a wish that I could become a member of such a company.  Then the honest fellow described the profession of an actor as a brilliant, deceitful misery, and confessed to me that he had been only forced by necessity to adopt this profession, and that he was soon about to abandon it.  Once again I learned by this to divide cause from effect, internal from external things.  My visits to the play brought upon me a most unpleasant experience, for my father, when I spoke to him without concealment of my playgoing, reproached me very bitterly for it.  He looked upon my conduct as deserving the highest punishment, which was in absolute contradiction with my own view; for I placed the benefit I had derived from my attendance at the play side by side with what I had received by my attendance at church, and expressed something of the kind to my father.  As often happened in later life, so also on this occasion it was my eldest brother who was the mediator between my father and myself.

On Midsummer Day 1799 my apprenticeship came to an end.  The forester, who could now have made my practical knowledge of service to himself, wished to keep me another year.  But I had by this time acquired higher views; I wished to study mathematics and botany more thoroughly, and I was not to be kept back from my purpose.  When my apprenticeship was over I left him, and returned to my father’s house.

My master knew well that he had not done his duty towards me, and with this probably humiliating consciousness before him, and in spite of the thoroughly satisfactory testimonial that he gave me, he committed a very mean action against me.  He did not know anything about my private study; for instance, my completely working through some elementary mathematical books, which I had found myself quite well able to understand.  Besides, he was dissatisfied that I would not stay another year with him.  He therefore sent a letter to my father, in which he complained bitterly of my conduct, and shifted the blame of my ignorance of my calling entirely on to my shoulders.  This letter actually arrived at home before I did; and my father sent it on to my eldest brother, who was minister in a village through which I had to pass on my way home.  Soon after I reached my brother’s house he communicated to me the contents of this inculpatory letter.  I cleared myself by exposing the unconscientious behaviour of my master, and by showing my private work.  I then wrote a reply to my master, clearly refuting all his accusations, and exhibiting on the other hand his behaviour towards me; and with this I satisfied my father and my brother.  But the latter reproached me for having suffered wrongdoing so long without complaint.  To that I gave the simple answer, that my father, at the beginning of my apprenticeship, had told me not to come to him with any complaint, as I should never be listened to, but should be considered as wrong beforehand.  My brother, who knew my father’s severity and his views on such points, was silent.  But my mother saw in one declaration of the forester the confirmation of her own opinion about me.  The forester declared, that if ever anything was made of me, the same good fortune might be told of the first-comer without further trouble, and my mother assented heartily to his opinion.