The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-12-18
"A CHRISTMAS STORY.
THE HERMIT IN THE FOREST.


know from their grandparents is that
Marbach or Steinheim has always stood
where it does, and so it will continue to
stand. Scarcely one old chronicle tells us
how first; here or there knight built his
castle or good monks a cloister and a
church; how then gradually farmers,
workmen and trades-people settled there
until at last there was little village or
city, around which they made walls and
bitches. How each place has grown up
is scarcely known at all, and there are few
people who ask anything about it.
In America it is different. especially
since the last fifty or sixty years. There
are cities as if they had sprung out of the
ground, and after ten years one often
could not reapgnizee the country.
Such plaSSa pleasant village called
Newbruch, stands not far from a great
forest. There were old people yet living
who could remember how a German peas
ant had cut the first piece from the forest,
built himself log house and dug up a
little piece OF land.
The ground had proved fruitful, other
settlers came there, workmen over from
WHO put up DttlcI nOuHcS VI
timber and stone-and now there was a
pleasant little village, with some forty
houses. Before many of the houses were
little flower gardens, wherein they planted
roses and pinks and gilly-howers, as they
grew at home; the men cultivated
the fields, the women attended to their
houses, happy children played around,
where seventy years before had been only
forest and wilderness. The inhabitants of
Newbruch did not have a church; they
had to go almost two miles in order to
reach one but they had school and a
good, intelligent schoolmaster, who had
travelled great deal.
The school-house, to which the boys and
girls wandered, stood alone, quite at the
end of the village, and had beautiful,
pleasant Fairgrounds around it, which
<were perhaps as pleasing as Mr.. Bauers'
school room, although they were fond OF
him.
There they roamed about at recess in all
kinds OF wild plays, noisily enough, after
the nature of boys. The girls gathered on
a little hill behind the school house and
amused themselves with quieter plays; the
lads did not care much for that. Only
when the girls began to call out: "The
old Poppel is cooking~ the boys also
sprang up and stood on tiptoes or climbed
on high stone; all looked out toward the
near forest. If they saw there a thin
column of smoke rising. then a general cry
sounded: 'The old Popped is cookingl
the old Poppel is cookingl" The old Pop
pie was a man whom no one in the village
knew; he had come there long time ago
and lived out in the forest.
When it was possible, little band of
the widest BOYS went from school out into
the forest where, near the first clearing
upon bare hill stood the dwelling of the
old man, whom they,no one knew why.
called the old Popped.
1t is peculiar, often right cruel pleas
ure to children, TO tease those who do not
wish to be teased. Now, since the chill
dren from the settlement of Newbruch had
noticed that the old man, also called ''the
Hermit in the Forest" could not endure
children and often became quite fierce if
they came near him, it was Just their
pleasure to irritate him. AS soon as they
saw by the smoke from his hut, that he
was at home, they crept as near as they
could TO the wretched little house and
raised cry: "Old Poppel, what are you
cooking? Old POppel, does it taste good?"
Then when the old man broke fercely
out of the little house and sprang after
them with club, it was great joke to
run before the old Poppel in wild fight
and great fear, and to scream a teasing
word from below the hill.
The parents certainly did not wish to
allow this, for all kinds of terrible things
were related concerning the old Poppel.
Some said he was leper, who dared not
come among men; that he had buried in
his hut a great heap of gold and silver;
some one had seen it once. mo, it is a
murderer asserted old Lena, a very cum
ming old woman, land he has killed some
one and brought the body here through
the forest from a distance and buried il
out there under the hill; now he cannot
go away on account of anxiety lest some
ore should find the body" "He is not
such an old man" affirmed wood-cutter;
Il once saw him from afar, when he had
Strengthened himself, and he was vigor-
GUS man. | say to you, do not let the
children go there any more"
Now, no one had ever heard that child
had gone astray out there. Only fat Willie.
who had waddled out with the others and
had not been able to run away so fast, had
been struck on the head by the club of
the old man and received hearty bump,
and since then the schoolmaster had
strictly forbidden the journeys into the
forest.
The schoolmaster was the only person
with whom any one, walking here and
there In the forest, had seen the old Poppel
speak. The children had on that account
still greater respect for their master
Also the older people were interested
and wished to know from the schoolmaster
everything concerning the very mysterious
old man, who he was and whence he
came. But that the schoolmaster could
not tell them; only he thought this much /:
The old man is surely not very bad he is a
sad, gSsxfan, who has received from some
one N.Y. misfortune or injustice, but he
Is not wicked; he has even asked whether
tat Willie was injured. The boys should
leave him in peace.
But the boys had no desire for that, and
because they did not wish to disobey
right out the command of the school
master, they tried to think OF a cause for
going out again to the old man.
1t was near Christmas, and this feast
was celebrated finely and pleasantly in
Newbruch- The English inhabitants held
JOYFUL feast on Christmas evening, and
ate a great roast and pudding, but the
German mothers decked a little green
tree with small presents and colored
lights, as their mothers had done for them
in their far-away home, and the German
windows cleaned and sparkled brightly
in the holy night.
Then the English children thought
about it; they wanted German tree"
too. Soon it was the general custom in