At the end of March a telegram from Hamburg announced the birth of a
fine boy, to whom Wilhelm was to stand godfather. He was to be named
Paul Wilhelm, and to be known by the latter name. When the warm weather
came, Paul and his family were to go to the moor, and during the
removal Malvine went with her mother and grandmother, who had both
nursed her tenderly, to Berlin for a visit. Paul went through a great
deal of worry and anxiety this summer. He had everything at stake in
waiting for the results of his undertaking. All his money was in the
buildings, the earth-works, and waterworks; if the barren swamp did not
yield twice the sum intrusted to it he was a ruined man. But as July
drew near, and Paul looked at the thick standing ears of barley and
wheat, he felt the weight of his anxiety lifted, and in August he
proclaimed in letters to his friends that the battle was won, the
harvest more abundant than he had dared to hope for, and the remaining
half-year would complete the transformation of the worthless moorland
into a veritable Australian gold mine. He regarded his property now
with a parental tenderness, as if it were some living being whom he had
trained and educated. The first harvest had given him experience, and
opportunity for new work, and he stayed through the autumn and winter
in his house in the midst of his workmen, whom he felt inclined to
canonize. The men now formed a little colony with their wives and
children, and Paul was as happy as possible within the limited boundary
of his horizon, between the Suderelbe and the Seeve.
These two years had been outwardly uneventful for Wilhelm. In the
mornings he worked in the Physical Institute, in the afternoons he
worked at home, in the evenings he gossiped with Schrotter--a journey
to Hamburg and a fortnight's visit to the house on the Friesenmoor had
given him change. Paul came pretty often to Berlin, and found in the
society of his old friends the enjoyment of his early years renewed,
and Wilhelm with his girlish face, his enthusiastic eyes, and his
unworldly manner did not seem a year older. The professor of physics,
who had frequently been invited to go abroad to direct the teaching in
other European and foreign schools, asked Wilhelm to go with him to
Turkey, Japan, and Chili--as professor. He had the highest opinion of
Wilhelm, and deeply regretted that his misadventure with Herr von
Pechlar made an appointment in Germany impossible. Wilhelm, however,
declined, on the ground that he did not feel an aptitude for teaching,
only for learning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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