this cost a great deal of trouble and money. He was an attractive young fellow with an assured bit of bread, so he had no difficulty in obtaining the hand of the daughter of the late Bartholomäi Smiterlow, and the niece of Nicholas Smiterlow, the burgomaster of Stralsund.^[3] Young and pretty, rather short than tall, but with exquisitely shaped limbs, amiable, clever, unpretending, an excellent managers, and exceedingly careful in her conduct, my mother unto her last hour was an honest and God-fearing woman. My father's register shows that the marriage took place in 1514, the Sunday after St. Catherine's Day; the husband, as I often heard him say, was still short of five and twenty.

At the fast just before Advent, in 1515, Providence granted the young couple a son who was named Johannes, after his paternal grandfather; he died in 1545, at Aquapendente, in Italy. In 1517, in vigilia nativitatis Mariae, my sister Anna was born; she died on August 16, 1594, at the age of seventy-seven; she was the widow of Peter Frobose, burgomaster of Greifswald. On Tuesday, August 21, 1520, at six in the morning, I came into the world and was named Bartholomäi, after my maternal grandfather. I leave to my descendants the task of recording my demise, to which I am looking forward anxiously in my seventy-fifth winter.

The year 1523 witnessed the birth of my sister Catherine, a charming, handsome creature, amiable, loyal and pious. When my brother Johannes returned from the University of Wittemberg, she asked him what was the Latin for "This is certainly a good-looking girl?" "Profecto formosa puella," was the answer. "And how do they say, 'Yes, not bad?'" was the next question. "Sic satis," replied Johannes.

Some time after that, three students from Wittemberg, young fellows of good family, stopped for a short while in our town, and Christian Smiterlow asked his father, the burgomaster, to let them stay with him. The burgomaster, who had three grown-up daughters, invited my sister Catherine. Naturally, the young people talked to and chaffed each other, and the lads themselves made some remarks in Latin, which would, perhaps, have not sounded well in German to female ears. One of them happened to exclaim: "Profecto formosa puella!" "Sic satis!" retorted Catherine, and thereupon the students became afraid that she had understood the whole of their lively comments.

In 1544 Catherine married Christopher Meyer, an only son, but an illiterate, dissipated, lazy and drunken oaf, who spent all his substance, and ruined a servant girl while my sister was in childbed. God punished him for his misdeeds by bringing abject misery and a loathsome disease upon him, but Catherine died at twenty-six, weary of life.

My sister Magdalen was born in 1527; she died a single woman at twenty-two. These five children were born to my parents in Greifswald; the last three saw the light at Stralsund; namely, in 1529, Christian, who lived till he was sixty; in 1532, Barbara, who only reached eighteen; and in 1534, Gertrude.

From their very earliest age my sisters were taught by my mother the household and other work appropriate to their sex. One day while Gertrude, who was then about five, was plying her distaff--the spinning wheel was not known then--my brother Johannes announced the news that the Emperor, the King of the Romans, the electors, the princes and counts, in short all the great nobles, were to foregather at a diet. "What for?" asked Gertrude. "To look to the proper government of the world," was the answer. "Good Lord," sighed the child, "why don't they forbid little girls to spin."

The pest of 1549 took away my mother, Gertrude, Magdalen and Catherine. As her daughters were weeping bitterly my mother said: "Why do you weep? rather ask the Lord to shorten my sufferings." She died on July 3. On the 16th it was Gertrude's turn. Magdalen was also dying; she left her bed to get her own shroud and that of Gertrude out of the linen press, and bade me be careful to fling only a little earth on her sister's grave, because she herself would soon be put into it; after which she returned to her bed and expired on July 18, the morning after Gertrude's burial. Magdalen was the tallest and most robust of my sisters, an accomplished manageress, hardworking, and her head screwed tightly on her shoulders. Catherine sent me all this news on September 9, two days before her own death of the plague. She did not try to disguise her approaching end; on the contrary, she prayed fervently for it, and bade me be resigned to it. She had had two children by her worthless husband; I undertook the care of the boy, Christopher Meyer, and my sister Frobose at Greifswald mothered the girl, who was but scantily provided for. Christopher gave me much trouble; neither remonstrance nor punishment proved of any avail; when he grew up he would not settle down, and practically followed in the footsteps of his father, yielding to dissipation, and indulging in all kinds of vice. Nevertheless, I made him contract a good marriage which gave him a kind of position. He left two sons; the elder was placed by his guardians at Dantzig, with most respectable people, who, however, declined to keep him. The younger remained with me for two years, going to school meanwhile, and causing me greater trouble than was consistent with my advanced age. But I had hoped to do some good with him; alas! he was so bent upon following his father's example as to make me rejoice getting rid of the cub.

My sister Barbara had been sent to Greifswald; when the plague abated, my father recalled her, for he was old, wretched and bowed down with care. Barbara was only fifteen, very pretty, amiable and hardworking. She married Bernard Classen, then a widower for the second time. My father did not like this son-in-law, against whom he had acted in the law courts for the other side; but Classen was not to be shaken off, and finally obtained my father's consent. The wedding took place on St. Martin's Day (November 11), 1549. On my return from Spires, I paid a visit to the young couple; my brother-in-law showed me the window of his study ornamented with my monogram and name, taking care to mention that he had paid a Stralsund mark to the glazier; I loosened my purse-strings and counted the sum to him, but the proceeding did not commend itself to me after the protestations of friendship my father had conveyed to me from Classen's part.^[4]

In 1521, at the Diet of Worms, where Doctor Martin Luther so courageously made his confession of faith, Duke Bagislaw X, the grandfather of the two dukes at present reigning, received from His Imperial Majesty Charles V the solemn investiture under the open sky and with the standards unfurled, to the great displeasure of the Elector of Brandenburg. The imperial councillors were instructed to bring the two competitors to an agreement at Nuremberg, or to refer the matter further to His Majesty in case of the failure of negotiations.

In 1522 occurred the disturbances in connexion with Rolof Moller, a young man of about thirty, if that. His grandfather had been burgomaster, and in consequence he had detained in his possession a register of the revenues and privileges of the city. Having summoned a number of citizens to the monastery of St. John, he tried to prove by means of said register the enormous revenues of the city, and to accuse the council of malversation; after which he invaded the town hall, took the councillors to task, and treated them all like so many thieves, including one of his own relatives, Herr Schroeder, whom he reproached with