The Poor Man of Toggenburg - Autobiography of Ulrich Bräker

wife, however, did not recover easily on this first occasion and had to keep her bed for many weeks. The child, however, grew and thrived amazingly.

Soon after this my family's situation engendered many a quarrel both great and small between me and my spouse. For, as commonly happens, she could not abide them, and was always of the opinion that I thought of them too often and gave them too much of my own. It is true that my brothers were somewhat uncouth lads, but my brothers nonetheless, and so I was in duty bound to take care of them. Finally they left the district one after another, except for Georg, who married a rather slatternly woman. The others, as far as I know, all earned their bread in honesty and with God's help.

Long past were now the honeymoon days of my marriage, (though I have but little to relate of their honey). My wife was continually trying to get the whip hand over me, and where much is forbidden, transgressions will be all the more frequent. If I strayed even a little from the right path all hell would break loose. This made me sour and moody and lured me into all kinds of foolish projects.

Meanwhile my business went well at times, at other times badly. Now and then a neighbour would come into conflict with me and my fine trade was hampered, now and then sly rogues cheated me over my cotton and my money, for I was far too gullible. I had planned for myself the finest castle-in-the-air, nothing less than paying my debts in a year or two, but my expenditure was increasing from year to year. In the winter of '63 my wife bore me a daughter, and in '65 another

. I began to feel nostalgia for goats, and so had to acquire some without further ado. The milk suited me and my three little ones very well, but the beasts made a great deal of work for me. At another time I kept a cow, sometimes two or three together. I planted potatoes and other vegetables and tried every possible means of balancing my accounts. But I remained as it were for ever on the same spot, not advancing, yet not falling back.

For the most part I frittered away these years of the sixties, so that I cannot rightly say how I passed them, and they are more distant to my memory than the earliest years of my youth. So I will say only a little concerning the state of my heart and mind at this time. [...]. From the very day of my marriage I intended to begin with nothing less than a full renunciation of the world and the crucifixion of the flesh with all its lusts. But oh, what a simpleton I was! What confusion, what conflicts this let loose in my inward self! [...] I became an intolerable, nay, a godless man, who held that all about him were evildoers, and he alone was good, and so would teach all men to dance to his piping. Every one of life's pleasures, were it never so innocent, made scruple upon scruple for me; I tried to deny myself the satisfaction of even the most essential needs, yet still my bosom was full of hidden lust and a thousand strange desires, which I perceived well enough when I had the courage to look therein.

Then, indeed, I came almost to despair, but every time I returned to my post and tried to amend matters by praying and reading, and - oh, what a repulsive fellow I was! - chiefly by playing pastor to my wife and my brothers and sisters, and setting hell-fire in full blaze for them. Often the idea even came into my head that like the Herrenhuters and the Inspired People

I should go out into the world and preach repentance. But whenever I was preaching a sermon to my brothers and sisters and faltered even before I had the text given out, then I thought: "You fool! You have not the gifts of an apostle, so you are not called to be one". Then I hit upon the idea that I should perhaps succeed better with the pen, and all at once I decided that a little book