Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/231

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THE PARTING.

with all the variety of his acquirements, with all his
culture, seemed only to live for the duties of his appar-
ently insignificant post. They respected her loving
nature, her quiet management in the domestic circle,
and in both, their contentment in a more than humble
earthly lot ; one in which thousands accustomed, as
they, to something better, would have been completely
miserable. They did not know that a hallig pastor was
little respected, from the very fact of his being such,
and that this title is sufficient to inspire many with a
feeling of contempt ; but had they known this, they
would have considered the privations and self-denials,
the weariness and the dangers of such a position, and
would have represented the insignificance of the salary,
the necessity of busying himself with household labors,
and even the care of the sheep — the chief source in-
indeed from which his salary was derived — his isolation
from the world and all intellectual intercourse ; they
would have spoken of all these, to such of Hold's pro-
fessional brethren as might be disposed to complain of
a want of congenial society and means to keep up with
the progress of knowledge. Has the clergyman — their
defense would have been something of this sort — whom
you admire for his refinement of manner and his bear-
ing in the highest circles, whom you have placed among
the number of well-informed, highly cultivated, even
learned men — has he passed the best years of his youth
and manhood as a hallig pastor ? Has he tried what it
is to pass from a rich world of enjoyment to such a
state of privation, with a heart beating warmly for the
whole human race to be transplanted to such a forgot-
ten soil, taken from a blooming paradise of youthful