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27th Apr. Bräker comments on the decision of the Moral Society, by one vote, not to buy Lavater's "Physiognomik": "I am annoyed for Lavater's sake and think it does no honour to our Society that they are so little acquainted with the best authors. I think, that anybody, even if he has no notion of the book, but has only heard something of Lavater's great spirit, ought to conclude therefrom that such a mind cannot write anything useless. Though maybe not to petty minds!" [Voellmy, v 1 pp 52-53]

9th May Bräker's son Jakob, [aged ten] is very ill: "He lies there groaning and writhing like a poor little worm, a fire glows in his chest so that it gives off steam, there is a knocking in his breast, his young blood moves convulsively in all his veins, he smells of putrefaction..."

15th May "Holy Nature, all your youthful beauties, O I can never see enough of them, never describe them enough. And yet my scratchings are a blot on your charm. Every morning you are new, every morning all senses are enchanted anew. Wonderful, splendid earth! So, I think, so will it be in Heaven, always new, always more beautiful.

The jubilant sound of the little singers of the wood awakened me. I was ready for a little journey over my most pleasant and best-loved hills. What a morning, God, what a morning! When the gentle sun glances out from behind the mountains, and all beautiful things seem to laugh as she meets them, all bushes and hedges full of singers vie in greeting her, pastures and meadows full of a thousand colours spread themselves laughing and incline towards her, and her golden rays play upon every drop of dew, all birds, every little animal, every little beetle rejoices, every tree, every plant trembles with happiness. God, what soul could not feel, be kindled, full of inward gratitude rejoice at its existence, surrounded by Thee, infinite All, Source of all beauty!

First I climbed up over lonely moors, then through the dark forest, and every step was a divine wonder. Hill and dale resounded with sweetest tones. On the top of the pine-trees the gold-beaked blackbirds and the starlings sang cheerfully to the heavens. There the nightingale hopped through the thick bushes and trilled out her clearest songs. There the air teemed with larks, fluttering upwards as high as the sky, vying with one another to sing as they swung in the breezes, then let themselves descend softly, still singing. There the finch joins in the sound. The warbler and the yellowhammer add their voices eagerly. Then the little wren twitters more beautifully than all and the warbler ravishes body and soul. God, who gave these wonderful creatures voices, will and courage to give rapture to the desert? It was Thou, Creator of wonders, Thou, splendid and beautiful in all Thy creatures [...]" [Voellmy, v 2 pp 180-181]

1st June Jakob is losing weight although able to eat and drink. Bräker is doubtful about the prescriptions of Doctor Johann Rudolf Mettler (a member of the Moral Society), and resolves to leave Jakob to God and Nature. At first Jakob's cough gets worse and Bräker is desperately unhappy, but by the 4th Jakob recovers. [Chronik, p 167]

5th June "Today again to Gantersweil, where I have my spinners and weavers. In this little village there are still good thrifty people and also still some genuine old Toggenburgers, I always look upon them with inward pleasure and in them see our ancestors. The forefathers of my own family in particular, those whom I have known, looked like them. A look worthy of respect, when they come in from the fields, in their old Swiss costume in all its roughness. Men like trees, with straight hard bones, contentment on their brown bearded faces, they sit down on the settle-bench, smoke their pipes and discourse in their rough deep voices about the fruit of their fields and about their oxen. Who can blame them, when such fine pale effeminate faces of today's world go past them, that they laugh at them a little?" [Voellmy, v 2 p 183]

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