narrative. Thus I have perpetuated all that she strove to record for her
descendants out of her warm heart and eager brain; though often in mere
outline and broken sentences, still, in the language of her time and of
her native province.




MARGERY

CHAPTER I.

I, MARGERY SCHOPPER, was born in the year of our Lord 1404, on the
Tuesday after Palm Sunday. My uncle Christan Pfinzing of the Burg, a
widower whose wife had been a Schopper, held me at the font. My father,
God have his soul, was Franz Schopper, known as Franz the Singer. He
died in the night of the Monday after Laetare Sunday in 1404, and his
wife my mother, God rest her, whose name was Christine, was born a
Behaim; she had brought him my two brothers Herdegen and Kunz, and she
died on the eve of Saint Catharine's day 1404; so that I lost my mother
while I was but a babe, and God dealt hardly with me also in taking my
father to Himself in His mercy, before I ever saw the light.

Instead of a loving father, such as other children have, I had only a
grave in the churchyard, and the good report of him given by such as had
known him; and by their account he must have been a right merry and
lovable soul, and a good man of business both in his own affairs and in
those pertaining to the city. He was called "the Singer" because, even
when he was a member of the town-council, he could sing sweetly and
worthily to the lute. This art he learned in Lombardy, where he had been