rst for knowledge, a love for
science and art. On account of it I passed for a stupid idler in the
family, who would not contribute to his own support. Occupation with
books was accounted idleness and laziness by my father. I was driven to
work with blows and ill-treatment; and, that I might the sooner equal
my father as a good shoemaker, I was bound to the stool near his own.
During the long, fearful days I was forced to sit and draw the pitched,
offensive thread through the leather, and when my arms were lame, and
sank weary at my side, then I was invigorated to renewed exertion with
blows. Finally, with the courage of despair, I fled from this life of
torture. Unacquainted with the world, and inexperienced, I hoped for the
sympathy of men, but in vain. No one would relieve or assist me! Days
and weeks long I have wandered around in the forest adjoining our little
village, and lived like the animals, upon roots and herbs. Yet I was
happy! I had taken with me in my flight two books which I had received
as prizes, in the happy days that my father permitted me to go to the
Latin school. The decision of the teacher that I was created for a
scholar, so terrified my father, that he took me from the school, to
turn the embryo savant, who would be good for nothing, into a shoemaker,
who might earn his bread. My two darling books remained to me. In the
forest solitude I read Ovid and Virgil until I had memorized them, and
recited them aloud, in pathetic tones, for my own amusement. To-day I
recall those weeks in the forest stillness as the happiest, purest, and
most beautiful of my life."

"And they undoubtedly are," said Goethe, kindly. "The return to Nature
is the return to one's self. Who will be an able, vigorous man and
remain so, must, above all things, live in and with Nature."

"But oh! this happy life did not long continue," sighed Moritz. "My
father discovered my retreat, and came with sheriffs and bailiffs to
seize me like a criminal--like a wild animal. With my hands bound, I was
brought back in broad day, amid the jeers of street boys. Permit me to
pass in silence the degradation, the torture which followed. I became a
burden to myself, and longed for death. The ill-treatment of my father
finally revived my courage to run away the second time. I went to a
large town near by, and decided to earn my living rather than return
to my father. To fulfil the prophecy of my teacher was my ambition. The
privations that I e