t is not hardship, however, that enervates a lad. It is indulgence
and luxury that do that. He grew a stout, healthy, tough, and patient
boy, diligent and skilful in the discharge of his duty, often
supplying the place of his father absent in merry-making. If, in later
life, he overvalued money, it should not be forgotten that few men
have had a harder experience of the want of money at the age when
character is forming.

The bitterest lot has its alleviations. Sometimes a letter would reach
him from over the sea, telling of the good fortune of a brother in a
distant land. In his old age he used to boast that in his boyhood he
walked forty-five miles in one day for the sole purpose of getting a
letter that had arrived from England or America. The Astors have
always been noted for the strength of their family affection. Our
millionaire forgot much that he ought to have remembered, but he was
not remiss in fulfilling the obligations of kindred.

It appears, too, that he was fortunate in having a better schoolmaster
than could generally be found at that day in a village school of
Germany. Valentine Jeune was his name, a French Protestant, whose
parents had fled from their country during the reign of Louis XIV. He
was an active and sympathetic teacher, and bestowed unusual pains upon
the boy, partly because he pitied his unhappy situation, and partly
because of his aptitude to learn. Nevertheless, the school routine of
those days was extremely limited. To read and write, to cipher as far
as the Rule of Three, to learn the Catechism by heart, and to sing the
Church Hymns "so that the windows should rattle,"--these were the sole
accomplishments of even the best pupils of Valentine Jeune. Baden was
then under the rule of a Catholic family. It was a saying in Waldorf
that no man could be appointed a swineherd who was not a Catholic, and
that if a mayoralty were vacant the swineherd must have the place if
there were no other Catholic in the town. Hence it was that the line
which separated the Protestant minority from the Catholic majority was
sharply defined, and the Protestant children were the more thoroughly
indoctrinated. Rev. John Philip Steiner, the Protestant pastor of
Waldorf, a learned and faithful minister, was as punctilious in
requiring from the children the thorough learning of the Catechism as
a German sergeant was in exacting all the niceties of the parade.
Young Astor became, therefore, a very decided Protestant