Thirty Years In Hell | Page 3

and I am led to believe belongs to one of the many Protestant
denominations, known under the head of Methodist, Baptist, Christian,
United Brethren, Presbyterian, Free Baptist, or some one of the many
other Protestant Churches. Therefore you can easily see why it was that
I became a Catholic, as I was taught it from my infancy.
My father, like his ancestors, lived in Essen, Oldenburg. Essen is a
town of considerable trade in grain, in fine Oldenburg horses and
Holstein cows, in fact, it is a town noted for its fine stock.
The beautiful town of Essen has a considerable population. Two fine
rivers, which unite their rapid waters in its very midst, make it an ideal
spot to live.
My relatives were among the first and best families of the Dukedom.
These families were by name Dickmann, Meyer, Junker and
Mohlenkamp, who are at the head of the intellectual and material
movements of that place. They are all related by marriage and
intermarriage to the Fresenborgs. My parents had ten children. This,
however, may not interest the reader, so I will confine myself to my
own biography.
The school to which I was sent was one of the leading schools and had
a world-wide reputation, especially of sending many scholars and
students to the gymnasium and afterwards to universities for different
branches of sciences.
It seems as though all of those who attended this school became
successful in their individual careers, as lawyers, doctors or some other
of the chosen avocations of life.
I was raised, I might say, under the walls of the free City of Bremen,
and was inspired with the idea of freedom, and this, perhaps, may be
the reason why, when I have come to be an old man, that I have shaken
off this eternal bondage of Catholicism and launched my boat so late in
life upon the broad waters of Protestant freedom.

As the son of a wealthy family, I was sent to the Gymnasium of Vechta
for higher studies, where I received the best education which Germany
could give to her sons, and from there I was dismissed with the diploma
of "Maturity" in 1870, which was a passport to any man holding such a
diploma in any scholarly community, for a diploma from this
institution meant all that it implied.
After I had gone through a perfect study of Gymnasium, and after
having obtained my diploma, I could then decide for any career that I
might choose.
About this time came the disturbance of all of Germany caused by "The
German-French War." Like every patriot, I volunteered as a soldier, but
the officers in the German army were practical men and they had little
use for unseasoned "student soldiers" in the field of action, and I was
left in garrisons where universities were situated, where I had military
practice for a few hours each day, and then could follow my studies at
the same time.
Peace followed quickly after the Waterloo of Napoleon III at Sedan,
and this peace was restored quickly in the "fatherland," as not one
victorious Frenchman had crossed the "Rhine."
I followed my favorite study, forestry and agriculture, for some time,
but as my parents and my forefathers, both on my father's and mother's
side, had been devout Catholics, I had an earnest longing to become a
Catholic Priest, as I desired to go forth in the world and proclaim the
cause of Christ, believing that Catholicism was the only church which
had a right to establish her doctrines, and, of course, cast my lot with
this church, and to-day finds me an old man with every vestige of
childhood's faith shaken from center to circumference, as I have lived
in America so long and seen so much of the intelligence of
Protestantism, and so much of the deception of Catholicism, I could not
remain in the Catholic Church and be true to my conception of what
was right and wrong, therefore I laid aside, with a degree of regret, the
relics of Catholic barbarism.
I discarded the Scapular and everything that has no more intelligent

meaning to it than the cungering devices of the heathen has towards the
uplifting of humanity and the civilization of the world.
Many, many years ago my faith was shaken by what I had seen with
my own eyes and heard with my own ears, but I nursed my religious
belief from my mother's bosom; my religion was born and bred in my
bones; every drop of blood in my person was electrified in childhood
by the cungerings of Catholic legerdemain, and I was taught at my
mother's knee to believe that there was no other church that had a ghost
of a chance of eternal salvation but the Catholic Church, and