The following description of a peasant's house in an area near the German city Frahkfuft am Main is written in a tongue-in-cheek style, comparing the home of a peasant to the castle of a king Despite the author's comic intent, his portrait of a wealthier peasant's home (note the mention or servants) and its furnishings is accurate The description of the looting of the house by hungry soldiers who, during military campaigns, lived by plundering peasant villages, is less funny, and reveals the frequent and unexpected hardships to which peasants were subjected

My father. . . owned a place as good as the next man's. It was so attractive that not a single king could have built one like it with his own two hands; he would rather have put off the construction for all eternity. It was well chinked with adobe, and instead of being...