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Christian Gellert, and other sketches. transl
Christian Gellert and other sketches transl Author:Berthold Auerbach Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES FROM THE MEMORANDUM-BOOK THE PASTOR OF THE MOUNTAIN. HURRAH FOR THE NEXT. I Was Vicar of the town, and at the same time master at the national sch... more »ool: among my candidates for confirmation was a lad of particularly interesting character; he was always ready and willing, and had besides a rare, quick, and peculiar apprehension. His parents were poor, honest people; the father supported his family but scantily by his handiwork, for he was a turner of the old school; he could not procure the new-fashioned machines, and would probably have been unable to use them if he could. At the confirmation lessons I learnt to know my brown-eyed William—he was well- grown too, and had something attractively bashful in his manner— more and more intimately. His proper destination became continually more evident,—he seemed to me intended for a scholar,— but so compliant was he, that without a word of opposition, and, as it seemed, without any inward objection, he willingly consented to learn his trade of his father. Father and son, however, were quite prepared, should another vocation fall in his way, to avail themselves of it. I was for a long while in doubt whether I ought to leave him to his fate, or might, in this case, consider myself justified in a decided interference. I find in my papers of that date a short essay upon the caste system of the Egyptians, wherein I attempted to show, that, notwithstanding the palpable hardship and cruelty of the system, there was still some compensation in the fact, that family ties were thus more firmly and internally knit. Supposing the son not to enter upon a different line of life, in which he must follow a totally different manner of life, he remains still more the son for that very reason. There ensue none of those estrangements or th...« less