Within the confines of this out of the way nook the author has placed the personages of this romance, which he fondly hopes may be of interest not only to Pennsylvania-Germans, but to all who delight in a story which is only a story. Over a century and a half has elapsed since the Sisterhood and Brotherhood were in the zenith of their little world, and it were well-nigh impossible to reproduce at this late day with absolute fidelity such matters as dress, customs, manners and habits, religious rites and ceremonies; and yet, thanks to the exhaustive investigations of Mr. Sachse and others, the author has been able to pattern forth in the warp and woof of this tale more or less distinctly, considerable that relates to the homely architecture, the cloistral life, worship, rites, ceremonies, and beliefs of these peculiar but devoted, plain-living, high-thinking Sisters and Brothers. To reproduce their speech, even if possible, were of course sadly out of place at this day; for the German, even of the early settlers, was represented by such various dialects as Swabian, Würtemberger, Bavarian, Swiss, Hessian, Palatinate, and others; and though these were all German dialects, yet since those days there has been such a copious infusion of English words, that to-day Pennsylvania-German, though "it is still, in the articulation of its bones and its general form and spirit, the tongue of the Rhine country,"[2] is none the less neither German nor English, but "a hybrid, non-descript jargon,"[3] at best an Americanized dialect of the German, but a dialect able to produce beautiful flowers in the fields of lyric poetry under the cultivation of such as Harbaugh, Hark, Zimmerman, Zeigler, Fisher, Grumbine, and others. [2] "The Pennsylvania-German Dialect," by Lee L. Grumbine, Esq. [3] _Ibid._ Pennsylvania-German being a dialect not of the almost universal English tongue but of the German, and what is especially to the point, a fast declining dialect with but a small remnant who can speak and understand it in the vernacular, the author feels not only that he should by employing this dialect address himself to an exceedingly small audience, but might, moreover, justly incur the charge of pedantry and affectation. Thus while it is true that the greater number of the Sisters and Brothers of the Kloster were Germans and spoke the mother tongue in their daily intercourse, yet after all language is only the means of conveying ideas, thoughts, and these we know have a language understood by all.