The Germans in Colonial Times #252707

If we would sup full of the horrors of war, pestilence and famine, or religious persecution with stake and fire and noisome prison, with midnight flight for conscience' sake, we can find these told in simple pathos in the stories of the Palatines of the Rhine, the Mennonites of Switzerland, the Moravians, or the tiny sect of the Schwenkfelders. If we would meet with good men or great, we may see here the gentle Pastorius, first pro testant against American slavery, or Conrad Weiser, whose adventurous life was largely filled with embassies to mighty Indian chiefs and nations, whom he held back from war from the white men's frontier, or, last but not least, William Penn, whose mighty figure dominates the history as its counterfeit presentment does the city he has builded beside the Delaware. And indeed time would fail us to tell of the many people and incidents, interesting, pathetic, humorous, or containing in them the germs of our present American development, which fill the annals of those Pennsylvania Germans and their kin in many States, whom the New England histo rian, Parkman, slurred over with the description, dull and ignorant boors, which character their descendants for the most part retain.