CHAPTER IX.
_Dortmund._--_Railroad Enterprise and Prospective Fortune._--_Henry Schulte's Love._--_An Insult and its Resentment._--_An Oath of Revenge._ How true it is, that in the life of every one, there exists a vein of romance which justifies the adage that "Truth is stranger than fiction." No page of history may bear their names.

No chronicle of important events may tell to the world the story of their trials and sufferings.

No volume of poetry or song may portray the sunshine and the storms through which they journeyed from the cradle to the grave.
But in their quiet, humble lives, they may have exemplified the vices or virtues of humanity, and may have been prominent actors in unpublished dramas, that would excite the wonderment or the admiration, the sympathy or the condemnation of communities.
The life of Henry Schulte evinces this fact, in a remarkable degree.
The town of Dortmund in Prussia, in 1845.
A quiet, sleepy, German town, in the Province of Westphalia, whose inclosing walls seemed eminently fitted to shut out the spirit of energy and activity with which the world around them was imbued, and whose five gates gave ample ingress and egress to the limited trade of the manufacturers within its limits.
Once a free imperial city, it had acquired some importance, and was a member of that commercial alliance of early times known as the "Hanseatic League," but its prosperity, from some cause, afterwards declined, and passing into the hands of Prussia in 1815, Dortmund had slumbered on in adolescent quiet, undisturbed by the march of improvement, and unaffected by the changes that were everywhere apparent in the great world without her boundaries.
This sober, easy-going method of existence seemed to be in perfect accord with the habits and dispositions of the people.

The honest old burghers pursued the even tenor of their way, paying but little heed to the whirl and excitement of the large cities, and plodding on with machine-like regularity in their daily pleasures, and their slow but sure acquirement of fortune.

Children were born, much in the usual manner of such events--grew into man and womanhood--were married, and they--in their turn, raised families.