greatest struggle of our country.

Slavery is no more.

Now let the gentlemen in gowns and bands come, and show us heretics a
deed which shall bear such mighty consequences as this.

Later.

Read this! A murder, an assassination! Why was it not to be? Why can
nothing be carried out purely to perfection? Lincoln assassinated!

Does it not often seem as if a malicious demon ruled the world?

This deed is a standing proof of how far the supporters of an
aristocracy, the defenders of a privileged class, the deniers of human
rights, have sunk into barbarism. In future days such wickedness will
not be believed; but now it stands plainly before us as assassination,
and not the deed of a single individual; it is the work of a sworn band
of conspirators.

The fanaticism of the Southern States had burst forth in war, now it
has its seal of blood.

[Knopf to Weidmann.]

Our friend Dournay's uncle is dead; he was ill, and the news of the
assassination of President Lincoln killed him.

Eric, Manna, and their child are going home.

[Eric to Professor Einsiedel.]

What I am now interested in arranging is not the filling out of my own
life, the new calling into which I have entered. It is the torment
attendant on the self-renovation of the modern mind, that doubts and
questions immediately set themselves in opposition to action.

I want to establish a refuge for laborers in the intellectual field,
but the question comes up to me:--

Is not this a direct contradiction to the spirit of this modern age?

Is not the desire for solitude a necessary part of that free individual
life which is our noblest characteristic?

Could I imagine a Lessing, in his old age, in this house of refuge
which I would found?

Is not the quiet communion with one's self, which is our most precious
treasure, destroyed or banished by living in such close relations with
others?

I think that it is not, and only those who pine for rest shall enter
the home.

I beg you not to consider this as the roof of my life-building; it is
to be only a merry green bough which I would set up.

[Eric to Weidmann.]

This letter goes only three days before us to Europe, to the Rhine.

I am coming home.

Deliver the enclosed legal document to the proper authorities.

I herein declare that only a life interest is retained i