You have no fear; you are safe, nothing troubles you; the way you do is the uncorrupted way.  Parents always like their youngest children best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure.  Such little ones need their parents’ care and love the most; therefore the love of their parents always reaches down to them.  How Abraham must have felt when he had in mind to sacrifice his youngest and dearest son!  Probably he said nothing to Sarah about it.  That must have been a bitter journey for him.”  His favorite daughter Magdalena lay at the point of death and he lamented, “I love her truly, but, dear God, if it be Thy will to take her away to Thee, I shall gladly know that she is with Thee.  Magdalena, my little daughter, you would like to stay here with your father, and yet you would be willing to go to the other Father?” Then the child said, “Yes, dear father, as God wills.”  When she was dying he fell on his knees before the bed and wept bitterly, and prayed that God would redeem her; and so she fell asleep under her father’s hands, and when the people came to help lay out the corpse and spoke to the Doctor according to custom, he said, “I am cheerful in my mind, but the flesh is weak.  This parting is hard beyond measure.  It is strange to know she is certainly in peace and that it is well with her, and yet to be so sorrowful all the time.”

His Dominus, or Lord Kaethe, as he liked to call his wife in letters to his friends, had soon developed into a capable manager.  And she had no slight troubles:  little children, her husband often in poor health, a number of boarders—­teachers and poor students—­her house always open, seldom lacking scholarly or noble guests, and, with all that, scanty means and a husband who preferred giving to receiving, and who once, in his zeal, when she was in bed with a young child, even seized the silver baptismal presents of the child in order to give alms.  Luther, in 1527, for instance, could not afford even eight gulden for his former prior and friend Briesger.  He writes to him sadly:  “Three silver cups (wedding presents) are pawned for fifty gulden, the fourth is sold.  The year has brought one hundred gulden of debts.  Lucas Kranach will not go security for me any more, lest I ruin myself completely.”  Sometimes Luther refuses presents, even those which his prince offers him:  but it seems that regard for his wife and children gave him in later years some sense of economy.  When he died his estate amounted to some eight or nine thousand gulden, comprising, among other things, a little country place, a large garden, and two houses.  This was surely in large part Frau Kaethe’s doing.  By the way in which Luther treats her we see how happy his household was.  When he made allusions to the ready tongue of women he had little right to do so, for he himself was not by any means a man who could be called reticent.  When she showed her joy at being able to bring to table all kinds of fish from the little pond in her garden, the Doctor, for