The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1867-11-06
From Blackwood's Magazine.l
TRESSEL.
CHAPTER l.

tie story now about to Ee told, arose
from the too rigid virtue OF her near
est and most loving friends - as
troubles will sometimes come from
rigid virtue, when rigid virtue is not
accompanied by sound sense, and
especially when it knows little or no.
thing of the softness of mercy.
The nearest and dearest friend of
Linda Tressel was her aunt, the
widow Staubach-Madame Charlotte
Staubach, as she had come to be called
in the little town of Nuremberg
where she lived In Nuremberg,
all houses are picturesque; but you
shall go through the entire city,
and find no more picturesque
abode than the small red house
with the three gables close down by
the river side in the Schutt Island
the little island made by the River
Pegnitz in the middle of the town.
They who have seen the widow Stau-
bach's house will have remembered
it, not only because of its bright color
and its sharp gables, but also because
of the garden which runs between the
house and the waters edge. And yet
often -a-days be seen In the bal
comics of the mansions of Paris and
of London. Here Linda Tressel lived
with her aunt, and here1also, Linda
had bean born.
Linda was the orphan of Herr Tres
sci, who had for many years been what
we may call town clerk to the magis-
trates of Nuremberg Chance In mid
die life had taken him to Cologne
German city indeed, as was his own,
but city SO far away from Nurem-
berg, that its people and its manners
were as strange TO him as though he
had gone beyond the reach of his own
mother tongue. But here he had mar
ried, and from Cologne had brought
home his bride to the picturesque, red,
gabled house by the waters side In
his own city. His wife's only sister
had also married in her own town:
and that sister was the virtuous but
rigid Aunt Charlotte, to live with
whom had been the fate inlife of Lin
da Tressel.
1t need not be more than told in
the fewest words that the town-clerk
and the clerks wife both died
when Linda was but an infant, and
that the husband of her aunt Char
lotte died also. In Nuremberg there
is no possession so much coveted and
so dearly loved as that of the house in
which the family lives. Herr Tres
sci had owned the house with the
three gables. and so had his father
before him, and to the father it had
come from an uncle whose name had
been diferent-and to him from some
other relative. But it was an old
family property, and, like other
houses in Nuremberg, was to be kept
in the hands of the family while the
family might remain, unless some ter
rible ruin should intervene.
When Linda was but six years old.
her aunt, the widow, came to Nurem-
berg to inhabit the house which the
Tressels had left as an only legacy to
their daughter; but it was understood
when she did so that a right of living
IN the house for the remainder of her
days was to belong to Madame Stau-
bach, because of the surrender she
thus made of whatever of a home
was then left to her in Cologne.
There was probably no deed executed
to this effect; nor would il have been
thought that any deed was necessary.
Should Linda Tressel, when years
had rolled on, be taken as a wife, and
should the husband live in the red
house. there would still be room for
Linda's aunt And by no husband
in Nuremberg who should be told
that such an arrangement had been
anticipated would such an arrange
ment be opposed MoIhers-in law,
aunts. maiden sisters, and dependent
female relatives, in all degrees, are
endured with greater patience, and
treated with gentler hand, in patient
Bavaria than in some lands farther
west, where life is faster, and in
which men S shoulders are more easily
CALLED by slight burdens. And as
poor little Linda Tressel had no other
possession but the house, as all other
income, Slight as it might be, was to
be brought with her by Aunt Char
lotte, Aunt Charlotte had at least a
right to the free use of. the roof over
her head 1t is necessary that so
much should be told; but Linda's
troubles did not come ,trom-the divi-
ded right whichshe had in her fathers
house. Linda's troubles, as has be-
fore been said, sprang not from her
aunt's cevetousness, but from her
aunt's virtue-perhaps we might more
truly say from her aunt's religion.
n Nuremberg is ore of those German
cities in which a stranger finds it
difficult to understand the re
ligious idyosyncrasies Of the people.
It is in Bavaria; and Bavaria, as
he knows, is Roman Catholic. But
Nuremberg is Protestant; and the
stranger, when he visits the two
Il IL L \ I y.