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"No" said I, "no, I was never a Wachtmeister. I was never tempted to seek a title. But I did help to arrange the procession. I was only twenty-two years old then - just escaped from the Prussians and come home. I still had my uniform complete, and that day I cleaned it up nicely, like on church parade in Berlin, curled up my moustache and made it all shiny. The only other thing I did was to make a dozen wooden grenades and from time to time I set a few flying over the procession. Then I did the Prussian arms drill. For all that, of course, was something that was very rarely seen in the Toggenburg."

"Well, well", said he "that's all true. I rode behind your procession all the time and enjoyed watching your manoeuvres. And the tales you told afterwards, and those you wrote in your book, match each other to a hair. That's why I said straight off, when I saw my boy reading, that Ulrich Bräker had written it."

In a third respected merchant's house I heard a man from St. Gallen and a man from Appenzell exchanging words. I must introduce them in the very words they spoke, but I will distinguish them only as St. and A.

St.: Ha, so it's you, you rascal! Have you another cloth piece there? How much of the thread have you stolen?

A.: You're a gentleman as likes his little joke!

St.: No, I'm not joking. The piece is too thin. Did you not cast all the thread into it? How much do you still have at home, eh?

A.: None of it. It was bad yarn and short weight, barely eight hundred in the pound.

St. Ha, you rascals always have an excuse. What scoundrels you are - do you think you will ever go to heaven?

A.: Yes, just like you gentlemen from St. Gallen. We will find it easier to slip in there than you. We aren't so stout and heavy as you.

St.: Ha, not so, you rascal. They don't let scoundrels and prentice thieves like you slip in.

A.: But I think the small people will be ahead of the great ones. If you could peep in there through the keyhole, you would be sure to find more Appenzell folk with slim bellies in there, than the St. Gallen folk with their fat paunches.

St.: But what would you do in heaven, you Appenzell men? You are all fools and in heaven they don't suffer fools gladly.

A.: They don't need to. If St. Gallen folk are in, we'll certainly get in too. For you can't do without fools any more than a fish can do without water.

St.: Very well. You know what's what. But how far is it, do you think, to heaven?

A.: Further than St. Gallen is from Appenzell. A piece farther than to the sun. Seriously, I believe it is so far, that you gentlemen from St. Gallen are too slow to think of getting there. And if you really were up there, you wouldn't be able to think of what's down here. And yet you go about so proudly, as if you alone knew the way up there.

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