easure over his fellowmen, and
especially over children, we shall deem it natural that a child suddenly
transported into this circle could forget its past."

When I entered it, though at that time it was much modified and
established on firm foundations, I met with a similar experience. It was
not only the open air, the forest, the life in Nature which so captivated
new arrivals at Keilhau, but the moral earnestness and the ideal
aspiration which consecrated and ennobled life. Then, too, there was that
"nerve-strengthening" patriotism which pervaded everything, filling the
place of the superficial philanthropy of the Basedow system of education.

But Froebel's influence was soon to draw, as if by magnetic power, the
man who had formed an alliance with him amid blood and steel, and who was
destined to lend the right solidity to the newly erected structure of the
institute--I mean Heinrich Langethal, the most beloved and influential of
my teachers, who stood beside Froebel's inspiring genius and Middendorf's
lovable warmth of feeling as the character, and at the same time the
fully developed and trained intellect, whose guidance was so necessary to
the institute.

The life of this rare teacher can be followed step by step from the first
years of his childhood in his autobiography and many other documents, but
I can only attempt here to sketch in broad outlines the character of the
man whose influence upon my whole inner life has been, up to the present
hour, a decisive one.

The recollection of him makes me inclined to agree with the opinion to
which a noble lady sought to convert me--namely, that our lives are far
more frequently directed into a certain channel by the influence of an
unusual personality than by events, experiences, or individual
reflections.

Langethal was my teacher for several years. When I knew him he was
totally blind, and his eyes, which are said to have flashed so brightly
and boldly on the foe in war, and gazed so winningly into the faces of
friends in time of peace, had lost their lustre. But his noble features
seemed transfigured by the cheerful earnestness which is peculiar to the
old man, who, even though only with the eye of the mind, looks back upon
a well-spent, worthy life, and who does not fear death, because he knows
that God who leads all to the goal allotted by Nature destined him also
for no other. His tall figure could vie with Barop's, and his musical
voice was unusually deep.