educated wife helped him entertain us, so that we preferred an evening there to almost any other amusements.  Study began to charm us, and I can only repeat that he seemed to recall Langethal’s method and awaken many things which the latter had given me, and which, as it were, had fallen asleep during the interval.  He again aroused in my soul the love for the ancients, and his interpretations of Horace or Sophocles were of great service to me in after-years.

Nor did he by any means forget grammar, but in explaining the classics he always laid most stress upon the contents, and every lesson of his was a clever archaeological, aesthetic, and historical lecture.  I listened to none more instructive at the university.  Philological and linguistic details which were not suited for the senior pupils who were being fitted for other callings than those of the philologist were omitted.  But he insisted upon grammatical correctness, and never lost sight of his maxim, “The school should teach its pupils to do thoroughly whatever they do at all.”

He urged us especially to think for ourselves, and to express our ideas clearly and attractively, not only in writing but verbally.

It seemed as though a spring breeze had melted the snow from the land, such bourgeoning and blossoming appeared throughout the school.

Creative work was done by fits and starts.  If the demon seized upon me, I raved about for a time as before, but I did my duty for the principal.  I not only honoured but loved him, and censure from his lips would have been unbearable.

The poem which I was to read on the king’s birthday has been preserved, and as I glanced over it recently I could not help smiling.

It was to describe the life of Henry the Fowler, and refer to the reigning king, Frederick William IV.

The praise of my hero had come from my heart, so the poem found favour, and in circles so wide that the most prominent man in the neighbourhood, Prince Puckler-Muskau, sent for my verses.

I was perfectly aware that they did not represent my best work, but what father does not find something to admire in his child?  So I copied them neatly, and gave them to Billy, the dwarf, the prince’s factotum.  A short time after, while I was walking with some friends in Branitz Park, the prince summoned me, and greeted me with the exclamation, “You are a poet!”

These four words haunted me a long while; nay, at times they even echo in my memory now.  I had heard a hundred anecdotes of this prince, which could not fail to charm a youth of my disposition.  When a young officer of the Garde-du-Corps in Dresden, after having been intentionally omitted from the invitations to a court-ball, he hired all the public conveyances in the city, thus compelling most of the gentlemen and ladies who were invited either to wade through the snow or forego the dance.

When the war of 1813 began he entered the service of “the liberators,” as the Russians were then called, and at the head of his regiment challenged the colonel of a French one to a duel, and seriously wounded him.