"The influx of scholars from the neighbourhood did not fail to have an effect on the opponents in the place; many boys succeeded in overcoming the resistance of their parents, and had the satisfaction of entering the institution, which soon numbered between thirty and forty scholars. In order to regulate the instruction according to the requirements, I was obliged to alter the prescribed plan. I did it on my own responsibility, and when at the close of the first year, I reported this to the government, what I had done was approved, and a wish expressed that the same course might be pursued in the other district schools. In the summer I kept school only from six to ten o'clock in the morning, in order that the boys might be employed in house and field labour. Besides this, the great work of the hay and corn harvest was in the holidays. The objects of study I limited in number, but went more deeply into them; I honestly lamented that the pastor gave no religious instruction, for the boys came from the preparatory school very much neglected in this important branch; they had only been impressed with two points, the indispensableness of the Ecclesiastical order, and the value of relics; of biblical history they were almost entirely ignorant. If the pastor did not teach religion, neither did I teach politics, but left the Fatherland State system to the school of life. On the other hand, the German and French languages, together with practice in composition, history, and geography, arithmetic and geometry, were carried on with great zeal, and it gave me pleasure to observe how forward boys of natural capacity might be brought in a short time, when all bombast was abolished, things represented simply, and each individual suitably assisted in his intellectual work.