Herr Pastor has other functions than to preach to the living. The day after a battle, his horse must be very tired before the stable-door is reached. The burial parties are excavating great pits all over the field, while others pick up the dead in the vicinity and bear them unto the brink of the common grave. Herr Pastor cannot be ubiquitous. If he is not near when the hole is full, the _Feldwebel_ who commands the party bares his head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he strews the first handful of mould on the dead--it may be on friends as well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish. The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, _durch unsern Herr Jesu Christe_. Amen;" words so familiar, yet never heard without a new thrill. They are slightly uncouth in several matters, these _Feldpastoren_, and would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when they are mounted there is frequently visible an interval of more or less dusky stocking between the boot-top and the trouser-leg. They slobber stertorously in the consumption of soup, and cut their meat with a square-elbowed energy of determination that might make one think that they had vanquished the Evil One and had him down there under their knife and fork. But they are simple-hearted and valiant servants of their Master. Who was it, in the bullet-storm that swept the slope of Wörth, from facing which the stout hearts of the fighting men blenched and quailed, that there walked quietly into it, to speak words of peace and consolation to the dying men whom that terrible storm had beaten down? A smooth-faced stripling with the _Feldpastor's_ badge on his arm, the gallant Christian son of an eminent Prussian divine, Dr. Krummacher of Berlin. At one of the battles (I forget which) a pastor came to fill a grave, not to consecrate it. Shall I ever forget the unswerving hurry to the front of Kummer's divisional chaplain when the _Landwehrleute_, his flock, were going down in their ranks as they held with stubbornness unto death the villages in front of Maizières les Metz? Let the _Feldpastoren_ slobber and welcome, say I, while they gild their slobbering with such devotion as this! But there must be times and seasons when Herr Pastor is not at hand; nor can the ministration of any pastor stand in the stead of private prayer. The German soldier's simple needs in this matter are not disregarded. Each man is served out when he gets his kit with a tiny gray volume less than quarter the size of this page, the title of which is _Gebetbuch