“You not only wrong yourself, but you wrong mankind,” said Goethe, kindly. “In the world, and in literature, you bear an honored name; every one of education is familiar with your excellent work on ‘Prosody of the German Language’--has read also your spirited Journey to England. You have no right to ask that one should separate the kernel from the shell in hastily passing by. If you surround yourself with a wall bedaubed with caricatures, you cannot expect that people will look behind what seems an entrance to a puppet-show, to find holy temples, blooming gardens, or a church-yard filled with graves.” “That is just what I resemble,” said Moritz, with a melancholy air. “From the depths of my soul it seems so. Nothing but buried hopes, murdered ideals, and wishes trodden under foot. From childhood I have exerted myself against circumstances; I have striven my whole life--a pledge of my being against unpropitious Fate. Although the son of a poor tradesman, Nature had given me a thirst for knowledge, a love for science and art. On account of it I passed for a stupid idler in the family, who would not contribute to his own support. Occupation with books was accounted idleness and laziness by my father. I was driven to work with blows and ill-treatment; and, that I might the sooner equal my father as a good shoemaker, I was bound to the stool near his own. During the long, fearful days I was forced to sit and draw the pitched, offensive thread through the leather, and when my arms were lame, and sank weary at my side, then I was invigorated to renewed exertion with blows. Finally, with the courage of despair, I fled from this life of torture. Unacquainted with the world, and inexperienced, I hoped for the sympathy of men, but in vain. No one would relieve or assist me! Days and weeks long I have wandered around in the forest adjoining our little village, and lived like the animals, upon roots and herbs. Yet I was happy! I had taken with me in my flight two books which I had received as prizes, in the happy days that my father permitted me to go to the Latin school. The decision of the teacher that I was created for a scholar, so terrified my father, that he took me from the school, to turn the embryo savant, who would be good for nothing, into a shoemaker, who might earn his bread. My two darling books remained to me. In the forest solitude I read Ovid and Virgil until I had memorized them, and recited them aloud, in pathetic tones, for my own amusement. To-day I recall those weeks in the forest stillness as the happiest, purest, and most beautiful of my life.” “And they undoubtedly are,” said Goethe, kindly. “The return to Nature is the return to one’s self. Who will be an able, vigorous man and remain so, must, above all things, live in and with Nature.”