Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/225

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MEMBERS OF THE COMMON COUNCIL.
213

noble young man, she is yours!" Wedding takes place on the spot; book-keeper restored to his office and emoluments; Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around.

ELECTING A NEW MEMBER.

We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village, (Ottenhöfen,) and then went into the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table. They were the Common Council of the parish. They had gathered there at 8 o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense. They were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natured faces, and were all dressed