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             CHRONICLES OF THE SCHOeNBERG-COTTA FAMILY

                      BY TWO OF THEMSELVES.


    NEW YORK:
    DODD, MEAD & COMPANY,
    PUBLISHERS.




PUBLISHER'S NOTE.


To those unfamiliar with the history of Luther and his times, the title
of this unique work may not sufficiently indicate its character.

The design of the author is to so reproduce the times of the Reformation
as to place them more vividly and impressively before the mind of the
reader than has been done by ordinary historical narratives.

She does this with such remarkable success, that it is difficult to
realize we are not actually hearing Luther and those around him speak.
We seem to be personal actors in the stirring scenes of that eventful
period.

One branch of the Cotta family were Luther's earliest, and ever after,
his most intimate friends. Under the title of "Chronicles" our author
makes the members of this family, (which she brings in almost living
reality before us), to record their daily experiences as connected with
the Reformation age.

This Diary is fictitious, but it is employed with wonderful skill in
bringing the reader face to face with the great ideas and facts
associated with Luther and men of his times, as they are given to us by
accredited history, and is written with a beauty, tenderness and power
rarely equalled.




I.

Else's Story.


Friedrich wishes me to write a chronicle of my life. Friedrich is my
eldest brother. I am sixteen, and he is seventeen, and I have always
been in the habit of doing what he wishes; and therefore, although it
seems to me a very strange idea, I do so now. It is easy for Friedrich
to write a chronicle, or anything else, because he has thoughts. But I
have so few thoughts, I can only write what I see and hear about people
and things. And that is certainly very little to write about, because
everything goes on so much the same always with us. The people around me
are the same I have known since I was a baby, and the things have
changed very little; except that the people are more, because there are
so many little children in our home now, and the things seem to me to
become less, because my father does not grow richer: and there are more
to clothe and feed. However, since Fritz wishes it, I will try;
especially as ink and paper are the two things which are plentiful among
us, because my father is a printer.

Fritz and I have never been separated all our lives until now. Yesterday
he went to the University at Erfurt. It was when I was crying at the
thought of parting with him that he told me his plan about the
chronicle. He is to write one, and I another. He said it would be a help
to him, as our twilight talk has been--when always, ever since I can
remember, we two have crept away in summer into the garden, under the
great pear-tree, and in winter into the deep window of the lumber-room
inside my father's printing-room, where the bales of paper are kept, and
old books are piled up, among which we used to make ourselves a seat.

It may be a help and comfort to Fritz, but I do not see how it ever can
be any to me. He had all the thoughts, and he will have them still. But
I--what shall I have for his voice and his dear face, but cold, blank
paper, and no thoughts at all! Besides, I am so very busy, being the
eldest; and the mother is far from strong, and the father so often wants
me to help him at his types, or to read to him while he sets them.
However, Fritz wishes it, and I shall do it. I wonder what his chronicle
will be like!

But where am I to begin? What is a chronicle? Two of the books in the
Bible are called "Chronicles" in Latin--at least Fritz says that is what
the other long word[1] means--and the first book begins with "Adam," I
know, because I read it one day to my father for his printing. But Fritz
certainly cannot mean me to begin so far back as that. Of course I could
not remember. I think I had better begin with the oldest person I know,
because she is the furthest on the way back to Adam; and that is our
grandmother Von Schoenberg. She is very old--more than sixty--but her
form is so erect, and her dark eyes so piercing, that sometimes she
looks almost younger than her daughter, our precious mother, who is
often bowed down with ill-health and cares.

[Footnote 1: Paralipomenon.]

Our grandmother's father was of a noble Bohemian family, and that is
what links us with the nobles, although my father's family belongs to
the burgher class. Fritz and I like to look at the old seal of our
grandfather Von Schoenberg, with all its quarterings, and to hear the
tales of our knightly and soldier ancestors--of crusader and baron. My
mother, indeed, tells us this is a mean pride, and that my father's
printing-press is a symbol of a truer nobility than any crest of
battle-axe or sword; but our grandmother, I know, thinks it a great
condescension for a Schoenberg to have married into a burgher family.
Fritz feels with my mother, and says the true crusade will be waged by
our father's black types far better than by our great-grandfather's
lances. But the old warfare was so beautiful, with the prancing horses
and the streaming banners! And I cannot help thinking it would have been
pleasanter to sit at the window of some grand old castle like the
Wartburg, which towers above our town, and wave my hand to Fritz, as he
rode, in flashing armour, on his war-horse, down the steep hill side,
instead of climbing up on piles of dusty books at our lumber-room
window, and watching him, in his humble burgher dress,