was then under the rule of a Catholic family.  It was a saying in Waldorf that no man could be appointed a swineherd who was not a Catholic, and that if a mayoralty were vacant the swineherd must have the place if there were no other Catholic in the town.  Hence it was that the line which separated the Protestant minority from the Catholic majority was sharply defined, and the Protestant children were the more thoroughly indoctrinated.  Rev. John Philip Steiner, the Protestant pastor of Waldorf, a learned and faithful minister, was as punctilious in requiring from the children the thorough learning of the Catechism as a German sergeant was in exacting all the niceties of the parade.  Young Astor became, therefore, a very decided Protestant; he lived and died a member of the Church in which he was born.

The great day in the life of a German child is that of his confirmation, which usually occurs in his fourteenth year.  The ceremony, which was performed at Waldorf every two years, was a festival at once solemn and joyous.  The children, long prepared beforehand by the joint labors of minister, schoolmaster, and parents, walk in procession to the church, the girls in white, the boys in their best clothes, and there, after the requisite examinations, the rite is performed, and the Sacrament is administered.  The day concludes with festivity.  Confirmation also is the point of division between childhood and youth,—­between absolute dependence and the beginning of responsibility.  After confirmation, the boys of a German peasant take their place in life as apprentices or as servants; and the girls, unless their services are required at home, are placed in situations.  Childhood ends, maturity begins, when the child has tasted for the first time the bread and wine of the Communion.  Whether a boy then becomes an apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his parents have been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient to pay the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his trouble in teaching his trade.  This premium varied at that day from fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and respectability of the vocation.  A carpenter or a blacksmith might be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker or a clock-maker two hundred.

On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of age, John Jacob Astor was confirmed.  He then consulted his father upon his future.  Money to apprentice him there was none in the paternal coffers.  The trade of butcher he knew and disliked.  Nor was he inclined to accept as his destiny for life the condition of servant or laborer.  The father, who thought the occupation of butcher one of the best in the world, and who needed the help of his son, particularly in the approaching season of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of the lad, who saw himself condemned without hope to a business which he loathed, and to labor at it without reward.