other children, none of whom are provided for, and from whom much has already been withheld on his account. On his prospects, hopes, plans, and promises, I can advance nothing, as I have already been so badly deceived. Even if it were possible to place some faith in them, I could not raise the money; for, although I am known as an honest man, my financial condition, and the amount of my salary, are also well known; and it is evident that I would not be able to pay a debt of from two to three hundred florins out of my income. I can do nothing but pray for my son! His faithful father, /Schiller/.'"[1] "Can do nothing but pray and scold," exclaimed Schiller, emphatically. "There you see what an unworthy, trifling fellow I am. All the hopes which my family and friends entertained for me, yes, which I entertained for myself and my talents, are blighted, dissolved in smoke like burning straw. Nothing real is left but the burden of my debts, and my poverty. My good Oswald, you have had the weakness to believe in me, and to accept a draft on my future. To your own detriment, you must now perceive that this draft is worthless, and that my father was right in reproaching me for having had the temerity to attempt to make a German poet out of a Wurtemberg regimental surgeon." "Do not speak so, Frederick Schiller," exclaimed Streicher, indignantly. "Your words are blasphemous; and all Germany would be angry with you if it heard them!" "But all Germany would take good care not to pay my debts. While I, in holy and true disinterestedness, am ready to consecrate my whole being to the service of my country, and to devote all the powers of my mind and talents to its benefit, its instruction and entertainment, if I should demand of the German nation that it should also bring me an offering, that each individual who had read and seen my tragedies should give me a groschen, each one would deny that he had ever seen or read them, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, would turn from the beggar who had the temerity to require any thing of the public but its applause and its momentary delight. My friends, I am very miserable, for you must know that this is not the only large debt which troubles me. There were other noble souls who had confidence in my success, and allowed themselves to be bribed by 'The Robbers.' My noble friend, Madame von Wolzogen, who gave the homeless one an asylum on her estate in Bauerbach, when he had fled from Ludwigsburg, did more than this. When, after a sojourn of seven months in her beautiful Tusculum, I marched out into the world again, she loaned me two hundred florins, which I solemnly promised to return in a year. The year has expired, my noble friend depends on this sum to make a necessary payment on a mortgage which is attached to her estate, and I am not able to keep my word. I must expect her to consider me a swindler who has cheated her with empty promises!"