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to put up with him to seem pleasant and may not tell him to go away. But when there is harmony, O what wonderful hours!" [Voellmy, v 2 p 164]

5th Jan. "What the wife says about it"
     "All time is wasted, says my wife, except when you're working or praying or reading morning prayers or a chapter from the Bible or Arndt's "Christianity". Away with all this fancy reading, away with writing, away with going visiting! What does a poor man need with such doings, that's only for the gentry, who have enough money and don't know how to do anything else. But to lie in bed twelve hours on the night before a holiday, she thinks that's a right splendid way to pass the time. But we should not pick on each other like this. I do not stick to the rules so exactly. At table, on that we are agreed, quarter of an hour at table, or if we are really living it up, half an hour, more is time wasted, says she and so also say I. My wife shows herself as she is. I am much better at dissimulation!" [Voellmy, v 2 p 165]

8th-9th Jan. "Much ado, much dealing makes our life a burden. How true have I often found that to be. Today too, preoccupations of business have given me much to think about, so that I would much rather have thought of something else, if only I could. Men of old, how lucky you were who knew nothing of trade. How good it was for you to eat the fruit of your labours as farmers and cowherds. Though you might have had your difficulties, no age can have been free of them. If only I could be truly contented, then surely it would be the best of all worlds for me. With my constitution I would quite certainly not have been suited to any other world but this. In the age when a man held the sword in one hand and the plough in the other, I would not have been well placed. My heart would be too soft, flashing swords and sabres give me the horrors. At that time there was need of lads more bold and more stout of heart than I.

     I would not have been well placed in the world when man lived only on herbs and chopped turnips, soft cheese and whey, nor in the world where for a penny one could drink as much wine as one liked. In the first I would have got a consumption and in the second I would have ruined my belly. I would not have been well placed in the times when nobody knew anything of any other business except to make a living by the hardest of crafts and work in the fields. Much better in these, when so many thousands of people live on business and the cotton trade, and earn their bread by this easy work. [...]. No, certainly, this present world is the best of all for me, in all respects. And even this place, this trade is the best of all for me. If one could only read a description that someone in two or three hundred years will perhaps make of these present times, O, one will hear of wonderful things!" [Voellmy, v 2 pp 165-167]

12th Jan. Bräker cuts himself in the arm while shaving, later slips and falls from a sledge, which puts him in a very bad temper, he falls out with his brother. Later entries show that he did not get over it for several days, and also quarrelled with his wife. The Chronik does not state what the quarrel was about. He was still remorseful on the 29th, after a hard day's work setting up a new warp on his loom

16th Jan. Bräker goes to Ganterschwil on business, still in a bad temper, but after drinking some wine on the way home, he makes up his quarrel with Salome. [Chronik, p 155]

17th Jan. Bräker declares that in spite of all his failings he still has faith in God's grace. He resolves to record all his worst failings in the diary, but to omit records of his business, because they are boring: "ein ewiges Einerlei" [always the same old thing]. [Chronik, p 155]

26th Jan. "Night thoughts"
     "Everything so clear and bright. Shining, long, cold nights. The half moon in the midst of the glittering sky. Below and above, everything sparkles. What a sight for my amazed eyes. Lose yourselves, my thoughts, among the millions of dazzling lights. I would gaze and think half the night, if the frost were not so sharp. Bitter cold about us and yet above us it seems so lovely and pleasant. All around the blue vault of heaven seems to smile down. The twinkling stars peep

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