Mrs. Summers and her daughter supported my
faltering confidence, and cheered my heart. I
told them that I would not have their friends
deceived in respect of my personal history,
and I was astonished when I found that this
knowledge only elicited for me the warmest
sympathy and regard. Every lingering doubt
was dispelled one day, when those words, which
in my own land would have covered me with
shame, were whispered in my ear, and the good
man asked me to be his wife, who has been my
kind husband these many and many happy
years.

BUSINESS IN THE BLACK FOREST.

LENZKIRCH, one of the chief towns of the
Black Forest, lies in a sunny nook, over which
frown the ruins of a keep called Urach Castle.
It consists of one hundred and seventy houses
and twelve hundred and fifty inhabitants, is
quite modern, and only dates back to 1813.
In that year the whole market-town was burnt
to the ground—an accident only too common
in the Black Forest, for the peasants persist in
covering their houses with shingles instead of
tiles. The priest all but saved the parish-
books; but, at the moment when he got them
out of the cupboard he lost his head, and
they were burned with his house. That is the
reason why I cannot describe more than the
very latest history of Lenzkirch, but perhaps it
is no great loss. It is, however, one of the
richest and most industrious towns in the whole
of the Badois, and perhaps in all Germany, if we
compare the income of the townspeople with
their numbers.

In 1775, two peasant lads of Saig, a village
about four miles from Lenzkirch, resolved to try
their luck as porters in Lorraine. Alois Faller
and Mathäe Tritzcheller started in the autumn
of that year with a load of Black Forest clocks,
and returned next summer with full pockets
to help as labourers in getting in the harvest.
A few years later they met in Lorraine with
some Bavarian chapmen, who dealt in straw
caps, or what are called cornets de paille. They
soon reckoned it up that it would be more
profitable for them to carry home some of these
hats instead of their money, and they made such
profit by the transaction that it occurred to them
that a summer trade in straw caps was preferable
to a winter march over hill and dale with a
heavy load of wooden clocks. Hence they
devoted themselves principally to the new branch,
but they grumbled at being compelled to buy of
the Bavarians, as they lost at least half their
profits, through having to pay the middleman.
Hence they tried to discover from the chapmen
where their factory was, but they were carefully
kept from the secret. The Bavarians on one
occasion left an invoice in a hat-box delivered
to Alois Faller. He could neither read nor
write, and had not the remotest knowledge of
Italian; but, as he had long been watching to
detect the secret, he had it translated, and
discovered that the invoice was dated from Trent.

Next autumn Alois was on his road to the Tyrol
with a quantity of Lorraine lace which he had
taken in exchange, and a heavy load of bird-
organs, watch-glasses, snuff-boxes, &c. By the
time he reached Botzen, he had disposed of the
whole of his stock, and he then started on a tour
of discovery for Trent. When he reached that
city, he learned that the hats he was seeking
were made in the "Sette Communi," the seven
Cimbro-Teuton communities of Upper Italy, and
the enterprising forester, therefore, continued
his journey to that spot. How he managed to
get on with no knowledge of the language, we
are not told; but it is quite certain that he laid
in a stock of straw hats at a much cheaper
rate than he had previously paid the chapmen.

Two of Alois's brothers, John and Kaspar, and
his two brothers-in-law, Laurence and Philip
Fürderer, of Lower Lenzkirch, now formed a
company with the two original founders of the
straw-hat trade, under the firm of "Faller,
Tritzcheller, and Co." John Faller had belonged
to the company of the Alsace porters, but left
it in anger on being recalled from Altkirch,
where he managed the business of the company.
He brought the experience of the Alsace
porters into the new firm, and thus established
it so firmly that the former were soon induced
to join the new company. But both parties
looked too eagerly after their own profit, and
thus injured the general trade, and so at the end
of a year they dissolved partnership, and each
went their own road. The new firm had great
difficulties to overcome, not so much in wars,
bad harvests, and depression of trade, as in the
obstinacy and domineering spirit of the partners.
Several times the firm was dissolved through
quarrels, but when the partners grew cooler,
they came together again. In spite of all this
the firm prospered; the pack was laid aside
and carts were substituted, orders were given
by post, until at length the firm had its own
entrepôt at Florence for the sale of Black
Forest wares, and in 1809 opened a house of its
own at Vallarona, in the "Sette Communi," for
the straw-hat trade. The Florence branch,
however, proved a failure, for the manager's ideas
of the business to be done were too magnificent.
It was therefore closed in 1811, but it was
destined to bear good fruit at a future day. The
manager, greatly to the disgust of his partners,
married at Florence a poor Italian girl, who,
however, understood straw-plaiting, and thirty
years later her daughter gave lessons in the art
to her Schwarzland relations, and thus aided
in establishing the straw-hat manufactory at
home.

If the Florence business entailed considerable
anxiety, there was even greater trouble
experienced in founding the branch at Vallarona.
All the competitors in the straw-hat trade were
extremely annoyed at seeing the simple,
persevering, and acute foresters settling at the
fountain-head of the trade. The Italian brokers even
managed to arouse the national jealousy of the
native workmen; there were regular tumults, to