contempt for or indifference to the material demands of life, and on the
other possessed a certain artless selfishness which gave him courage,
whenever he wished to promote objects undoubtedly pure and noble, to
deal arbitrarily with other lives, even where it could hardly redound to
their advantage. I shall have more to say of him later.

The source of Middendorf's greatness in the sphere where life and his
own choice had placed him may even be imputed to him as a fault. He, the
most enthusiastic of all Froebel's disciples, remained to his life's
end a lovable child, in whom the powers of a rich poetic soul surpassed
those of the thoughtful, well-trained mind. He would have been
ill-adapted for any practical position, but no one could be better
suited to enter into the soul-life of young human beings, cherish and
ennoble them.

A deeper insight into the lives of Barop and Langethal taught me to
prize these men more and more.

They have all rested under the sod for decades, and though their
institute, to which I owe so much, has remained dear and precious,
and the years I spent in the pleasant Thuringian mountain valley are
numbered among the fairest in my life, I must renounce making proselytes
for the Keilhau Institute, because, when I saw its present head for the
last time, as a very young man, I heard from him, to my sincere regret,
that, since the introduction of the law of military service, he found
himself compelled to make the course of study at Rudolstadt conform to
the system of teaching in a Realschule.--[School in which the arts and
sciences as well as the languages are taught.-TR.]--He was forced to
do so in order to give his graduates the certificate for the one year's
military service.

The classics, formerly held in such high esteem beneath its roof, must
now rank below the sciences and modern languages, which are regarded
as most important. But love for Germany and the development of German
character, which Froebel made the foundation of his method of education,
are too deeply rooted there ever to be extirpated. Both are as zealously
fostered in Keilhau now as in former years.

After a cordial greeting from Barop, we had desks assigned us in the
schoolroom, which were supplied with piles of books, writing materials,
and other necessaries. Ludo's bed stood in the same dormitory with mine.
Both were hard enough, but this had not damped our gay spirits, and when
we were taken to the other boys we wer