Take, as a sample, two hausfraus chatting sociably across a market stall. "And is your mother living yet?" With mournful air the other shakes her head. "Not yet!" she answers. And that gives you just a slight idea of English as she's spoke among the Pennsylvania Dutch!

Take, now, that classical expression uttered by a youngster watching as a freight train rumbled by: "Mom, ven it comes a little red box, why then the train's all, ain't?" His actual words-I have an ear witness to prove it! Consider, too, the watchman who in days gone by went bawling through the streets at midnight.- "Twelf o'glock-all's well Makes somesing down like a drizzle!"

They sound incredible to outland ears, their weird distortions of the English tongue. But not so weird, perhaps, when you remember that your Pennsylvania Dutchman has three languages to wrestle with. He has the German of his hymnbook and his Bible, brought by his forefathers from their native lands and used tiH fairly recently in church and school; he has the dialect he speaks at home; and worst of all-to him-he has the language taught him in our schools today. No wonder he's thoroughly con- fused at times, and gets the order of his English words all mixed up with the order of his mother tongue!

He "goes the road up" and he "turns the gate in", and he "goes to work and does" a thing, no matter how uncomplicated it may be. "I gif you right" is how he tells you he agrees with you. "Oy, anyhow!" implies complete amazement. "Yes, it wonders me I" or "I was wonderful sick last week", or even (cross my heart!), "It wonders me wonderful I" He speaks of a "toot" instead of a paper bag, and talks about a "herschel" when he means a storm. He warns you to watch out for "blutzes", me bumpy places.

And, just as Pennsylvania Dutch itself includes some English words, so, vice versa, your bewildered linguist scatters dialect expressions through his English with a carefree hand. "It kreistles me", he'll tell you, meaning that it makes him shudder. "Now stop rutsching roundl" he scolds his small boy fidgeting upon a bench. And, "Sadie, your hair's strubley", is his way of telling little daughter that her crowning glory isn't sleek and smooth. "He's such a doppel!" brands a person as awkward, a schussel is the name he gives a careless, lazy one.

Examples of this Pennsylvania Dutch idea of English could be cited until doomsday. "Ach, don't talk so dumb!"-"Go make the door shut"-"Wait until I make my dirt away" (clean up)-"Outen the light" -"It happened in the hind part of July"-"The bell don't make."

With all these pitfalls of the English language waiting to engulf him, it's hardly to be wondered that one old farmer felt the way he did about the whole confounded business. Coming home from work one evening to be told an English speaking person wished to see him, he let out a gusty sigh. "Ach, such a dog's lifel" he remarked disgustedly. "Work hard all day I must, then in the evening I speak English yet!"


Excerpted from Pennsylvania Dutch Cookery, J, George Frederick, 1935, The Business Bourse

The high quality of the Pennsylvania Dutch was especially noticeable in the first group of Germans to arrive in America in 1683. Their vigor of mind and outlook on life is proved by the fact that in 1688, only five years after landing, they were the authors of the very first organized protest against slavery made in America. The names of Francis Daniel Pastorius, Dirck Op den Graeff, Abraham Op den Graeff and Gerhard Hendricks were thus immortalized as the harbingers of America's liberal stand almost two centuries later against this oldest of human curses. They used almost Lincolnian language in their protest, calling slavery "traffic in the bodies of men." Slavery had been introduced into America in 1609 at Jamestown, Virginia, and the bondages of some of the Dutch for their passage money was also smacking of slavery. This protest was quite of a piece with the sense of social justice which made the Pennsylvania Dutch so liberal and honorable in their dealings with Indians, and with the instant readiness of the. Dutch to fight English tyranny in 1776.

The coming of the larger body of Mennonites in 1710, Swiss-German religionists of a very unique order, then set the stage for more demonstration of the quality of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Martin Kundig, at Amsterdam, Holland, took title for the Men- nonites to 10,000 acres at Conestoga, and when he had shepherd- ed the first group to America went back to Germany and Switzerland for more, perhaps visioning for these people the actual fact of 1935 that Lancaster County (where they settled) was to be the richest agricultural county in the entire United States (thanks largely to their industry and skill). Not even the lush lands of the Mississippi Valley have been able to seize from Lancaster County the laurels of America's most highly developed agricultural county.

Nothing was more remarkable in all colonial America than the haven of religious freedom which Pennsylvania offered. Both New England and the south were intolerant to other religious sects, but Pennsylvania opened its arms wide to every shade of religious expression and belief. As the Palatinate and nearby regions were seething with new sects, they were attracted to Pennsylvania as by a magnet. Perfectly astounding was the array of sects pouring into Pennsylvania and living side by side with but a small amount of friction: not only Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, Dunkers, Crefelders, Moravians, United Brethern, Shakers, Seventh Day Adventists, Huegenots and Amish (all of whom survive today), but also minor sects such as Labadists, New Born, Zion's Brueder, Ronsdorfer, Inspired, Gitchtelians, Depellians, Mountain Men, River Brethern, Brinser Brethern, Atheists, Naturalists, etc.

Probably never before nor since was there such a melting pot of religion. Yet aside from a few slappings in church when the Moravians tried to annex these sects there was no overt strife. These people were endlessly thankful and proud of their opportunity to worship as they pleased. So little difference was there between sects that it has long been said that, as between Amish and Mennonite, the only distinction is that one uses hooks and eyes to fasten their coats and the other uses buttonsf But behind this seemingly ridiculous difference lies the fact that the Amish distaste for buttons is based on distaste for war-buttons being the age-old insignia of soldiery.

Various similar sects established themselves in Lancaster County, the Seventh Day Adventists (who make Saturday their Sunday, and whose right to do this was affirmed by George Washington himself. It was this sect which settled around Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and built there what still remain some of the oldest and most interesting historical buildings in America, well worth traveling hundreds of miles to see. Being ascetics, they separated men and women; building a huge many-roomed "brother house" (no longer in existence) and a similar "sister house," which is the thing to see. These great community houses contained dozens of rooms, only about 5 x 10 feet in dimension, furnished only with wooden benches for bed and wooden blocks for pillows. They lived a communistic existence, dressing uniformly in sombre colors, worshipping in a chapel entered by a low door compelling en- trants to bow their heads--to induce humility. They conducted a wide range of industry, their looms, utensils and full equipment of tools are still to be seen today-an invaluable museum of early colonial craft.

Their particular renown in American history is that in 1748 they printed and bound the famous Martyr Book for the first time in America, from their own hand-made types. This feat (requiring 15 men for 3 years) by colonists who had to hew their timber, clear their land, and carve a subsistence out of the primeval forest, still inhabited by Indians, is certainly one to marvel at.

All the Dutch country in Pennsylvania was pure forest land when the emigrants tackled it, and is in sections mountainous and difficult. The Dutch had to clear it and cultivate it, build roads, schools, churches precisely as did other pioneers settling in America. They colonized in Bucks, Montgomery, Berks, Lancaster counties, and later in York, Cumberland, Northampton, Dauphin, Lebanon and Lehigh counties. Virtually the entire southeastern quarter of Pennsylvania is Dutch territory, except for the extreme southeastern tip, which is Quaker.

Fortune favored the Dutch not only in the kind good friend they found in William Penn, but also in the opportunity they had to take title to the splendidly fertile eastern Pennsylvania lands. Their cleverness was demonstrated in the fact that they picked the most heavily wooded tracts, knowing that these were the most fertile. Willingly they cut down these forests and dug out the stumps, while less agriculturally intelligent Scotch-Irish farmers picked more open but less fertile ground. As luck would have it, the limestone character of the soil, and even the climate, was approximately what it was in the Rhine Valley. Their practical lore, not only in farming but in a great many arts and crafts, was of a very high order. Their personal qualities of thrift and industry were prodigious. As early as 1747 Governor Thomas of Pennsylvania admitted that the Dutch had mainly been instrumental in "raising the state beyond any of His Majesty's colonies in North America."

It is perfectly true that the Dutch carried thrift and saving and industry to a fault; selling everything and living on little; but when one understands their origins and what for centuries they had been through in the Palatinate, one realizes how it was with the Dutch. The long deprivation and devastation they had en- dured in the old country trained them to the point almost of neurosis, to waste nothing and to make full use of opportunity. The Scotch in their stony and much fought-over Scotland, and the Jews in their long persecution everywhere, have had the same qualities built into their characters, for precisely the same reasons.

Unfortunately it must be recorded that because of this intense concentration on pioneering coupled with language isolation, the Dutch for over half a century entered into a kind of retrogressive backward period, very much like that experienced by settlers in isolated western and southern regions. The Dutch were not isolated by distance, but they were by language and pioneering necessity. They had a long job of clearing the soil and building themselves up to the more bountiful standards of physical well-being they had known in better days, and they suffered enormously from lack of education and contacts. They had desperately little chance for culture after the original emigrants died. Having sought the farms, not the towns, and since, until after the Revolution, these farms were far apart, schooling meagre and difficult, and labor very onerous, (as each farm and family had to be almost completely self-sustaining). The new generations of Dutch had to live by tradition, religion and instinct. In practical arts they were adept indeed; it has been calculated that a Dutch farmer of the period and his wife were masters of a total of 132 separate techniques. Every farrner was his own blacksmith, veterinary, miller, shoemaker, butcher, baker and candlestick maker, and every farmer's wife her own textile mill, canner, soap-maker, preserver, dairy, gardener, etc. Perhaps once or twice a year a visit was made to a city, and perhaps in the spring a pack-peddler came with sundries.

Culturally this was very bad. It inaugurated a hundred years of backwardness. The original cultured Dutch passed away, and those later comers who were still alive and had been cultured in the old country found little use for culture in a pioneering farming community where even visits to neighbors were infrequent. Travelers would sometimes be astonished to find at some rural Berks or Lancaster or Bucks County inn behind the bar a Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been a member of Parliament in Frankfortl Such things were inevitable---quite comparable to finding men herding cattle in Africa or Australia who had been university teachers in London.

Their culture had virtually to be confined to handicraft. And never was there a more superb opportunity for the use of practical arts and skillsl The Pennsylvania Dutch rose to this opportunity in a manner which makes their accomplishments a very prominent part of American history in such matters. They needed furniture, so they made it for themselves--and in so doing developed an authentic furniture period-Early Pennsylvania Dutch. They needed pottery and glassware-and they revived what the Romans, the Syri- ans and the Persians had taught their ancestors and made brilliant use of it, as exhibits in great museums now abundantly testify. They needed great wagons, and so they developed Conestoga wagons. And so on down the line of many crafts and arts. It was not arts and crafts or spiritual quality which were lacking and which were smothered in the Pennsylvania Dutch "dark age" (1710-1800) -it was just plain educational facility, books and contact with the world. It was also the fatal, but human choice they made to cling to their language instead of dropping it for English, as their own great leaders urged them to. The lack of these things was most unfortunate, for it has taken many genera- tions of modern facilities to overcome the language handicap and the loss of the original cultural standing of the Pennsylvania Dutch, and to fully integrate these peoples with modern life. It is only now being accomplished definitely.

Even so the Dutch clung with great tenaciousness to their culture. But this culture was dependent on the German language, and as we know all foreign language cultures in America, even in large cities, must of necessity tend to shrink and disappear. This Pennsylvania Dutch culture was the first foreign language culture in America, and it had far too little opportunity for communal encouragement. Nevertheless, the Dutch even as late as 1753 (on the statement of Benjamin Franklin himselo were holding on to their culture vigorously. Franklin complained that of the six printing presses in Philadelphia two were Dutch and two more were half Dutch. The Dutch were actually printing more and technically better books than literary Boston! Furthermore Franklin actually feared that the Dutch would "outnumber the English and make government and language precarious." He also rather contradicted himself in his statement, for his criticisms that the Dutch were illiterate and backward did not seem to jibe with his statements about most of the printers being Dutch, and also his statement that they imported many books from Germany. The truth is that there was such a strong set of differences between the Dutch and the English that they were bound to dislike each other to some extent. Whatever backwardness and illiteracy the Dutch suffered was due to the serious handicap of dependence on high German for their reading, a German which was not even their own Palatinate German. They faced the appalling necessity of com- pletely shifting their basic language and literature and coalescing with the colonial English. If they had lived in cities this could have been accomplished within a few generations; but living as they did on isolated farms scattered over thousands of square miles of territory, and divided as they were into many religious sects, this proved to be a herculean task needing a century and a half of time. The very lauguage of the Dutch was hammered by necessity into new form. There were from the beginning dialect differences between themselves North German, South German, Swiss, Alsatian and local dialect variations. After a century there was formed a very distinct and fairly unified Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. Prof. Samuel Stehman Haldeman, famous philogist, and Dr. Walter J. Hoffman agree that the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect is not, as is often said, a corrupt form of German. They certify that it is a legitimate South German dialect (with later added elements of English) consisting largely of the characteristics of the Pfalz dialect, in the main. Pennsylvania Dutch, says Dr. Hoffman, is characterized by an abundance of nasalized terminal vowel sounds, with a peculiar drawl and prolonged intonation. On the authority of Jacob Geismar of Wiesbaden in the Palatinate, the Pennsylvania Dutch language is easily intelligible to the Germans living today in the Rhine country. Karl Nadler's poems published in 1880 in Germany are in the Palatinate German language, and can be enjoyed and understood in almost their entirety by a literate Pennsylvania Dutchman.

The Pennsylvania Dutch did not, however, until a century or so later, attempt to write in Pennsylvania Dutch. They were still devout religionists, the German Bible their master book. Chris- tian Sauer in Germantown in 1843 printed the first Bible in German in America. In their churches they heard (and to some extent in remote rural sections still do hear) only high German language sermons. Their own everyday idioms were for week days. With their Sunday clothes on, at church, they tried to fol- low the preacher in high German. Their everyday language, Pennsylvania Dutch, had no literature; indeed had some sectional variations. The language which they were taught in school (in the few months of the year they could go) was for nearly a century German and English-which they heard almost nowhere else. Is it any wonder that their syntax became twisted, their reading negligible and their intonations peculiar? They lived in a three-dimensional language world, with the serious drawback that their most familiar language had no literature and no dictionary. Not even the Tennessee and Kentucky mountaineers have ever labored under such drawbacks. This is all the more sad and ironical when one realizes that the very first school text- book in all America was written by a Dutchman, Francis Daniel Pastorius.

Before about 1880 the Dutch were like a nation within a nation, with a folk-lore and habits and characteristics quite peculiar to themselves, especially in the rural and semi-rural districts. Their festivals, their cookery, their superstitions, their marriage and funeral customs, their handicraft and decorative ideas being quite sharply marked and unique. They had little intercourse with the rest of the nation; indeed little with the cities of their ow n Pennsylvania Dutch section. My grandmother told me how, living 25 miles from Reading, she considered it a remarkable treat to get to this city once a year or every other year. Homs being needed for the farm it was the custom of the time (nearly a hundred years ago) for adventurous young people to start off on a hike to the city on such rare occasions. Young men and young women alike would swing their hand-made cow-hide shoes over their shoulders and walk barefoot until within a few miles of Reading, when they would put on the precious shoes and greet their city friends. Today her great grandchildren hop into an automobile after dinner and go to the theatre in Reading and are back before midnight.

Even going to school or church required a good deal of energy, for Pennsylvania is hilly and in the winter bad roads, snow-drifts and other difficulties often prevented very regular attendance at the few and widely separated schools.

Another important distinction to make about the Pennsylvania Dutch is that they did not, like the New Englander, turn to manufacture and sea-faring; nor did they lean, like the southerner, upon slave labor. They have remained a self-reliant agricultural people to the last, even today, when farming in most other sections of the country has been bankrupt. Through panic and war and pestilence the Pennsylvania Dutch not only maintained themselves and prospered, but what is more difficult, retained their essential virtues and characteristics; even their sectarian religions; even their stubbornness and their dialects; both of these latter being, of course, severe cultural handicaps, making for isolation. But this is passing.

The second significance of the Dutch background, it seems to me, is its rounded variety, inclusive of color and art and music. This is a very important statement to make about American life, because the truth is that no other early American colonists brought to these shores any very pronounced interest in art and color and music. Indeed many of the colonists (including the Quakers, near neighbors of the Dutch) were actually violently opposed, on account of religious prejudice, to music, gaiety, color, and the humanistic pleasures of life. This greatly impoverished the colonies and got America off to a false start in creative values. But not so the Dutch. From their Palatine, Bohemian, Bavarian, Swabian, Swiss lands they brought with them intact a richness of personality which excluded no one of the major temperamental values and pleasures of life; no one of the joys of appetite; and with these they also brought creatin,e imagination of a first-rate kind in handicraft, pottery, glass, iron, wood, linen.

Take color, for instance. The woodwork in my grandmother's farm house was painted in the most thrilling colors-a gay peacock blue; while the walls were painted a combination of pink and blue. Red, too, was abundant. Never had I seen before a home so colorful. As I reflect on it now, it was almost Russian in its high colors. Even in their barn yards they had peacocks because they loved their color. The Dutch bright red barns are also famous-you rarely see them anywhere else, from coast to coast. Yellow and green were also to be found. As for the bridal chests and other objects of furniture, they were all superbly decorated. Go to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, or Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, and see the roomsful of authentic Dutch objects, now held very high in art value. The sgraffito pottery and the Fractur work represent work of authentic high artistry. The English called the specially highly colored China they made for the Dutch by the generic name "gaudy Dutch," since in no English speaking country of the time was high color so deeply loved as by the Dutch. The Dutch made stone china of red and white and blue; plates with hand-painted tulips and pomegranates with orange-yellow, black and olive green; at their own early potteries they fashioned earthen pie plates, red and white and black, and a wide variety of glass and pottery ware, decorated woodwork, rugs, textiles, all testifying to the uninhibited response to gay color by the Dutch. Even the religious sects among them were not at all afraid of it-the only reservation by the Dutch being against putting gay colors on their persons.

Particularly the Dutch wornen loved color and always had plenty of it about them. They loved peacocks and tulips to distraction for their gorgeous color, and luxuries though they were, they possessed them, and wove them into many of their art motifs, in textiles and wood. Even their birth or christening certificates (taufchein) were made into elaborate color and design; angel women with golden wings; birds with green, crimson and yellow plumage. Their rag carpets, with colored wool warp, rival the rainbow. Even the mirrors, clocks, chairs, settees, chests, etc., are stenciled in colors. The bed spreads, quilts, etc. are alive with color-as are the names of some of their designs "Last Rose in the Wilderness," "Flower Pot" "Bird of Paradise," "The Pierced Pineapple," "Full-blown Tulip," "The Garden Basket," etc.

The only other colorful spirits in America as free temperamentally, were perhaps certain of the Southerners they too were lacking in complexes and repressions. The Pennsylvania Dutch have been born humanists always. Even the religious sects (Amish, Mennonite, Shaker, Dunkers, etc), took their religion rather extravertly and not introvertly; that is to say their souls were not great consuming fires of tortured conscience and internal conflict, as the Puritan's soul was so usually. The gentle, smooth, un- troubled faces of these Dutch sect people are evidence even today of the inner calm and peace with life which they possess. As Prof. Weygandt says of the Dutch, "We accept human nature as it is, and we rejoice in all the instincts that it gives us." That is the true humanistic philosophy, and its central principle "of nothing too much," is as Pennsylvania Dutch as it is Greek. The Dutch never had a fear, like the Puritans and Quakers, that music or color or fleshly appetites were going to send them to hell. Nor that a hearty trencherman interest in food would stultify their souls.

In industry too the Dutch early showed great facility. William Rittenhouse in 1690---only seven years after the first landing of the Dutch-set up America's first paper mill on a little stream called Paper Mill Run. Here paper was made by hand-250 pounds per day. A dozen other paper mills were started by the Dutch a little later, and some of these are still running, making particularly high grades of paper; for instance the old Van Reed mill on the Tulpehocken.

In flour milling the Dutch were also the best, the roller mill flour made at Wertz' mill along the Tulpehocken being shipped a hundred years ago by canal to the entire East. There exist today many very picturesque flour mills in the Dutch country. Daniel Boone, coming back to the Dutchland of his birth before he died, desired to see the old Hans Schneider mill in Exeter, remembered of his boyhood, and built in 1734. It was indeed Daniel Boone's grandfather, George Boone, who set up the first mill in Berks county (1726).

Very early too the Dutch developed charcoal iron furnaces, and dozens of these were in operation throughout the Dutch territory for 150 years. In the Revolution the iron furnaces of Baron Stiegel, Ege, Udree and others were of incalculable value to the American cause. Thomas Rutter and Thomas Potts built the first blast furnace in Pennsylvania at Colebrookdale in 1720, and some of the artistic stove plates which are now collector's items were made here. It was John Fritz, a Dutchman, who founded the Bethlehem Iron Company, which today is the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, headed by another Dutchman, Charles F. Schwab. B. F. Fackenthal also became a very prominent ironmaster, as did George F. Baer. The great steel man Henry Clay Frick was Dutch. The early cast iron stoves of the Dutch are now eagerly collected, for the Dutch applied art design on the stove plates, making the stoves things of beauty. (Read The Bible in Iron).

In printing the work of Billmeyer and Christian Sauer-and his Germantown press were notable, setting up the Bible in German in 1743. Conrad Beisell's Ephrata press in 1745, using hand made types for a 1512 page Martyr Book, was most notable.

Later in textiles the Dutch developed special facility, helping to make Philadelphia, Reading, Allentown and other cities great textile centers-in silk, hosiery, carpets, etc.

In glassware of course Baron Stiegel and Wistar are very fam- ous names of the very highest rank.

In the mercantile field Frank W. Woolworth and John Wanamaker were top-notch figures. In candy manufacture William H. Luden and Milton Snavely Hershey are national, even international figures. David O. Saylor developed the great Portland cement industry along the Delaware.

In the sciences the Dutch have no mean record. Johannes Kelpius and David Rittenhouse, early arrivals, were competent astronomers, while James Lick, after whom the great Lick Observatory was named, was a Dutchman. Prof. James A. Mower is also a Dutch scientist. Melsheimer is the father of American entomology, and in surgery and medicine Dr. Caspar Wistar, Leidy and Pfeffer are well known names. Prof. Samuel David Gross was an international figure in surgery.

(President International Medical Congress, and author of first manual of military surgery.) That prize asset of Pennsylvania, anthracite coal, was discovered by two Dutchmen. One, a gunsmith near Nazareth in 1755 used lumps of it brought by an Indian, and another Dutchman, Phillip Ginter, discovered it in 1791 (see Egle's History of the Commonwealth of Penna, 1883). In education, Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians deserve credit for being pioneers in education for young women; a circumstance which gives the lie to statements sometimes made that the Dutch do not give their wo- men a high rating. In education George Wharton Pepper, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and Adam H. Fetterolf, president of Girard College have been outstanding examples, as well as other men such as Prof. Samuel C. Schmucker and Prof. Charles Rudy.

Among authors Reichenbach and Koester (who composed the first Latin work in America) were earlier names. Bayard Taylor, poet and essayist, was half Quaker and half Dutch. Among modern authors Joseph Hegesheimer, Theodore Dreiser, Elsie Singmaster, Lowell Thomas, Helen Reimensnyder Martin, Prof. Cornelius Weygandt, Col. Thomas H. Zimmerman, poet, Reginald Wright Kauffman, and others are well known. Prof. Harbaugh has written some delightful books of Dutch dialect verse, Harbaugh's Harfe, and so have half a dozen others. Elmer Greensfelder is a dramatist whose play about the Pennsylvania Dutch ("Broomsticks") ran on Broadway in 1934.

Among governors of Pennsylvania, there have been a number of Dutch-Joseph Hiester, George Wolf, Joseph Ritner, John Andrew Schulze, John Frederick Hartranft, Samuel W. Pennypacker. In politics the new progressiveness of the Dutch is illustrated in the notable Socialist government of the city of Reading.

In law, judge Peter Stenger Grosscup, of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Chicago, won very high place. In publishing, few men attained such fame as Dr. Isaac K. Funk, head of Funk & Wagnalls, publishers of books, encyclopedias and of the Literary Digest. Dr. Funk's interests have been exceptionally broad and public-spirited. In diplomacy and public work Ralph Beaver Strassburger attained high rank, is prominent as a publisher, and is the author of a book on early Dutch history.

In music there is Paul Althouse, well known Metropolitan Opera singer, (with whom I remember singing as a boy in a Reading Episcopal church choir). There was another Metropolitan Opera singer, Miss India N. Waelchi, who sang with Caruso. And there is Fred Hufsmith, tenor with the National Broadcast- ing Co. In the theatre there is the famous screen star Clark Gable. In stage acrobatics and in baseball a number of the Dutch have also distinguished themselves.

Finally, the Dutch achieved a President of the United States, Herbert Hoover whose ancestor was Andreas Huber, arriving in 1740 and moving to Carolina. Huber was a Dutch Quaker--descendant of one of the converts William Penn made in the Palatinate.

The Dutch, even before they came to America, had seen plenty of soldiering, and it is therefore not surprising that they ranked high in Revolutionary soldiering-nor that in the great World War America picked as the head of her entire army, the largest in American history, General John J. Pershing, a Dutchman.

One of the great authentic historical contributions of the Pennsylvania Dutch of Colonial and pioneering times was the Conestoga covered wagon, which represents one of the major expressions of American genius for transportation. The epic of the settlement of America might not have occurred had not the Conestoga wagon been developed by the competent Dutch carpenters, smiths and wheelrights of Pennsylvania; for what the railroad coach or the freight car is to transportation today the Conestoga covered wagon was to pioneer America.

It is interesting-because it is so little known-to look into the origins of the Conestoga Wagon. The very first Pennsylvania Dutch settlers in the Pennsylvania wilderness away from Philadelphia went to Lancaster county, in the land of the Conestoga Indians; a very powerful and brave tribe which for a long time was able to resist the Iroquois, until 1675 when they were overwhelmed. Eight years later the Dutch came and built up the territory. The artisans among these and other groups which later settled here brought from Germany the memory of covered wagons which in the far-off mediaeval wars had been used to transport goods and people (often to escape invaders). These Conestoga Dutch needed such large wagons themselves, and then they developed for the use of pioneers going westward in America con- stantly larger and sturdier models of covered wagons, which came to he known the nation over as Conestoga wagons, (because of their use with a special breed of Conestoga horses). The distinguishing feature of all Conestoga wagons is the boat-like curves of the wagon body, hanging low in the middle. Also the very broad wheel rims. The Dutch had built these wagons first (about 1725) for themselves to transport their large crops of food and grain to Philadelphia and to other far-off markets. There being few bridges, these wagons had to ford creeks and go through rough weather and rougher terrain. The reason for the curved body was to prevent the cargo from shifting from front to rear, or vice versa, when traveling bad roads. The Conestoga wagon cargo tended, under any conditions, to settle safely toward the middle. The broad wheel-rims also tended to prevent miring in mud and stream.

It was Benjamin Franklin himself (who practical man that he was) saw the superb usefulness of this cunningly contrived wagon. Gen. Braddock in 1755 complained in Philadelphia to Franklin of his difficulties of transport, for the French and Indian war supplies. Canny Ben Franklin at once told Braddock to insert in his newspaper an ad for men with Conestoga wagons. The Dutch, always ready for something profitable and adventurous, responded handsomely, and Braddock had no more transport trouble. The lesson was well-learned; both in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812 the Pennsylvania Dutch Conestoga wagons were precious useful assets.

The Dutch wagon-makers learned things, too, from this experience. The Conestoga wagons were made ever larger and larger. Very few people today realize what giants and what highly efficient transportation units they were during the time of the great westward hol period. The over-all measurement of a six-horse Conestoga outfit at its hey-dey was sixty feet. The wagon itself was 16 feet long, with 13 wooden bows rising over the body, covered with 25 feet of homespun canvas. The top of the wagon was usually 11 or 12 feet from the ground. The rear wheels were 5 or 6 feet in diameter-as tall as a tall man. The timbers were selected oak, hand-hewn and superbly carpentered. The wagons were very colorful, too, with their high seats, their running gear painted a bright red and blue. The picturesqueness of the covered wagon was further enhanced by the accessories-the "lazy board"-a projection on the right side of the wagon on which the driver often sat (this actually inaugurating the distinctly American custom of right-hand drive). There was also the tar bucket on the coupling pole, the tool box on the left side, and the feed box on the front. The horses wore bells and queer trappings.

What mighty engines of transportation they were may be seen in the fact that they carried loads of six or eight tons. Our best modern automobile trucks have to he very big and strong indeed to carry such a load--even over good roads. The Conestoga wagons had to carry their six or eight tons over untracked wilds and prairie, over corduroy forest trails and through creeks and rivers -in lands infested with hostile Indians compelling often (as all moviegoers know) the use of the wagon for a fort. Thousands of pioneer families made these great wagons their homes on five- month journeys across the entire continent, over the famous trails. No wonder these great Pennsylvania Dutch wagons were called American "inland ships."

At the height of America's trek westward, sometimes 2,500 or 3,000 of these covered wagons would pass a given western point in a single day! In one year 42,000 people crossed the plains in these wagons. The rumbling noise of such caravans was an awe- inspiring sound, as well as a heart-stirring sight. They constituted America's "overland limited" trains before 1848, and the sturdy Dutch workmanship on them saved many a family from disaster. With the coming of railways they naturally passed out of existence.

The imagination of the Dutch, due to their language handicap, was rarely expressed in written words, although there exists now a fair amount of verse and story in dialect, written in the last 40 years. The imagination of the Dutch was expressed precisely as was that of their ancestors, the Rhine Valley and Black Forest people-in legends and superstitious tales, told orally. The ancient forbears of the Pennsylvania Dutch originated in the very part of Germany from which many great legends came. Wagner immortalized a Dutch ancestor, Herman I in his opera Tannhauser. The Wild Hunstman is still a real person to some Dutch, as is also the Elbadrickel a mythical bird whom innocents are posted to catch, but which none has ever seen. The same is true of the dragons which legend says resided in the various large limestone caves of the region; Crystal Cave, French Creek and Plum Creek, for example.

The "hex" (witch) is so definite a reality that now and then, in remote Dutch regions, it creates tragedy and the Associated Press wires hum with the tale. "Hexerei" or witchcraft has for half a century been given much space in the news about the Dutch-but the very fact that it is news when something happens concerning a "hex" in Pennsylvania shows that the matter is not a common occurrence.

Because their mediaeval legends and arts have never ceased to have a hold upon them, the Dutch have always at least toyed with the "hex" or witch theme. In the more backwoods illiterate sections it sometimes obsesses a few people. The "hex" stuff is merely general mediaeval black medicine magic and has a utilitarian basis. The "Hex Buch" (Johann George Hohman's Lange Verborgen Freund-"The Long-Lost Friend,," first published at Reading in 1820) is in reality a sort of household remedy book, or faith healing manual. Research has established that Hohman got his material for the book from Egyptian Secrets of White and Black Magic compiled by Albertus Magnus, a learned German monk of about 1225.

This Hex Buch is a somewhat harmless compilation of superstitious rituals, no different from the "don't walk under a ladder" type of superstitions which were found in a recent investigation to be believed even by large numbers of college students throughout America, 1935! The Dutch simply have their own special set of such superstitions. An axe under a bed will cure a hemorrhage; a rose seed, a mustard seed and the foot of a weasel held in a fisherman's hands will make the fish bite; an egg boiled in rain water caught before sunrise, and pierced with three holes and left to be eaten by ants will keep an invalid from wasting away. You mustn't shingle a roof except with the up-going of the moon, etc., etc. The world, from pole to pole, is full of just such superstitious ideas, and Park Avenue, New York, or even the campuses of Yale or Harvard are not free from them. This is no "defense" of my own-Prof. George L. Kittredge of Harvard, an authority on witchcraft beliefs, says "Pennsylvania should not be regarded as particularly discredited on account of belief in witches . . . . .in my opinion such belief is held, in some form or other, by nine-tenths of the human race."

The Dutch hex doctor in most cases is the simplest of faith healers. If, for example, he is asked to cure a case of hysteria he places the first knuckle of his thumb on the bare skin near the patient's heart and mumbles, "Matrix, patrix, lay thyself right and safe, or thou and I shall on the third day fill the grave." He cures just about as readily as medical doctors in such cases, because the difficulty is mental. There is no mystery about it. Many very respectable cults and some very high-placed American peo- ple of today, with two or three generations of culture and college education behind them, patronize astrologers, numerologists and various faith-healing cults. To regard the comparatively few simple rural Dutch folk who still cling to their old Hex Buch is snobbery and hypocrisy. Many other than the Dutch believe that amber heads will drive away goitre or hazelnuts drive off sciatica, a gold wedding ring drive away a sty on the eye. Save for an exception here and there, the comparatively few pow-wow doctors who still practice are admittedly not charlatans, but simply normal folk who use autosuggestion on their patients, with the aid of some entirely harmless "mumbo-jumbo" which is as old as man himself, and as widespread even today.

The Dutch are not fanatics about their belief in "hexerei," they call in a real doctor for any serious ailment. Only once every few years is there some abnormality such as the Rehmeyer murder in York county' or the Shinsky killing in Lebanon county, or the Fritz case of a boy cutting his his sister. All of these folk were isolated mountain folk, and some were recent insane asylum patients. Slightly deranged minds sometimes become obsessed in the Dutch country, quite as they do elsewhere. Abnormally fearsome People sometixne run to a hex doctor believing that an evil hex is after them. The hex doctor soothes them with the mumbled words "Dullix, ix, ix-yes, you can't come over, Pontio. Pontio is above Pilato"-and thus the hex doctor sometimes saves a half-cracked brain from some other serious aberration, in a not much different manner than the medical doctor who gives a patient colored water as medicine and does not laugh at his groundless fears. Hexerei in the Dutch country is passing away just as rapidly, but no more rapidly, than superstitious beliefs anywhere. The Dutch hex doctors keep their incantations closely related to the Bible and reiterate scriptural mottoes. I doubt very much whether any of the superstitious rituals now obsessing Park Avenue or London (where in the last few years superstitions and magic cults have greatly increased their vogue) are as fundamentally harmless and as little of a racket as the Dutch "hexerei. The Dutch "Himmels brief(letter from heaven), believed in by a gradually declining small number of Dutch rural peoples, is of the same order as "hexer-ei," but has no more and no less superstition and black magic in it than the astrologic readings which even J. Pierpont Morgan is reputed to have believed in, and which nets dozens of large fortunes to practitioners of this genuine black art racket. As a matter of fact the Dutch never excited themselves to one-twentieth the frenzy over witches that Puritan Salem did. Witches have been the common folk-tale inheritance of most races, even Oriental ones. That there are still some backward regions in Dutch-land where "hexes" are believed in is not in the least surprising; it proves little except that the Dutch have been amazingly tenacious like many other hill folk, in clinging to certain old traditions.

Their traditions of courting (among the Amish) are naively delightful. An Amish farmer, when his daughter reaches marriageable age, will paint his gate blue--a most efficient signal for a swain! In olden days it was perfectly correct for any swain, even a stranger, to rap at the door of an evening, enter and sit down, without a word-perfectly sure that his mission would be understoodl

The Dutch are not as progressive and modern in some things that matter; but in others they are surprisingly alert. For example some communities of Dutch farmers have for a century past set their clock ahead in summer. Daylight saving may thus perhaps he said to be a Dutch invention!

Their imaginations have always been lively, however, even if limited in scope. Wierd tales of many kinds are told and retold. Lacking a standardized written language the Dutch became-like all imaginative peoples in a similar situation- most adept at tale-telling. Their memories were their books; their pens, their tongues. My grandmother was a marvel at it. She held us children spell-bound with her tales, from youth to adulthood. As an inn-keeper's wife and daughter (at the Black Horse.Inn, Fredericksville) she had since girlhood amused the guests of the inn, as well as her family. She knew every tale, every legend, every tradition, and she was superbly graphic and convincing.

The Dutch have not been a self-advertising people. Quite the reverse. They have been too insular; that is why it is an old joke that they still continue to vote for Andrew Jackson. (Now that for the first time in 45 years Pennsylvania has overthrown the Republican yoke, to the delight of most of the rest of the country, perhaps this old saw will lose its force!) The Dutch country is even today a territory more individual and redolent of America's earliest history and times than almost any other- the reason being I think that its ancient stone houses, so char- acteristic of the region, provide a rooted permanent character most distinct and separate. Colonial frame houses are now everywhere imitated, so that in England and the South the pre-Revolutionary structures still standing are either rotted away or hidden. But not so these seemingly everlasting, distinctive stone houses in Eastern Pennsylvania; these great red barns of the Dutch-land! Such great stone houses may be seen everywhere in Dutchland. One of the best is the Miller House at Millbach, Lebanon County (details available in print). Very early examples are Lincoln's great-great grandfather's birthplace, near Reading, and Daniel Boone's birthplace, nearby. Dutch stone houses are an architectural treat to see, and are now widely copied. (Incidentally, there is in all eastern America no more delightful automobile journey than into the Dutch country, which now has excellent roads).

Even the old inns still stand-but rather totteringly. It is a pity. At Fredericksville still stands the long stone "Black Horse Inn" which my great grandfather and his father before him ran; in days when stage-coach, horseback and wagon were the only transports. Not even the great sign, picturing the Black Horse, is now to be seen; it is now only a country store. In it in olden days my grandmother dispensed to the infrequent travelers hospitality as well as entertainment with the true Dutch prodi- gality. They had a farm to supply them, and the table groaned with its food-always plus the traditional "seven sweets and seven sours." Sometimes guests were snow-bound for days, for it is high on the hills, with magnificent views to the Blue Mountains on the north, and the fertile valleys to the south. For twenty-five cents in those days one could eat all one could hold of this bounty. Now the owner dispenses groceries and soda pop, and the old inn is entering its final period of decay. Unfortunately this is symptomatic of the Dutch hotel cuisine of old, for the day of the automobile has made country hotels a little superfluous. It is rare therefore that one stumbles upon a place-perhaps, a farm house-where a Dutchwoman lives whose hand still boasts a cunning such as my grandmother's; such as every Dutch girl half a century ago was taught. To help preserve its authentic gourmet values before it is flattened out by the march of the tin can, the hot dog stand and the delicatessen, as well as the modern "who cares" attitude, I have labored over this book.

As to the Dutch dialect Oscar Kuhn says in his book "nothing is more striking than their persistence in clinging to their dialect. Here we have a group of people living in the very heart of the U. S. surrounded on all sides by English-speaking people, almost every family having some of its branches thoroughly mixed by intermarriage with these people, yet still after the lapse of nearly 200 years retaining to a considerable degree the language of their ancestors." As they dropped their hold on the high German language, their own idioms and folk-lore became richer and more definitely defined. Andrew Bradford, famous colonial printer, had printed Conrad Beissel's Buchlein vom Sabbath in 1728; the Bible, German hymn books and the Mennonite Martyr Book, were in use for a century, but the young people of succeeding generations more and more neglected the high German and turned slowly toward English.

The Pennsylvania Dutch language was to survive even the better schooling in English and the automobile, newspaper, radio and moving picture. The situation, in 1935, is that cities and towns of 5,000 or more population are fairly thoroughly Anglicized. Only on farms and in these small towns is to be heard today much Pennsylvania Dutch and even these towns are changing rapidly. However it is much more difficult to lose the inflections and intonations and the tag-ends of idioms and syntax. "Dutchisms" such as "already yet" at the end of sentences are still to be heard frequently, as well as other re- cognizable idioms. Such expressions as "the bread is all" (meaning the bread is all gone), or "He is to the Sunday School gone," or "Run the stairs up and look the window out," and queer accenting, such as "red beets," still persists. The radio, auto- mobile, bus and good roads have put the little Dutch isolated communities into very active relationship with the rest of America, and the 400m of the language is now in sight. In another fifty, or at most a hundred years, it will doubtless be an almost dead language. The young people of today, even though their parents speak it, often refuse point-blank to speak it-and of course they are right. It is the same phenomenon to he seen with all people of non-English origin in America. For 253 years Pennsylvania Dutch has prevailed, and - its tenacity may be enough to keep it alive another half century at least. The transition of the language from high German to Dutch is illustrated in several Dutch adages as assembled by the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia:
English: "Live and let live"
German: "Leben und leben lassen"
Pennsylvania Dutch: "Mer mus lewa un lossa lewa."

One of the reasons why there is considerable English in the Dutch tongue is that these pioneers coming to America centuries ago with only seventeenth century German words, were obliged to find new words, both for new American objects, and also for new ideas, relationships and objects arising out of civilization's advance. There were no iron stoves, or any stoves, before they came here, so they called it eisenstove (iron stove), using a combination English and German. The same is true of such words as carving-messers (carving knives), gauls-blankets (horse blankets), etc. Words like office, endorse, etc., are taken over completely from English. Pennsylvania Dutch offers. plenty of material for interesting language research. The final character and accomplishment of the Dutch will be to integrate thoroughly and completely with their fellow-citizens -but without losing their own fine background values and skills.

Trucks, buses, and pleasure cars flash the Lincoln Highway between Philadelphia and Lancaster. The bustling county town slows their progress, but they soon whiz on, west-bound toward York.

In two or three hours this swift stream of traffic straks a route that six-horse Conestoga wagons used to labor along for days. It goes through a garden spot of America-rich farmlands tilled for generations by folk here born and bred and everywhere respected as master farmers.

Lincoln Highway (U. S. Route 30) is the base of a triangle in southeastern Pennsylvania formed by Philadelphia, York and Bethlehem. Within this region roughly lies the Pennsyl-vania Dutch country, the subject of my story.

Slow moving creeks wind through broad, limestone valleys and lose themselves in clumps of woods or disappear under covered bridges. Tremendous red barns tell of fat farms; geometrical designs are painted on many. Often red, too, are the dozen-roomed brick farmhouses mothering their broods of low-built springhouses, smokehouses, chicken-houses and pigpens.

Sturdy split-rail fences bound fields of tobacco, wheat and corn, potatoes, and pasturage.

Not a few motorists, however, fail to keep the speedy pace on entering this land of plenty. They slow down as boxlike, horse-drawn wagons pass. In the so-called "cheese boxes" bearded men in black broadbrims and their bonneted wives with long, full skirts prompt the comment: "Why, they look like people another world! "

So they are; and another world all our Pennsylvania German Land seems Approach it from any direction, and you are conscious that here the earth is rich, towns and villages neat, farmers industrious and orderly, brick churches red and frequent, taverns old and crowded with dormer windows.

Over the door of his cottage Francis Daniel Pastorius, leader of the first band of Germans to come to Pennsylvania, wrote an inscription in Latin which I have translated rather freely:

Sweet and pleasant breathe the breezes
Round my bothy in the glen;
But they waft no words of welcome
To the godless and profane.

On the sixth day of October, 1683, six weeks after Pastorius had landed, the "good ship Concord" arrived at Philadelphia, bearing "thirteen heads of families" and their wives.

There is no trustworthy record of the number of children. Weavers they were, and other artisans, Mennonites and Quakers by faith, many of Dutch ancestry, attracted to Pennsylvania by the earnest preaching of William Penn. They chose for their home a spot then in the remote wilderness, now the twenty-second ward of the city of Philadelphia, but still called Germantown.

The colony grew so rapidly that six years later it was compelled to incorporate. But, alas, men willing to hold the offices could not be found; Pastorius, who became its first mayor and chief citizen, had to impose a fine upon any elected officer refusing to serve. We are still like that! Most Pennsylvania Dutchmen consider public office a burden.

Eleven years later arrived a band of mystics led by Johann Kelpius. A platform of celibacy collapsed when the charm of Germantown's daughters undermined the ascetics' lonely life in caves. Only Kelpius continued his hermit ways, praying alone in his rock-bound chapel.

European wars, with privations and sufferings, and political and religious persecutions sent more Germans to the New World in 1709. The next year ten ships loaded with 3,000 refugees cast anchor in New York Harbor.

Most of the immigrants settled in the valley of the Mohawk, especially along the Schoharie. But reports from happy compatriots in Germantown led 300 families to abandon farms and homes, float down the Susquehanna to the Swatara, cross the divide, and settle in the Tulpehocken region of Pennsylvania.

Soon came others fated to grow in numbers and influence among us-a trickle of Amish and still more Mennonites, from Germany and Switzerland. Having landed, they decided to go so far into the wilderness that "the world" would never follow. They chose the Pequea Valley, about 60 miles inland, and established their homes. Here the eighth generation still ives, often on the very farm the original mem- )er of th e family cleared. And such farms is they are!

The German Baptist Brethren, known as Dunkards or Dunkers, landed in 1719. They, too, flocked to the fertile valleys in Lancaster County. Many spread westward and southward until today hardly a farming section of our country is without these master farmers.

Among the Brethren appeared, in time, Johann Conrad Beissel. He founded.a group that considered Saturday the true Sabbath and observed it as a holy day. Settling at Ephrata, they established a thriving monastic group.

The colony has virtually disintegrated now, but the "cloisters" of the enterprise still stand, a spot of interest to visitors.

Coming to Pennsylvania in 1734, the Schwenkfelders settled in what is now Montgomery County, but particularly in the valley of the Perkiomen. Since then, they have lived here to add their bit to the color and character of our region.

Among the last of the "Sects" to arrive, though far from small in numbers, were the Moravians. In 1735 a group migrated to the new American colony of Georgia, but moved north to Pennsvivania later. They purchased an immense tract of land on which the town of Nazareth now stands.

Here the Moravians established their industries, a dozen in number, and began their extensive and influential missionary work among the Indians.

The "redemptioners," too formed a large body, They came as the result of the operations of shipowners and land speculators. These gentleman found it profitable to lade the holds of their ships with bulky goods and the decks with passengers. To accomplish the latter, they advertised the glories of Pennsylvania. A circulat shows a lad sitting on the bank of a stream, herding geese; the longer one looks at the woodcut illustration, the more geese he sees.

"Many men in Pennsylvania own five hundred geese," avers the subscribed legend. "Bison peer from the forest; giant deer stalk the woodland lanes; two hunters stagger beneath the weight of a wild turkey; rye-heads of prodigious size vie with beets and cabbages of tremendous proportions; and fish struggle to impale themselves on the hook."

Ships groaned with those seeking plenty in the woodlands of William Penn. Many passengers, however, lacked the necessary fare. Such the shipowners brought as redemptioners. These men and women agreed to work for any persons to whom the shipowner should sell them, until they had earned their passage money.

Many were unskilled workmen or farm laborers-but not all. Witness this placard once displayed in Philadelphia:

There still remain on board the ship Aurora 18 passengers amongst whom are servant girls, sugar bakers, bread bakers, 1 shoemaker, 1 silversmith, 1 leather dresser, etc.... also for sale are 80 water casks, 1 chest of fowling pieces, and 15,000 bricks.

The migration made a tremendous drain upon the young male population of the cities in the Rhineland. The burgomaster of Berne feared a feminist uprising. To prevent it, that worthy hired a schoolmaster to present arguments against going to Pennsylvania.

"What is the gain," declared his booklet "of large' heads of rye in a land lacking smiths to make sickles, or the grain itself in without millwrights to build mills, or if no gunsmiths can be found to keep guns in repair?"

As a result numerous young Swiss mechanics arrived.

Of the sects to settle the Dutch country, Mennonites, Amish and Dunkards stand out prominently today for their determination to cling to a simple way of life. Because of their plain clothes and rigid adherence to customs of two centuries ago, they are known collectively as the "Plain People. By their magnificent farms and drab dress you will know them. They keep their homes, and other buildings brilliantly painted often in red, yet wear black or gray clothes.

The Mennonite sect takes its name from Menno Simons, a Dutch priest, though the views of these people originated in Switzerland. The principal tenets of the Church include nonresistance, nonswearing of oaths, nonparticipation in civil government, non-belief in infant baptism, and seclusion from the world. The Church still holds footwashing rituals and baptizes by pouring or sprinkling.

About 1693 a Swiss Mennonite, Jacob Amen, felt that the Church was slipping away from the rigid doctrines laid down by Menno Simons. With sympathizers Amen formed a group known as the "Amish." They virtually bent backwards to return to the original articles of faith.

Buttons gave way to less "worldly" hooks and eyes. Hair grew long about the men's shoulders. Their upper lips were clean-shaven, for a mustache was then the mark of a soldier. Married men only were allowed to grow chin whiskers. The Amish costumes of both men and women remain much the same today as those of two and a half centuries ago.

Even among these hard-working, hard-living, hard-praying folk differences led to divisions of the Amish sect. Broadly, there are two principal branches: House Amish (Old Order), and Church Amish (New Order). The former hold religious services in homes and barns; the latter have church buildings.

House Amish use only horse-drawn vehicles. They scorn such modern conveniences as electricity and telephone. Church Amish drive automobiles, may have their homes wired for light and telephone, and wear less drab clothes than the Old Order.

The Dunkards, or Dunkers, literally dipped into religion and their names through baptismal procedure. They practice trine immersion: that is, baptism by submerging three times in a stream or river-once for the Father, once for the Son, and once for th Holy Ghost. They refuse to bear arms or engage in quarrels, take an oath, or conform i many worldly ways.

Now, if you meet Plain People on a country road or city street, how can you tell Amish from Mennonites or from Dunkards? Easiest to distinguish are the Amish. Amishmen's hats have the flattest crowns and broadest brims; theirs are the bushiest and longest beards. Amish women's bulky bonnets cloak their heads almost like hoods; skirts, full are wide, fall to the ankles. Amish children are sartorial replicas of their parents.

Between Mennonites and Dunkards you will have more trouble. After months in the Dutch country, many persons are still unable to tell a Mennonite woman from a Dunkard. Both have small, black bonnets on the backs of their heads; skirts are neither long nor short.

Men of both sects may or may not be bearded, wear dark clothes, and black hats not so conspicuously broad-brimmed as those of Amishmen. The children, until taken into the Church, dress like any others outside the plain sects.

Churches of the Plain People are severely lacking in ornament. Simple, too, are the services-singing without accompaniment, prayer by members of the congregation, and serrmons usually beginning with the phrase, "It just occurred to me on the way here . . ."

Members of these churches will not go to court nor will they defend themselves against wrong. Were a thief to drive off a Mennonite's best cow, the farmer would do nothing except protest. He might, however, appeal to one of his "worldly" neighbors, who would crack the marauder over the head with a club and restore the stolen property.

Were an unscrupulous creditor to hale an Amishman into court, I can hear the judge declare as he surveys the defendant's long hair, lavish beard, and buttonless coat: "But the defendant is an Amishman. You had better settle out of court."

Not only the plain sects of the Pennsylvania Dutch country cling to centuries-old customs. At Manheim the Lutheran church still honors a tradition born in 1772. The deed to the plot of ground upon which the church stands stipulates that the rent shall be "one red rose annually in the month of June forever, if the same shall be lawfully demanded by the heirs, executors or assigns."

Owner of the property and author of the clause, "Baron" Henry William Stiegel was founder of the town, maker of Stiegel glass, and philanthropist whose generosity brought on poverty and death in obscurity.

Only twice did the Baron personally receive the rose. By the third year he had been cast into a debtor's prison; payments ceased and were forgotten until the mislaid deed was found 118 years later. In 1892 the tradition came to life again. A descendant of Stiegel living in Virginia journeyed to Manheim to receive the payment of one red rose.

Every year since then the Festival of the Red Rose has taken place on the second Sunday in June with a descendant of the Stiegel family on hand to accept the floral rent.

In founding the glassworks near Manheim, Stigel contributed a precious part to the Pennsylvania Dutch country's treasure chest of arts and crafts. Today rare Stiegel glass is widely sought by collectors and museums. One woman of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has spent more than thirty years and a small fortune assembling a collection she displays on a few short shelves in her home.

"Dutch" furniture, chinaware, pottery, counterpanes, rugs, artistic ironwork - all made by hand-are other art objects treasured in homes for generations.

Of much interest, too, are fractur paintings. These are vivid, carefully executed designs on certificates of birth, baptism, and marriage; title pages, wall texts, bookmarks, etc.-a hold-over of the ancient art of illumination in our modern age.

In out-of-the-way villages, in large towns, or on farms various small-scale trades have been handed down from father to son.

George Crouse lives on a farm a couple of miles from Reinholds. In a near-by stone house built by his grandfather in 1824, Crouse turns cow horns into hair combs.

Here an elderly workman with pincers takes a horn, previously slit by saw, from a big, black caldron containing a boiling oil solution. He runs it through rollers that look like an over- sized clothes wringer, and the horn comes out flat as a flounder. A hand-worked press flattens it further; a plunge into cold water gives it bonelike hardness.

Upstairs, Crouse's son saws the slab into sections measuring 9 by 2 inches. Crouse himself planes and polishes the pieces, then pushes them through a teeth-cutting machine. After more polishing, what was once a bovine bone of contention becomes an appeaser for unruly locks or a smoother for silky strands.

During the Revolution, Crouse's great-grandfather made combs from cow horns for soldiers. Ever since his grandfather settled here permanently, the family has followed the same trade in the original factory. As long as cows grow horns and the Crouses bear sons, the plant will flourish, the comb maker believes.

"Horn combs can stand sterilization," he explained, "so we ship a lot to hospitals."

"Where do you distribute?" I asked.

"All over the United States and even to the Philippines."

"To Europe, too, in peacetime?" "No. France and Germany still have horn- comb factories,"

"Where do you get the horns?"

"Most of the smaller ones come from cows right around here. The larger ones are from Texas. We also get some from Panama."

A white-haired gentleman of Lititz inherited a business begun in 1861 by his father. With a small staff of helpers he makes some of the finest pretzels in the region. The bakery is housed in a Dutch-styled stone building constructed in 1784.

Pretzel dough of flour, yeast, and water goes into a machine that ejects it in pencil-like strips. An endless apron belt conveys them to a woman who snatches them up, one by one deftly tying the conventional pretzel knot. When 90 have been knotted and placed on a wooden tray, they are taken to racks in the baking room.

The woman loads 115 such trays in a day. That means she individually knots with her tireless fingers 10,350 pretzels--the bakery's daily output.

After knotted dough remains on racks to "rise" or "set" it boils for less than a minute in a light solution of potash. This gives pretzels their gloss.

During the boiling the one baker sprinkles coarse salt on a "peel"-- a flat wooden shovel. In orderly arrangement the pieces of dough are placed on the peel, showered with more salt, then shoved into the oven. Here they bake from five to eight minutes.

Allowed to dry out and crisp for half an hour, the finished pretzels, all golden brown, sparkling, and smelling better than roasting chestnuts on a cold day, are packed in big round tins.

The pretzel patriarch, who sells only locally in Lancaster County, maintains that the quicker they bake, the better; the quicker they dry, the better; and, of course, the quicker they are eaten, the better.

Phaeris Brenner of Millersville is a carpenter by trade, gun collector by preference. He also repairs neighbors' clocks and watches But his guns get most attention.

For 35 years he has been collecting and swapping muskets, rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

In a workshop at the rear of his little house several watches and their parts were spread over a table under the window. Many kindsof guns stood in corners or hung from racks against the walls.

Picking up a light short rifle, he said, "This is one like Buffalo Bill used." He reached for another. "Here's the last type flintlock that was made. See the date-1844?"

After showing a pistol similar to that used by Booth to shoot Lincoln, he led the way upstairs to another room. Almost enough guns to outfit a platoon striped the walls. Arranged in racks, the exhibition told the story of the evolution of American rifles from the Revolution to the first World War. And still, no two of his 200 were alike.

"Kentucky" Rifles from Lancaster