as a reminder of pleasant incidents he wished to review from time to time. He was unconscious of any literary ability, and yet these desultory fragments, written in scraps at odd times and scattered at random here and there, have a quaint charm that will recall his personality to those who were attached to him, and for whom this volume is printed. No attempt, beyond an orderly arrangement, has been made to alter or amend what he wrote with no thought of posthumous publication. He passed away at Nauheim, Germany, in the summer of 1901, and now rests on a hillside at Zoar, beside the trees he planted there, in the very spot where, in life, he said he hoped to finally sleep. WESTBURY, LONG ISLAND, June, 1902. THE HERMITAGE-ZOAR NOTE-BOOK1 ARLY in the century there came from Wür EAR temberg a band of exiles, driven from their native land by the cruelties of the King. That thrill of feeling which shook the world at the French Revolution lingered in the breasts of a handful of enthusiasts in Swabia. Burning with a passionate thirst to be free, and exalted by religious fervor, they revolted from the exactions which crushed nearly all the Continental peoples into the dust. Deprived of almost every natural right, in a condition little removed from slavery, የ forced into armies and farmed out by their mercenary rulers to fight the battles of strangers and to suffer death in quarrels of alien peoples, they, with the energy born of desperation, turned upon their tormentors and refused to obey the odious 1 This volume is made up of writings in three little note-books in which, without any attempt at sequence, Mr. Gunn, from time to time since November 1889, made entries. These books were found at the Hermitage. There is evidence, in letters, of earlier notes, but they have not been recovered. law of conscription. For this they rotted in prison, were harried by wholesale confiscations, and finally were summarily banished. Gathering some fragments of their scattered fortunes, they sailed for America, landing in Philadelphia toward the end of the year 1817. On the voyage, which was long and full of suffering, they decided that, in the new world they were seeking, all their property should be united; and as they were already one in suffering and exile, they would so continue, having one purse and living together, one for all and all for one. They were largely persuaded to this through the personal influence of one of their number, Beimler, a man of uncommon force of character and of resistless and untiring energy. Combined with an unusual capacity for affairs, he had the passionate zeal of a religious enthusiast. His sermons, delivered extempore, are to this day read at Zoar. He was priest and king. As the society gradually gathered into a closer union, his masterful intellect assumed an almost absolute sway, and he molded the sentiment of the new commune to conform to standards established by his individual character. The record of life at Zoar must fail to inter |