in such a funny kind of way that the street was as crooked as the limb of a crab-apple tree.

Christian Thurngauer owned a little plot of land outside of the village, which was large enough to produce all the cabbages he needed for sauer-kraut, and more than that, had a pond where the geese could flounce and puddle at will, and then pick grass around the edges on little scraps of shores. Every day Hans had to let the geese out of the pen in the morning, and watch them while they picked, and bring them back at night. One day, in March, when there was a cold, nasty wind, which made his face and hands look as blue as skimmed milk, he had been out all day, and having had no dinner but a piece of bread without beer, he was impatient with the geese as they came slowly waddling home, and flung a pebble at an old gander, which broke its leg.

Great was his dismay thereat, for he knew he should not escape his father's wrath. He caught the gander, and tried to carry it, but it made such a squalling and flapping that he was obliged to let it go. It dragged itself along to the pen, and then set up such a screeching that his father came to see what was the matter.

"How did this happen, Hans ?”’

“I—I— He kept a peckin' the other geese, and wouldn't go along."

"Ah, Sacrament! I see how it is. And with that he fetched him a smack on the face with his hard, broad hand, which sent him spinning away over the bank, and down into the ditch, where he fell top downward, and jabbed his head into the mud so deep that it was only after a considerable flouncing about that he pulled it loose.

Hans's Teutonic blood was up now. Before, he had felt sorry, and pitied the old gander; but now he cried

for very rage. His mother came to him, and tried to soothe him. She was a patient, kindly, daft little body, with a pale, thin face, and soft, Saxon blue eyes, around which many sorrows and the boisterous temper of her husband had imprinted deep lines of grief. She loved Hans, as her only remaining child, with all the intensity of which her nature was capable; and many a time shielded him with her own person from the choleric bursts of passion to which his father so often gave way.

Now, she soothed and caressed him with more than her wonted tenderness, washed his face, and kissed away his tears, in a vain attempt to check their flow. Hans was inconsolable. His soul was full of rebellion. They went into the room, and sat down around their little supper. There was a great platter of boiled potatoes, with a cellar of salt beside it, into which each dipped his potato, and a pan of bonny-clabber. That was all.

Hans tried to eat, but he could not. Now and then a tear would trickle out and run all the way down along his nose; and he kept heaving long sobs, and the potato would not go down.

So, after the meal was finished in silence, Hans crept away to bed, but not to sleep. He kept turning over and over, and muttering to himself as nearly aloud as he dared, for he did not quite venture to speak out even to himself the naughty things he was thinking about. He was planning to run away, and was determined to go to America; but he would have to slip out through the back door, and he could not for his life think how he could get through the goose-pen without stirring up the geese and making a great uproar. He thought the matter all over a great many times, and finally he remembered a hole in the wall, about as high up as his head, where he could crawl out without getting among the geese. So he got up carefully, after all

the house was still, dressed himself, and crept slyly out, and crawled through the hole and got safely into the road.

The moon was shining brightly overhead-as brightly as it ever does in blue old Germany--and Hans, in order not to make tracks in the road, walked along on the grass under the great spindling poplars. He did not know where America was, but he had heard old Herr Hundbacher, in the village, talk about it often enough, and he knew people had to go to Bremen to get there, and he knew the road to Bremen very well.

All night long he walked as fast as he could, and never thought once of his mother, nor of anybody else behind him. Before morning he got pretty hungry, and a little after daybreak he stopped at a house where they gave him some crusts of black bread. He was very tired, and sat down by the roadside to nibble them, and then he thought about his mother's bread, and he could not help thinking that if he were at home she would not give him hard crusts to eat; and while he thought about her he cried a little, but then there came back to him the broken-legged gander and the ditch, and they made him feel spunky again.

Presently he overtook an old peasant, with his long sheepskin coat and staff, trudging along in the middle of the road, shuffling his wooden shoes along, and making a prodigious dust. Hans began to talk with him.

"Mein Herr, is it very far to America?”

66

Oh, little one, Sacrament!

than a hundred miles from here!"

America! That's more

"But when I get to Bremen I'll be pretty near there, won't I?"

"Tut, little one! Bremen isn't more than half way there.

They have to cross the big water first, where

there's great wall-fishes, with holes in their heads on top.'

"Is them wall-fishes very big?" asked Hans, somewhat alarmed, “and will they catch anybody?”

"Yes, they're long as that house yonder. But what are you doing; going to America? I'm afraid you're running away, little one?"

This question confused Hans not a little; but he was too honest to lie, so he muttered and mumbled something, but the old peasant's understanding was so obtuse that he paid little attention. More than that, even if he had, he would have been only too glad to be young himself, and on the way to America. Presently Hans mustered courage to commence again.

They telled me in our village that in America the clouds is barrels, and it rains beer sometimes, so people only has to set kegs under the spouts.

"Potztausend! little one, don't you believe none of them foolish stories. But I'll tell you true stories about America. There's men there that gives men money just as soon as they comes ashore, and shakes their hands, and gives 'em plenty of beer, and takes 'em to nice houses, and takes their old German money, and gives 'em American money, lots of it, more than five times as much as they had before, and all new money, too. They are so glad to see 'em come.'

"Well, I hope they'll give me some money," said Hans, with childish honesty, "'cause I ain't got much."

"And then, when Germans has been there two or three months, they takes 'em again, and gives 'em more money for nothing at all; but all they has to do is to take some papers, and some little pieces of papers, and go and put it all in boxes. They treats 'em like brothers, and shakes their hands every time they meets 'em."

"But what's all them papers and boxes for?" asked Hans.

"Oh, they're just to get beer with. If they gets enough papers into the boxes, the men that gets the most buys beer again.”

And so they talked and walked together, Hans and the peasant, till noon, when they sat down on a grassy bank, and the peasant gave Hans some bread and sausages out of his handkerchief, and they ate together and drank some beer from a flask.

Hans had to sit down and rest many times that afternoon, and it was not till about sunset that he reached Bremen. He knew nothing whatever of the big city, so he went wandering about the thronged streets, among the crowds of people so strangely and brilliantly dressed, his great eyes rolling about in his round, pudding-sack face, like those you may see in a little Dutch clock in a jeweler's window. By a most fortunate chance he fell in with a Bavarian, with a great red face and yellow beard, who was going to America on the next vessel, and agreed to take him along if he would live with him in New York and learn to brew beer. Hans readily agreed to this, and in a few days they went down to Geestemünde, and went on board.

It was a sailing vessel that they embarked upon, and they had a great deal of tempestuous weather on the voyage. Ah! how sick was poor Hans! He would sit by the taffrail hour after hour and gaze down upon the sea, which looked just as the soapsuds used to in his mother's washtub; and then he would keck, and retch, and strain until he thought he would turn wrong side out.

When the ship would go up, his head would feel as heavy as if there were a big gander on top of it; and then it would go down, down, down, so far and so fast