bright, kindly face was so well set off by the cap she wore that she
seemed quite an admirable object to me; and I thought no head-dress in
the world could so well become an elderly lady.



II.--HISTORICAL.


George Rapp, founder and until his death in 1847 head of the "Harmony
Society," was born in October, 1757, at Iptingen in Wuertemberg. He was
the son of a small farmer and vine-dresser, and received such a moderate
common-school education as the child of parents in such circumstances
would naturally receive at that time in South Germany. When he had been
taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, he left school and
assisted his father on the farm, working as a weaver during the winter
months. At the age of twenty-six he married a farmer's daughter, who
bore him a son, John, and a daughter, Rosina, both of whom later became
with him members of the society.

Rapp appears to have been from his early youth fond of reading, and of a
reflective turn of mind. Books were probably not plentiful in his
father's house, and he became a student of the Bible, and began
presently to compare the condition of the people among whom he lived
with the social order laid down and described in the New Testament. He
became dissatisfied especially with the lifeless condition of the
churches; and in the year 1787, when he was thirty, he had evidently
found others who held with him, for he began to preach to a small
congregation of friends in his own house on Sundays.