ted;
humanity prevailed, and the guilty _wachter_ was conducted to a life
prison.

The Senate of Hamburg has not formally abolished the punishment of death;
but the last _hereditary_ headsman is now growing an old man, and the
first and only stroke of his weapon was dealt thirty-two years ago.

CHAPTER IV.

WORKMEN IN HAMBURG.

Here amid the implements of labor, in the dingy _werkstube_ in Johannis
Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard
for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered
details about the German workmen in Hamburg.

German workmen! do not the very words recall to your memory old
amber-coloured engravings of sturdy men, with waving locks, grasping the
arm of the printing-press, by the side of Faust, Schoeffer, and
Gottenberg? Or, perhaps, the words of Schiller's "Song of the Bell" may
not be unknown to you, and hum in your ears:

Frisch, gesellen, seyd zur hand!
Von der stirne heiss,
Rinnen muss der schweiss.

Briskly, comrades to your work!
From the flushing brow
Must the sweatdrops flow.

But your modern German workman is somewhat of a different stamp; he
points his moustaches with black wax, trims his locks _a la Francaise_,
and wears wide pantaloons. He tapers his waist with a leathern strap,
and wears a blouse while at his labors. He discards old forms and
regulations as far as he can or dare, and thus the old word "Meister" has
fallen into disrepute, and the titles "Herr" and "Principal" occupy its
place. Schiller, like a true poet, calls his workmen "gesellen," which
is the old German word meaning companion or comrade, but modern
politeness has changed it into "gehulfe," assistant; and "mitglied,"
member. In some places, however, the words "knecht" and "knappe,"
servant or attendant, are still in use to signify journeyman; as
"schusterknecht," shoemaker; "schlachterknecht," butcher's man;
"muhlknappe," miller; "bergknappe," miner; but these terms are employed
more from habit than from any invidious distinction.

Well! we live and work on the fourth floor of a narrow slip of a house in
Johannis Strasse. Herr Sorgenpfennig, our "principal," occupies the
suite of four rooms, and devotes a central one (to which no light can
possibly come save at second hand through the door), to his "gesellen."
We are three; a quiet Dane, full of sage precepts, and practical
illustrations of economy; a roysterin