Now I will proceed with my little story on myself again.

After I was confirmed, and that was in 1851, my father sent me to school in Frankenberg, which was a private school given by a Teacher with the name of Jacob Bock, and here I should be prepared to study for a Teacher, but my folks never told me so until after some time my brother John told me what my parents intended, whereupon I expressed my disapproval. So later I was asked by my mother, and when she found out I did not like to become a Teacher, then I had to quit to go to school and now stay home and become a farmer, and take in all the sport in which the young lads all take part in.

Farming in those days was all hand work, mowing was all done with the scythe, threshing with hand flails, and so on, so by that I learned farming in all its details.

The sports and pleasures which young lads are allowed in these villages are quite many, and of different nature, and for the first is that every fall after all fieldwork is done, is a Festival, called "Kirchmesse" and said Festival lasts three days, and generally begins on Wednesday evening and ends Saturday night at 12 o'clock. And all young folks take part in that, and even married folks will be there for two days and enjoy themselves.

The only resting time is from four till nine o'clock AM, and all the rest of the time the young folks are on the dancing floor.

Eat drink and enjoy themselves in general. This festivity originated in Heathen time when God Wodan had given his blessings to plenty, and then these three days were spent in pleasure and happiness on Honor of the Gods, and then when the Christian Era began, the Festival was only changed to a Christian Festival and those three days of pleasure fitted very fine in Honor of the whole Trinity. I have lived in my native home to enjoy four such Festivals and remember them with pleasure.

The next pleasures are in winter time, as it was yet customary to Spin and Weave linen in every house. So all women and girls had to spin in winter, and then the girls will go together in one house and the young lads of the same age will come to see them in the evenings and they can have all kinds of fun as long as they do it in good manners and behave decently.

These spinning rooms (or Spinstube as they are called in Germany) you only can understand thoroughly when you read ancient history of the German people and see how the Goddess Bertha encouraged spinning and kept spinning parties, and at them parties, entertained the Gods that came to visit them.

In spring and summer time the young folks are allowed to see each other on Sunday afternoon on the Public Playground and can play games of all sorts in which boys and girls will take part in, but if a boy and girl would be promenading alone arm in arm, such would be considered indecent, and that is the custom of the country.