“My son must be impressed with love and fear of God, as the foundation of our temporal and eternal welfare. No false religions or sects of Atheist, Arian, Socinian, or whatever name the poisonous things have, which can so easily corrupt a young mind, are to be even named in his hearing. He is to be taught a proper abhorrence of papistry, and to be shown its baselessness and nonsensicality. Impress on him the true religion, which consists essentially in this, that Christ died for all men. He is to learn no Latin, but French and German, so as to speak and write with brevity and propriety. “Let him learn arithmetic, mathematics, artillery, economy, to the very bottom; history in particular; ancient history only slightly, but the history of the last hundred and fifty years to the exactest pitch. He must be completely master of geography, as also of whatever is remarkable in each country. With increasing years you will more and more, to an especial degree, go upon fortification, the formation of a camp, and other war sciences, that the prince may, from youth upward, be trained to act as officer and general, and to seek all his glory in the soldier profession. You have, in the highest measure, to make it your care to infuse into my son a true love for the soldier business, and to impress on him that, as there is nothing in the world which can bring a prince renown and honor like the sword, so he would be a despised creature before all men if he did not love it and seek his glory therein.” In October, 1723, when the prince was eleven years of age, his grandfather, George I., came to Berlin to visit his daughter and his son-in-law, the mother and father of Fritz. From the windows of his apartment he looked out with much interest upon Fritz, drilling his cadet company upon the esplanade in front of the palace. The clock-work precision of the movements of the boy soldiers greatly surprised him. Every year Frederick William rigorously reviewed all his garrisons. Though accompanied by a numerous staff, he traveled with Spartan simplicity, regardless of exposure and fatigue. From an early age he took Fritz with him on these annual reviews. A common vehicle, called the sausage car, and which was the most primitive of carriages, was often used by the king in his rough travels and hunting excursions. This consisted of a mere stuffed pole, some ten or twelve feet long, upon which one sits astride, as if riding a rail. It rested upon wheels, probably with a sort of stirrup for the feet, and the riders, ten or a dozen, were rattled along over the rough roads, through dust or mud, alike regardless of winter’s frost or summer’s rain. The cast-iron king, rejoicing in hardship and exposure, robbed his delicate child even of needful sleep, saying, “Too much sleep stupefies a fellow.” [Illustration: THE SAUSAGE CAR.]