and writing than the
peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret
remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in
the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than
take needle in hand himself--for many miles there was no tailor,
unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances
of finding work. If any one wished to build a house he must provide
for artisans from the West as best he could. The country people were
still living in a hopeless struggle with the packs of wolves, and
there were few villages in which every winter men and animals were not
decimated. If the smallpox broke out, or any other contagious disease
came upon the country, the people saw the white image of pestilence
flying through the air and alighting upon their cottages; they knew
what such an apparition meant: it was the desolation of their homes,
the wiping out of whole communities; and with gloomy resignation they
awaited their fate. There was hardly anything like justice in the
country. Only the larger cities maintained powerless courts. The
noblemen and the starosts inflicted their punishments with
unrestrained caprice. They habitually beat and threw into horrible
dungeons not only the peasants but the citizens of the country towns
who were ruled by them or fell into their hands. In the quarrels which
they had with one another, they fought by bribery in the few courts
which had jurisdiction over them. In later years that too had almost
ceased. They sought vengeance with their own resources, by sudden
onslaughts and bloody sword-play.

It was in reality an abandoned country without discipline, without
law, without masters. It was a desert; on about 13,000 square miles
500,000 people lived, less than forty to a square mile. And the
Prussian King treated his acquisition like an uninhabited prairie. He
located boundary stones almost at his pleasure, then moved them some
miles farther again. Up to the present time the tradition remains in
Ermeland, the district around Heilberg and Braunsberg, with twelve
towns and a hundred villages, that two Prussian drummers with twelve
men conquered all Ermeland with four drumsticks. And then the King in
his magnificent manner began to build up the country. He was attracted
by precisely these run-down conditions, and West Prussia henceforth
became, as Silesia had been before, his favorite child, which with
infinite care, like a duti