Rich cultivated lands and broad meadows alternate with pine woods and patches of arid, sandy soil on the surface of the alluvial plain which reaches out in all directions from Lanz. Not allowed to mingle much with the peasant children, Jahn roamed these neighboring fields and forests, learned from grown-up acquaintances to ride and swim and shoot, helped his father in the garden, went with him across the Elbe to market the hops at Dannenberg, in the electorate of Hannover, and accompanied other hop-growers as far as Lübeck, Wismar, and Rostock, on the Baltic. His mother came from Neustadt, in the adjoining duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and frequent trips with smugglers across the borders of this state, only ten miles away to the north, made him thoroughly at home on every road and foot path leading thither. It was this frontier life and his early visits to other states that made it easy for Jahn in later years to disregard sectional barriers and to view as citizens of a common country all who spoke the German language. The relation of lord and vassal was unknown in Lanz and most of the peasants owned the farms they tilled. Jahn breathed in the prevailing spirit of self-reliance and independence, and grew up sturdy and fearless, fond of his native language and customs, and proud of the history of Prussia, and of Brandenburg, his own province, in particular. [Illustration: FIG. 16.—Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852).] On October 8, 1791, he entered the higher classical school (_Gymnasium_) at Salzwedel, an old Prussian town about twenty-five miles to the southwest of Lanz. Notwithstanding the lack of system and completeness in his home training the boy’s marked natural ability, his gift of quick perception, and his retentive memory must have led to rapid progress; for three years later (September 27, 1794), at the age of sixteen, he was received into the eighth class (_Unter-prima_) at the _Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster_ in Berlin. On the 17th of the following April, after spending only six months at this second school, he left for home suddenly and without taking leave, so that for a time the authorities supposed some accident had befallen him. In contrast with the outdoor life and the comparative freedom from restraint of his earlier years, he had found the confinement and orderly discipline of the classroom doubly irksome; and his country plainness, not to say roughness, of speech and manners and want of familiarity with city ways, together with his independent spirit and the absence of intimate companionship with boys of his own age while he was living at home, had led to repeated misunderstandings with teachers and fellow-pupils alike.