A 31,000-word novella written originally in German for younger readers but, because of the historical setting of the events, fascinating for readers of any age. This English translation was published in 1850.
Augustus, a young German boy raised in a good Christian home, is unwillingly caught up in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Never losing his love of God and his essentially good nature, he strives to do the right thing in every trying circumstance he encounters, as the huge French invasion army—victorious at first but victimized by its own arrogance—is eventually forced to flee Russia in the worst possible conditions. Again and again, in the most horrible situations, the reader has the satisfaction of seeing Augustus's Christian charity and goodness pay him unexpected dividends.
Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing. We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison. Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book. While remaining faithful to a writer's original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes. If the printer became distracted after placing an 'a' at the end of a line and then placed another 'a' at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too? Not us. That's why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.
