we reflect this unpretending and peaceful little volume elicited
after the appearance of the fifth English edition, and the injury
which it sustained from garbled and falsified editions, in not
less than three unauthorised reprints, it would really seem as if
this first edition, which "died a borning," had been typical of
the stormy path to which the work was predestined.

"I Gili Romaneskro," a gipsy ballad, was written both in the
original and translation - that is to say, in the German gipsy
and German English dialects - to cast a new light on the many-sided
Bohemianism of Herr Breitmann.

The readers of more than one English newspaper will recall that
the idea of representing Breitmann as an Uhlan, scouting over France,
and frequently laying houses and even cities under heavy contribution,
has occurred to very many of "Our Own." A spirited correspondent of
the Telegraph, and others of literary fame, have familiarly
referred to the Uhlan as Breitmann, indicating that the
German-American free-lance has grown into a type; and more than one
newspaper, anticipating this volume, has published Anglo-German poems
referring to Hans Breitmann and the Prussian-French war. In several
pamphlets written in Anglo-German rhymes, which appeared in London in
1871, Breitmann was made the representative type of the war by both
the friends and opponents of Prussia, while during February of the
same year Hans figured at the same time, and on the same evenings for
several weeks, on the stages of three London theatres. So many
imitations of these poems were published, and so extensively and
familiarly was Mr. Leland's hero spoken of as the exponent of the
German cause, that it seemed to a writer at the time as if he had
become "as regards Germany what John Bull and Brother Jonathan have