Within the RATHHAUS were a number of huge wild boars’ heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall; they bore inscriptions telling who killed them and how many hundred years ago it was done.  One room in the building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives.  There they showed us no end of aged documents; some were signed by Popes, some by Tilly and other great generals, and one was a letter written and subscribed by Goetz von Berlichingen in Heilbronn in 1519 just after his release from the Square Tower.

This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature.  He had in him a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them.  He was prompt to take up any poor devil’s quarrel and risk his neck to right him.  The common folk held him dear, and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition.  He used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop down from his high castle on the hills of the Neckar and capture passing cargoes of merchandise.  In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver of all Good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry such cargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could have relieved him.  He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle.  In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was only twenty-three years old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in the fight that he did not observe it for a while.  He said that the iron hand which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been.  I was glad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old German Robin Hood, though I was not able to read it.  He was a better artist with his sword than with his pen.

We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower.  It was a very venerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental.  There was no opening near the ground.  They had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt.

We visited the principal church, also—­a curious old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images.  The inner walls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper, bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old Heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely painted effigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of those days.  The head of the family sat in the foreground, and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row of sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row of diminishing daughters.  The family was usually large, but the perspective bad.