goose. But work for the
Grossvater was quite another thing. He had no trade, and while his
capacity as farmer on scientific methods ought to give him paying
employment in the country, the city held nothing for him. Work for
Lieschen and Lotte was easy. A week or two of apprenticeship would teach
them all that need be known to do the work on cheap coats or pantaloons,
but even for them it was certain that the country would be better.

It was here that Grossvater Bauer developed unexpected obstinacy. He had
a little money. He was still strong and in good case. Here was this
great city which must have work of some nature, and which, so far from
weighing upon him as Lotte had feared, seemed to have for him a curious
fascination. He haunted the wharves. The smell of the sea and the tarred
ropes of the ships bewitched him, and on the wharves he soon found work,
and loaded and unloaded all day contentedly, with a feeling that this
was after all more like living than anything could have been in the home
fields where only the ghosts of his own remained to have place at his
side.

It is now only that the story of Lotte begins,--Lotte, who pined for the
great farm and the fields across which the wind swept, and the cows she
had named and cared for. Her mother forgot, or did not care. She had
never loved her work, and liked better to chatter with the other women
in the house, or even to run the machine hour after hour, than to milk,
or feed the cattle, or churn. Lotte hated the machine. Her back ached,
her eyes burned, and her head throbbed after only an hour or two of it.
"Let me take a place," she begged, but the Grossvater shook his head
angrily. This was a free country. There was no need that she should
serve. Let her learn to be contented and thankful that she could earn so
much. For with their simple habits the wages paid in 1881 seemed wealth.
Forty-five cents a pair, three of which she could make in a day, brought
the week's earnings to eight dollars, sometimes to nine dollars, and
Peter prophesied that it might even be ten or twelve dollars. Lieschen
had as much. Down on the wharves the Grossvater earned sometimes
eighteen dollars a week. It was a fortune. At home, in the best of
times, with sons and daughters all at work, his books, which he kept
always with the accuracy of a merchant, showed something under $1,000 a
year as receipts, the expenses hardly varying from the $736.28 which
represented the maintenance of the