AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
| 28. | The headsman then cut off his head, |
| It leaped into his hat and bled. | |
| The signs could all men see. | |
| The sun became as red as blood, | |
| The Stadel Brun ran a red flood. | |
| 29 | Then said an aged man thereat: |
| “The Mennist's mouth laughs in his hat.” | |
| Then said an old gray man: | |
| “If you had let the Mennist live | |
| It would you lasting welfare give.” | |
| 30. | The lords together whispered then |
| “No Mennist will we judge again.” | |
| An old man spoke aloud: | |
| “If as I wished it had been done, | |
| The Mennist had been left alone.” | |
| 31 | The headsman said in saddest mood, |
| “To-day have I shed guiltless blood.” | |
| Again an old man spoke: | |
| “The Mennist's mouth laughed in the hat, | |
| God's punishment will follow that.” | |
| 32. | He who this little hymn has made |
| Is for his life in prison laid. | |
| To sinners sends he love; | |
| A man brought pen and ink to write | |
| He sends to you a last good night. |
I never had any instruction in German. After I had
been admitted to the Bar, Dr. Oswald Seidensticker, of
the University of Pennsylvania, one day told me that
George M. Wagner, a hardware merchant on Callowhill
Street near Fifth Street, had the manuscript account book
of Francis Daniel Pastorius, kept in 1702, and in it was
an account with Hendrick Pannebecker. Eager to know
what it contained, I went to examine the book, but being
written in German script, I was unable to read it. At
Mrs. Foster's boarding house I had an old German friend
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