy 

 up in the Christian religion, and have never let him go away from my 

 house, so that not a soul in the world knows where he has lived till 

 now. Do not question him on this subject, for he can not tell you 

 anything. To keep him more in the dark, I brought him as far as Neu- 

 mark in the night. He has not a sou. If you don't want to keep him, 

 kill him, or hang him up by the chimney." This letter inclosed another 

 one, which was regarded as of sixteen years' earlier date, on paper of 

 similar character, and apparently in the same hand. It read in sub- 

 stance : " The child has been baptized, and his name is Caspar. When 

 he is seventeen years old, send him to Nuremberg, to the light cavalry 

 regiment. He was born on the 30th of April, 1812. I am a poor girl 

 and can not support him, and his father is dead." 



Herr von Wessenig questioned the youth, but he could not tell who 

 he was or where he had come from. Such prodigious ignorance ap- 

 peared suspicious to the major, and he sent the letters to the police com- 

 missioner, asking his advice about them. The police at first regarded 

 Caspar as a vagabond, and he was locked up. Three points seemed 

 to be established : that he was born on the 30th of April, 1812 ; that 

 he was the illegitimate son of a poor girl and a light-cavalry man; and, 

 as his dialect indicated, that he was a native of some part of Bavaria, 

 near the borders of Bohemia. More than this, he had something to 

 conceal : he had probably committed some offense, which he did not 

 care about acknowledging to the police, and was trying to cover up 

 his tracks. When he saw that, instead of his being enrolled in the 

 cavalry, they were taking him to prison, he made himself appear still 

 more simple-minded and silly than before. If they had taken a sen- 

 sible course in the matter, Herr von der Linde justly observes, they 

 could soon have cleared up the mystery ; " but they did not think of 

 looking upon the ground, and gazed into the clouds." 



* Kaspar Hauscr, cine neucgcschichtlicke Lcgonde, von Antonius von der Linde. Wies- 

 baden, 1SS7. 



