[4V50 Gary]

In Washington, there is dispute; some want peace. However, the peace advocates are getting the worse of it; which reminds me of a little tragic-comic family story. For the peace advocates it has gone almost as with the pastor of Feverbach, and how it went with him I will only explain in passing. The story is a bit old because it came from the year 1850. The pastor was the cousin of the schoolmaster whose wife was a "hellcat," and had more hair on her tongue than many Newfoundlanders had on their pelts. She usually began to thunder lightly in the morning, she flashed lightning at noon and continued in the evening. There were, however, no "cold bolts." They were hot. Fistificuffs. On one unfortunate day there was a bad storm in the morning before cofee and Mr. Schoolmaster recevied his coffee roll on the cheek. That was just too much for the patient man, and "what is too terrible, is too terrible," and he went to his cousin, the pastor, and complained to him of his bitter plight. The pastor took off his sleeping gown and put on a large black "Gottfried (clerical garb)." He buttoned the white collar, so that he would make a right venerable impression on the wife; and went with the schoolmaster "in order to bring about peace," as he said. He went into the schoolhouse and heard his cousin's wife so terribly busy in the kitchen that his heart began to pound; and he timidly opened the kitchen door, stuck in there his otherwise wine-red face, that had by now become totally white like the Schoolmaster's, and began with a moving voice: "Frau ___ ____ ___."; Frau cousin's wife, he wanted to say. Hardly had the cousin's wife heard the word "wife," when she flew to the kitchen door like lightning, and mistaking the venerable cousin for her husband, angrily hit him around his face with a dripping wet kitchen rage, one time right, one time left, then right again, and again left, with shocking quickness, so that to the venerable pastor everything was green and brown before his eyes, and he barely could see the remorseful look of the repentant wife of his cousin when she realized her tragic error. The pastor has told this story to me many times and assured me from that since that time he has only acted as the peacemaker in the pulpit."

Single men, remember that marriage is like a fortress besieged. There are those fighting to get in; and those fighting to get out. You may want to consider about how hard you're going to fight.

This passage, like the two stinky cheese passages that preceded it, are from Two Germans in the Civil War. Get it at your local library, inter-library loan or the Univ. of TN online bookstore like I did.