rter of an hour for a walk; but you, lazy old
chap, what keeps you from thinking of your old friends? When
just going to bed in this moment my eye met with yours on your
portrait, and I curtailed the sweet restorer, sleep, in order
to remind you of Auld Lang Syne. Why do you never come to
Berlin? It is not a quarter of an American's holiday from
Vienna, and my wife and me should be so happy to see you once
more in this sullen life. When can you come, and when will
you? I swear that I will make out the time to look with you on
old Logier's quarters, ... and at Gerolt's, where they once
would not allow you to put your slender legs upon a chair. Let
politics be hanged and come to see me. I promise that the
Union Jack shall wave over our house, and conversation and the
best old hock shall pour damnation upon the rebels. Do not
forget old friends, neither their wives, as mine wishes nearly
as ardently as myself to see you, or at least to see as
quickly as possible a word of your handwriting.

Sei gut und komm oder schreibe.
Dein,
V. BISMARCK.

In a letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1878, Bismarck in answer to an
inquiry tells how the two became friends.

"I met Motley at Goettingen in 1832, I am not sure if at the beginning
of the Easter term or Michaelmas term. He kept company with German
students, though more addicted to study than we members of the
fighting clubs. Although not having mastered yet the German language
he exercised a marked attraction by a conversation sparkling with wit,
humor, and originality. In autumn of 1833, having both of us emigrated
from Goettingen to Berlin for the prosecution of our studies, we
became fellow lodgers in the house No. 161 Friedrichstrasse. There we
lived in the closest intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise.
Motley by that time had arrived at talking fluently: he occupied
himself not only in translating Goethe's poem, _Faust_, but tried his
hand even in composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of
Shakspere, Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly
with quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious
arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to
continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical
life cut short by the chime of the small hou