one side of the village amongst the thickets, but my two companions kept to the street, and two peasants after them. Then they fell down on their knees, and begged for mercy, said they had not done it; so when the peasants found that they were not the ones who had let the goose drop, they returned and picked the goose up. But as for me, when I saw my companions thus pursued, I was in great distress of mind, and said to myself, 'Alas! thou hast not prayed to-day, as thou wert taught to do every morning.' When the peasants went back they found our Bacchants in the ale-house; for they had gone on before, leaving us to follow them; and they asked them to pay for the goose, it was a matter of two batzen or so, but I did not hear whether they did or no. When we came up, they laughed and asked what we had been doing; I plead in excuse, that I supposed it the custom of the country. They said it was not yet time for that.

"At a quarter of a mile from Nuremberg, our Bacchants remained behind in a village; for whenever they wished to carouse, they sent us on before. We staid at Nuremberg several weeks. Here, we little fags spent our time in singing through the streets, those who could sing, but I in foraging, and none of us went into school. This the other boys would not endure, but threatened to drag us into school. The schoolmaster, too, bade our Bacchants come to school, or they should be carried there by force. Antony, as their spokesman, refused to go. There were some Swiss there who had agreed to join us on a given day. Then we, little fags, carried stones on to the roof, but Antony and the others made a demonstration against the door. On this the schoolmaster came out with all his boys, large and small, but we flung down stones upon them, so that they were glad to retreat. The next thing we heard was, that we were summoned before the magistrate: it so happened that a neighbor of ours was about to give away his daughter in marriage. This man had a stall full of fat geese. We broke into this in the night and took out three of the geese, and decamped to the farther side of the city. Here we awaited the Swiss, who joined company with us, and we all went together to Halle, in Saxony, to the school of St. Ulrica. But our Bacchants dealt so roughly by us, that, in company with my cousin Paul, we ran away from them and came to Dresden. Here the school was not a good one, and the habitations of the scholars were full of vermin, so that we heard them in the night crawling about in the straw on which we lay. So we left the place and set out for Breslau; on the way we suffered much with hunger, so that some days we had nothing to eat but raw onions with salt, and at other times roasted acorns, crab-apples or pears, and many nights lay out under the open sky, for nowhere would they give us a No. 13.--[VOL. V., No. 1.]—6.

shelter, much as we besought them; and some would even set the dogs on us. But when we came to Breslau, in Silesia, we found great abundance, and that so cheap, that the starved scholars would overeat, and many of them were very sick in consequence. Here we went first to the school of the Holy Cross, in Thum. But when we heard that in the upper parish of St. Elizabeth there were Swiss, we went thither. There were two from Bremgarten, two from Meilingen, and more, besides many Swabians; there was no distinction between Swabians and Swiss; they clanned with one another like fellowcountrymen, and stood up for one another's rights. The city of Breslau has seven parishes, and each parish its separate school, and no scholar of one parish can go into another singing or shouting, 'ad idem, ad idem,' without causing a general uproar; the boys run together from each side and pummel each other most unmercifully. It is said there have been some thousands of Bacchants and fags in the city at a time, and all dependent on alms. They say, moreover, that some have their fags for twenty and even thirty years, who forage for them. I would often carry five or six loads home of an evening to my Bacchants to the school where they lived. The people were always very ready to give to me, because I was a little boy, and a Swiss; for they loved the Swiss, and they felt great sympathy for them, because they had fared so ill in the great Milan battle; and it was the common saying, 'now have the Swiss lost their best pater noster,' for before every one thought them invincible.

"I remained here some length of time, and during the winter was thrice taken sick, so that I had to go into the hospital. The scholars had their own hospital and physician. They received from the city treasury sixteen hellers each a week; this was ample for their support; out of it they had good attendance and a good bed, though there were many vermin, like little hemp-seed, so that I preferred, with many others, to lie on the hearth rather than in bed. The scholars were covered with vermin to an extent that was scarcely credible. As often as I wished, I could pick two or three out of my bosom. I have often, especially in the summer, gone down to the Oder, washed my shirt, hung it on the bushes to dry, and meanwhile picked the vermin off my coat, dug a pit, buried a great quantity in it, covered them up, and marked the spot with a little cross.

"In the winter the fags lay on the hearth in the school room, but the Bacchants in the cells, of which there were some hundreds at St. Elizabeth's; but in the summer, when it was hot, we lay in the church-yard; we carried the grass that was spread in the Herren-gasse for the houses on Saturday, made a bed of it in a good spot in the

church-yard, and there lay, like pigs in their straw. But if it rained, we ran into the school, and when there was a thunder-storm, we sang the whole night long the Responsoria, etc., with the Sub-cantor.

"Sometimes we would go of a summer evening to the ale-house to fetch beer. There they gave us full flagons of strong beer, and I often drank so much before I knew it, that I could not go back to the school again, though it was but a stone's throw from where I was. In short there was plenty to eat and drink, but not much studying.

"In the school at St. Elizabeth's nine Baccalaureates in a room read every hour. The Greek tongue had not been then introduced into the country, nor had they any printed books; only the teacher had a printed Terence. Whatever was read, had first to be written, then divided, then construed, and then explained, so that when the Bacchants left the school, they had great thick copy-books to carry away with them."

From Breslau he went with Paul, by way of Dresden, to Munich, to a soap-boiler's. "This my master," he says, "I helped boil soap, more than I went to school; and I went about with him, through the surrounding villages, to buy ashes. Paul went to school in the parish of Our Lady, and so did I, though seldom, for I sung through the streets to procure bread, which I brought to Paul."

After fifteen years' wanderings Platter revisited with Paul his native town, Vispach. "Here," he adds, "my friends could not understand my speech. Our Tommy,' they said, 'talks so foreign, that no one can tell what he would have;' for while I was young, I had learned the language of every country where I had lived.

"Soon after this we went back again to Ulm: Paul took a lad with him, whose name was Hildebrand Kalbermatter, a clergyman's son, and quite young. They gave him a piece of cloth, such as is made in the place, for a coat. When we came to Ulm, Paul bade me take the cloth, and go for food. In it I brought much home; for I was well used to wheedling and begging, since to this trade the Bacchants had from the first accustomed me, but not to go to school, and not to learn to read.

"Though I seldom went to school, and during school hours went around with the cloth, yet I suffered much from hunger; for, whatever I got, I brought to my Bacchant; I ate not a mouthful of it all, for I feared a beating. Paul had associated with him another Bacchant, named Acacius, from Mentz, and I and Hildebrand, my companion, had to provide for him too. But Hildebrand ate up every thing; so they sometimes followed him through the streets to detect him in the act, or when he came back, they would force him to rinse out his

This put me in so great fear, that

mouth with water and spit in a basin, in order to find out whether he had been eating. And if he had, they would both together take him, throw him on the bed, cover his head with a pillow to drown his cries, and then beat him terribly. I brought every thing home, and we often had so much bread, that it would turn mouldy; the mouldy part they would then cut off and give to us. Many a time have I suffered bitterly from hunger and cold, when walking the streets far into midnight, singing for bread. And this puts me in mind how at Ulm there was a kind widow lady, who had two grown up daughters at home, and a son, named Paul Reling. Often in winter, when I came to her house, she wrapped my feet in a warm blanket that hung behind the stove, gave me a plate full of boiled pudding, and then bid me God speed. Often I felt the gnawings of hunger so keenly, that I would snatch the bone out of a dog's mouth, or would pick the crumbs from the crevices in the school room floor, and eat them."

At Munich Platter ran away from his Bacchants, who had persecuted him so long, and went to Zurich.

"Here I found a fellow-townsman of mine, named Anthony Venet, who persuaded me to go with him to Strasburg. When we arrived there, we found the place full of needy scholars, and but an indifferent school, but heard there was a good school at Schlettstadt. So we set out for the latter place, and on the way met a nobleman, who asked us where we were going. When we told him 'to Schlettstadt,' he advised us not to go, as the place swarmed with indigent scholars, and there were but few rich people there. Then my companion began to weep aloud and to ask, what we should do. I bade him keep up a good courage, 'for,' said I, 'when we get there, I am sure that one can easily shift for himself alone, and if so, I will engage to provide for us both.' As we came to an inn about a mile from Schlettstadt, I was seized with such a severe colic, that I thought I should die; I had eaten so many unripe nuts which I found under the trees. Then my companion wept again, saying if he should lose me he would not know what to do or where to go; and yet all the time he had ten crowns secreted about him, while I had not so much as a heller.

"When we arrived at the city, we found lodgings with an aged matron, whose husband was stone-blind. We then went to my beloved preceptor, John Sapidus, now deceased, and asked him to take us into his school. He inquired from what country we came, and when we replied, 'from Vispach, in Switzerland,' he said, 'they are headstrong, bad people there; they have driven all their bishops out. of the land. But for you, if you will study well, you need pay me

nothing, otherwise you shall pay me, or I will have the very coats off from your backs." This was about the period of the revival of classical studies and the classical tongues, and in the same year that witnessed the Diet of Worms. Sapidus had nine hundred pupils, at once, some of them well-bred, learned scholars. There were there at that time Dr. Jerome Gemusaeus, and Dr. John Huber, besides many others who have since become eminent doctors and renowned

men.

"When I came into the school, I knew nothing, nor could I even read Donatus, and yet I was eighteen years of age; and I sat there like a hen among the chickens. One day as Sapidus read over the names of his scholars, he said 'there are many barbarous names among you; these I must Latinize a little.' After he had finished reading, he wrote down my name, Thomas Platter, and my companion's, Antony Venet: these he changed into Thomas Platerus, and Antonius Venetus, and then said, 'let these two stand up;' when we did this, he exclaimed, 'see, there are a pair of clumsy boys, and yet what fine-sounding names they have.' This was in part true, especially of my companion, whose awkwardness was so great that I had many a laugh at his expense; for I suited myself to foreign ways. and usages much more readily than he.

We remained here from autumn to Easter, and as new scholars kept continually coming, and so it grew harder to secure a livelihood, we went to Soleure. Here there was quite a good school, and more abundant provision, but there was so much time to be spent in the church, and otherwise consumed, that we resolved to return home. I remained at home a while, and went to school to a master who taught me a little writing, and I know not what else I learned. At this time I taught my little cousin, Simon Steiner, his 'a b c,' in one day; the following year he came to me to Zurich, continued there at school, until he went to Strasburg; was Dr. Bucer's famulus; studied till he was appointed teacher of the third class, then of the second; was married twice, and died at Strasburg deeply lamented by the whole school."

After much change of place Platter returned to Zurich, and here went into the Frauenminster school.

"The schoolmaster's name was Master Wolfgang Knowell; he took his degree at Paris, and while there went by the appellation 'Le Gran Diable;' he was a man of stalwart frame and honesty of purpose, but gave little heed to the school, attending more to the pretty maidens, whose charms he could not resist. But I desired to study, for I felt there was no time to be lost.