# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1911 06 13_S191
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191

one asked for my services, until toward the end of February 1856 a call from Zion congregation in New Orleans reached me, which I accepted. During my stay in St. Louis I had been able to make myself somewhat useful by giving grammar instruction in Greek, Latin, and German at the Gymnasium, through all the classes. So at the end of February I went to New Orleans and was ordained by Pastor C. C. Metz in the midst of my congregation. The congregation was poor, and as a result I was very poor. Yet we never went to bed hungry a single day, nor lacked necessary clothing, although later even members of the congregation made remarks such as: "Pastor, your coat doesn't look at all clerical"; and rightly so, for I had bought it, because it was cheap, from a peddling Jew. I report this not as a complaint, but so that the present and future generation may see how times have changed. That time of poverty was an exceedingly precious and blessed one for me and, I believe, for my congregation as well, for we lived together for a long series of years in the best of harmony. Nor did we fail to attempt mission work. In turn we preached — Pastor Metz, Pastor J. List, and I — in Jefferson City, to win over an evangelical congregation calling itself Lutheran, which was quite willing to accept our preaching, because during that time it needed to pay no pastor's salary and meanwhile collected money for a new church. But after some time we were suddenly disappointed, for on a Sunday when Pastor Metz was to preach there, he was informed: our services were no longer needed, because the congregation had engaged a missionary from Basel, who had now arrived. Things went no better for me in Carrollton, when in the years 1877 and 1878 I preached in the congregation calling itself Lutheran, which at the beginning of 1879 took on a schoolteacher as preacher, who had promised he would apply all diligence to practicing preaching. This congregation did not last, and the church property was bought up for our Negro mission. I also served the school of Zion congregation for two years; first from fall 1856 until 1857, restoring the school that had lapsed through the departure of cantor Buenger and administering it for a year, until another schoolteacher arrived; and again, when teacher Conzelmann left us in 1865, until we obtained another teacher. In 1866 I also had to care for St. John's congregation, while Pastor Metz had traveled to Germany, and likewise the following year, when the congregation had become vacant through Pastor Metz's departure. Then in October 1867, during the great epidemic, yellow fever struck me quite unexpectedly, having spared me and my family (with the exception of my eldest daughter) even in the dreadful fever year of 1858, although I had continually dealt with yellow fever patients day and night and had gone from bed to bed in the Charity Hospital, where at that time on average a thousand yellow fever patients were housed. For whenever I had been with one patient and given him comfort, other sick people at once called me from every side, Catholics too, and asked for spiritual comfort. Once, when for four days I had gotten almost no sleep (for I was tending the sickroom at my daughter's, since I did not want to expose my wife and small child to infection) and had lain down in bed to rest, I was rung out of bed again after about two hours and called to a sickbed. — Let me cite here just one example from the year 1867 of the astonishing speed with which this plague sometimes carries out its work of death. At nine in the morning I passed by K.'s dwelling and saw his young wife sitting before the door with her little child on her lap. I asked her, my former confirmand: "Adeline, how are you?" She answered: "Pastor, I feel very bad." Three hours later her father came to me and reported: "Adeline is dead!"

In that year (1867) not only did many native-born people die, who are often thought to be immune, but also people who had served as nurses in the dreadful epidemic of 1853 without being struck by the plague. In 1853 more than 13,000 persons died of yellow fever; in 1858, from the same disease alone, 4,544; in 1867, up to November 5, 2,950; in 1878 (when I suffered yellow fever for the second time), up to October 31, 3,929; yet at that time the plague had not yet died out, for as late as January 1, 1879, I still had to make visits to yellow fever patients in the congregation I served at Carrollton. Only very gradually did I recover from my illness in 1867, and only with great effort was I able to resume my official duties. Dealing with yellow fever patients is not only burdensome for a preacher because the sick, from large doses of quinine, are frequently very hard of hearing, so that one must bring one's mouth close to their ear, but also very disgusting, especially after the onset of the black vomit, which carries a dreadful odor. During one of these great epidemics it happened that a doctor's carriage was seen standing in the middle of the street. It was the rig of Dr. Jones. The doctor had fallen asleep from great weariness, as had the driver and the horse. — Of all the pastors of our Synod I am the only one who has lived through these great epidemics and is still alive, for all the others have either died of yellow fever or were absent during the epidemic.

On the Church Chronicle.

America.

Concerning our last Delegate Synod, an older pastor of our Synod, who was not present himself but has formed a judgment from oral and printed reports, writes us the following words, which in our opinion everyone who attended the assembly will subscribe to: "At the Delegate Synod good work was indeed done this year. And when one reads the reports, there was no discord either, but great unanimity and brotherliness, such as one was accustomed to in earlier years but has somewhat missed in recent years. Even the Addison matter, difficult enough though it certainly was, was after all dealt with objectively at bottom. I believe one will find no second body in which things go along so congenially and fraternally as with us, although given the size of our Synod even acquaintances become strangers to one another and one never becomes acquainted with many, and in the process the interests