, and more prudential in his ideas,
endeavoured to modify his alarm, and urge him to perseverance in any
honourable course of employment. The father's letter at this time to
his son, to apprize him of the true position of the family, and
preserve him against the dangers in his path, is honourable to both,
and worthy of perusal.

"This being in all probability the last letter that you will
receive from me at Mannheim, I address it to you alone. How deeply
the wider separation which is about to take place between us
affects me, you may partly conceive, though not feel it in the
same degree with which it oppresses my heart. If you reflect
seriously on what I have undergone with you two children in your
tender years, you will not accuse me of timidity, but, on the
contrary, do me the justice to own that I am, and ever have been,
a man with the heart to venture every thing, though indeed I
always employed the greatest circumspection and precaution.
Against accidents it is impossible to provide, for God only sees
into futurity. Up to this time we cannot be said to have been
either successful or unsuccessful; but, God be thanked, we have
steered between the two. Every thing has been attempted for your
success, and through you for our own. We have at least endeavoured
to settle you in some appointment on a secure footing; though fate
has hitherto decreed that we should fail in our object. This last
step of ours, however, makes my spirit sink within me. You may see
as clearly as the sun at noonday, that, through it, the future
condition of your aged parents, and of your affectionately
attached sister, entirely depends upon you. From the time of your
birth, and indeed earlier, ever since my marriage, I have found it
a hard task to support a wife, and, by degrees, a family of seven
children, two relatives by marriage, and the mother, on a certain
income of twenty-five florins a month, out of this to pay for
maintenance and the expenses of child-bed, deaths, and sicknesses;
which expenses, when you reflect upon them, will convince you that
I not only never devoted a kreutzer to my own private pleasure,
but that I could never, in spite of all my contrivances and care,
have managed to live free from debt without the especial favour of
God; and yet I never was in debt till now. I devoted all my time
to you t