because I weighed them with my rusty Dessau balance. I had to learn by
long experience that there may be a spot, nay, several spots on the
soft skin of a peach, and yet the whole fruit may be perfect. I acted
very much like the merchant who tested a whole field of rice by the
first handful of grains, and who, if he found one or two bad grains,
would have nothing to do with the whole field. I had to learn what
was, perhaps, the most difficult lesson of all, that a trusted friend
could not always be trusted, and yet need not therefore be altogether
a reprobate. What was most difficult for me to digest was an untruth:
finding out that one who professed to be a friend had said and done
most unfriendly things behind one's back. Still, in a long life one
finds out that even that may not be a deadly sin, and that if we are
so loth to forgive it, it is partly because the falsehood affected our
own interests. Thus only can we explain how a man whom we know to have
been guilty of falsehoods towards ourselves may be looked upon as
perfectly honest, straightforward, and trustworthy, by a large number
of his own friends. We see this over and over again with men occupying
eminent positions in Church and State. We see how a prime minister or
an archbishop is represented by men who know him as a liar and a
hypocrite, while by others he is spoken of as a paragon of honour and
honesty, and a true Christian. My narrow Dessau views became a little
widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two
years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at
Berlin. Still, during all this time I saw but little of what is called
society, I only knew of people whom I loved and of people whom I
disliked. There was no room as yet for indifferent people, whom one
tolerates and is civil to without caring whether one sees them again
or not. Of the simplest duties of society also I was completely
ignorant. No one ever told me what to say and what to do, or what not
to say and what not to do. What I felt I said, what I thought right I
did. There was, in fact, in my small native town very little that
could be called society. One lived in one's family and with one's
intimate friends without any ceremony. It is a pity that children are
not taught a few rules of life-wisdom by their seniors. I know that
the Jews do not neglect that duty, and I remember being surprised at
my young Jewish friends at Dessau coming out with some very w