ful mother, he washed and brushed, provided
with new clothes, forced into school and good behavior, and never let
out of his sight. The diplomatic negotiations about the conquest were
still going on when he sent a troop of his best officials into the
wilderness. The territory was subdivided into small districts, in the
shortest possible time the whole land area was appraised and equitably
taxed, each district provided with a provincial magistrate, with a
court, and with post-offices and sanitary police. New parishes were
called into life as if by magic, a company of 187 school teachers was
brought into the country--the worthy Semler had chosen and drilled
part of them--and squads of German artisans were got together, from
the machinist down to the brickmaker. Everywhere was heard the bustle
of digging, hammering, building. The cities were filled with
colonists, street after street rose from the ruins, the estates of the
starosts were changed into crown estates, new villages of colonists
were laid out, new agricultural enterprises ordered. In the first year
after the occupation the great canal was dug, which in a course of a
dozen miles or so unites the Vistula by way of the Netze with the Oder
and the Elbe. A year after the King issued the order for the canal he
saw with his own eyes laden Oder barges 120 feet long enter the
Vistula, bound east. Through the new waterway broad stretches of land
were drained and immediately filled with German colonists. Incessantly
the King urged on, praised, and censured. However great the zeal of
his officials was, it was seldom able to satisfy him. In this way, in
a few years, the wild Slavic weeds which had sprung up here and there
even over the German fields were brought under control, and the Polish
districts, too, got used to the orderliness of the new life; and West
Prussia showed itself, in the wars after 1806, almost as stoutly
Prussian as the old provinces.

While the gray-haired King planned and created, year after year passed
over his thoughtful head. His surroundings became stiller and more
solitary; the circle of men whom he took into his confidence became
smaller. He had laid aside his flute, and the new French literature
appeared to him shallow and tedious. Sometimes it seemed to him as if
a new life were budding under him in Germany, but he was a stranger to
it. He worked untiringly for his army and for the prosperity of his
people; the instruments he used were of less a