From: Krasna, Bessarabia
23 September 1912

Dear Mr. Editor!

Fortunately, you received my first article dated 25 July and I found out that I am still allowed to write the truth. Because I mentioned that I would write a second article about the situation of the school here in Krasna, I sat down on the 12 September and wrote an article about the school, thinking that you would receive it also. I wanted to wait until the article about the school was published, but one cannot wait. Just when one thinks the quarrelling is over, the next one starts. They quarreled and quarreled about the school until they got tired of it and haven’t done anything yet with the school.

I think, as time goes on, it will get worse than it was 20 years ago. Twenty years ago there was only one teacher in Krasna and he taught two hundred children. He educated the children so well that the people or men who at that time went to school were so intelligent that nowadays half of that kind of teaching would suffice. If there wouldn’t be any better educated ones in the world than they are, then I would believe it too. But I can see it with myself, that what is learned is learned, and dumb is dumb.

If I were educated, which I am not, then I would put the lid on differently. But nonetheless, I am happy to at least gather something for the newspaper. I think that if they can sign their names to a community document they believe they are educated. I am of the opinion that where there is nothing contained, there is nothing one can retrieve. If I could only put that little bit of education that I have into the heads of our people, then things would proceed a little better in Krasna. But if somebody is not educated at all, then that somebody belongs among those who don’t open their mouths when they should, and where they shouldn’t, they will open it up all the way to their ears.

For years our sexton (organist) had to struggle and work without a foot-operated harmonica in church. When the pastor and his assistant realized that it was too difficult for the sexton without such a harmonica, the priests then asked the community to buy a foot-operated harmonica. But then no one said anything. When the pastor had seen that they could not stomach it, he started a collection. With the collected money he bought a foot-operated harmonica by himself. That was okay then, and everybody heard how nice it sounded in church. That’s how they listened for several years until this year, when the foot-operated harmonica failed. That is when the community agreed to go all out and buy an organ for the church. The foot-operated harmonica was standing idle. Now that the foot-operated harmonica, obtained with collected money, was considered excess, the pastor declared it a church property and offered it for sale selling it for 100 rubles. However, you should have witnessed the commotion when several of the troublemakers found out that the pastor had sold the foot-operated harmonica without consulting them. How they screamed with mouths wide open, “We’ll see if the pastor has the right to sell the foot-operated harmonica without asking us. It must be returned so that we can auction it off.” Now what do you think, dear readers, is there a great literacy in such heads? When someone does not know what church property or community property is, then I think he does not know a lot.

The foot-operated harmonica was played in church for many years, and such a troublemaker over the years has perhaps forgotten that he did not help buy it. But that’s how things happen in the community. What happened before the noon meal is no longer remembered by the time the meal is finished. Then they are screaming into the world like a donkey into the air.

I am also a Krasna citizen, but I could not behave like that and scream into the world without considering the situation first. If I only could write like the priest was preaching on Sunday (23 September) about the troublemakers, I would put it on paper better than what the priest said on the pulpit. But I believe that our Lord soon should send the Holy Spirit to those in order for them to get a little bit of common sense into their heads. Now I want to stop writing for a while and monitor during the duration of winter if the troublemakers will continue as such. If they are not any smarter by Easter, then they need to be put on the register and made known by name. Then I will also tell the pastor that he cannot change such people for the better through sermons.

……….Text missing………and should bear everything with patience and think: Oh dear Lord God, have mercy on your people, they truly are all gypsies.

A Farmer

From: Mott, Hettinger County, ND
4 November 1912

Dear Staats-Anzeiger:

Instead of wagons, we are using the sleds. We have deep snow here. The weather is decent so far.

I would like to ask my brother, R.L. Drescher in the old country, whether they ran out of paper in Rumania, since we do not hear from him any more? There are no letters, no notes in the Staats-Anzeiger! If it is so bad, I will send you some paper, so don't be upset, dear brother, write! (*Publisher: Thank you for introducing a new reader. The paper and the calendar have been mailed!)

Greetings to my brother and to our aged mother, as well as to the readers of this paper and the publisher.

Anton Drescher