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Here also Christopher Sauer, a native of Westphalia, published the first newspaper in German type, and in 1743 the first German Bible, antedating, by forty years, the printing of any other Bible in America. The Germans in the cloister Ephrata, Pa., established by the Tunker, or Dunkards, also owned a printing-press, a paper-mill, and a bookbindery.
How should they guess that alongside her religious fervor a human love grew ethereally like an air plant? I have supplied details, dialogue, and passion. For the facts which constitute the groundwork I am chiefly indebted to Dr. Oswald W. Seidensticker's very valuable monograph entitled "Ephrata, eine amerikanische Klostergeschichte."
As there was another town of the same name in the tribe of Zebulon, the Bethlehem that we now approach was usually distinguished by the addition of Ephrata, or by a reference to the district in which it was situated.
These missionary brothers and sisters had chosen as the theater of their labor that part of our broad land which was pleasantly christened Pennsylvania, and selecting a portion of the southern area, they founded their colony and called it "Ephrata."
One sees now neither monks nor nuns in these narrow hallways; monks and nuns are nowhere about Ephrata, except in the graveyard where all the brethren of Bethany, and all the sisters who once peopled Sharon, sleep together in the mold.
The sisters now invited the brethren, and next the brethren entertained the sisters with unbuttered parsnips and draughts of innocent clear water, no doubt. That which was most remarkable at Ephrata, and that out of which grows my story, was the music. Brother Friedsam, besides his cares of organization, finance, and administration, and his mystical theological speculations, was also a poet.
But when she had lifted the latch and pushed back the door, squeaking on its wooden hinges, Tabea found that Friedsam was engaged in some business with the prior of the convent, the learned Dr. Peter Miller, known at Ephrata as Brother Jabez. Friedsam did not at first look up.
Daniel Scheible and his little love scrawls seemed to her lofty spirit as nothing now that she saw herself in the light thrown upon her by the love of the great master whose spirit had evoked Ephrata, and whose genius uttered itself in angelic harmonies. She loathed the little life that now opened before her.
But his release did not come until the morning; and of that release, and its event, and how it came about, I will now tell you. How Sir John went again to the cell: and of what he saw there Ecce audivimus eam in Ephrata: invenimus eam in campis silvae. Behold we have heard of it in Euphrata: we have found it in the fields of the wood. Ps. cxxxi. 6.
Bethlehem is a little city, long and narrow and well walled, and in each side enclosed with good ditches: and it was wont to be clept Ephrata, as holy writ saith, ECCE, AUDIVIMUS EUM IN EPHRATA, that is to say, 'Lo, we heard him in Ephrata. And toward the east end of the city is a full fair church and a gracious, and it hath many towers, pinacles and corners, full strong and curiously made; and within that church be forty-four pillars of marble, great and fair.
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