its a man to dig into the lump and stamp his own individuality upon
this commonplace routine; and, after all, it is that alone which could
give any personal satisfaction to a man constituted as I am--this
feeling, akin to the one you have in art, of having created something
which every other man could not have produced just as well by merely
following a certain formula.

"It may be that my experience in my own narrow little fatherland has
given me a false idea of what a man inclined to action has to hope and
to fear in this Old World of ours. Perhaps if I could find a position
in the North German Confederation!--but even that wouldn't help me; at
least I have known Prussian Landraths with whom I would not have
changed places--men, the highest aim of whose ambition was to succeed
to a chief magistrate's position, with a white head and a soul grown
gray in the dust of official documents.

"No, my dear fellow, Schnetz unquestionably used the right expression.
I have stumbled into the wrong century. I should have done very well in
the middle ages, when the old savage and unruly spirit was everywhere
to be found side by side with a struggling civilization, and when one
could be a good citizen and yet go armed to the teeth. But since this
wretched anachronism cannot now be helped, I will at least do my best
to seek out a place where a bird of my plumage won't be stared at like
a strange fowl in a hen-yard, and crowed over by every well-conditioned
cock.

"I have seen quite enough of the New World to know that I shall be more
in my proper place there than here. Don't imagine for a moment that I
over-estimate that promised land; the positive, human, heart-quickening
possessions and enjoyments that it has to offer are few. But of this
very same unattractive nothing, from which something can be made, there
is blessed superabundance there.

"Consequently, I have made up my mind, as the Yankees say, to cross the
wide water again, and to settle down there permanently. Salutary and
necessary as this step is for me, I know well that parting is not such
an easy matter. And for that very reason I want to make my preparatory
studies for it out here in the deepest solitude. I want to accustom
myself to doing without all sorts of things, and at the same time to
let my body get as hardy again as it is necessary to have it over
there.

"I hope to attain this result in a few months. And then, before I shake
the dust of the Old World off