about in the fields.

My time till midsummer, 1821, was spent partly in study, but in a great
degree in playing the piano-forte and guitar, reading novels,
frequenting taverns, forming resolutions to become different, yet
breaking them almost as fast as they were made. My money was often spent
on my sinful pleasures, through which I was now and then brought into
trouble, so that once, to satisfy my hunger, I stole a piece of coarse
bread, the allowance of a soldier who was quartered in the house where I
lodged.

At midsummer, 1821, my father obtained an appointment at Schoenebeck,
near Magdeburg, and I embraced the opportunity of entreating him to
remove me to the cathedral classical school of Magdeburg; for I thought
that if I could but leave my companions in sin, and get out of certain
snares, and be placed under other tutors, I should then live a different
life. My father consented, and I was allowed to leave Halberstadt, and
to stay at Heimersleben till Michaelmas. Being thus quite my own master,
I grew still more idle, and lived as much as before in all sorts of sin.
When Michaelmas came, I persuaded my father to leave me at Heimersleben
till Easter, and to let me read the classics with a clergyman living in
the same place. I was now living on the premises belonging to my father,
under little real control, and intrusted with a considerable sum of
money, which I had to collect for my father, from persons who owed it to
him. My habits soon led me to spend a considerable part of this money,
giving receipts for different sums, yet leaving my father to suppose I
had not received them.

In November, I went on a pleasure excursion to Magdeburg, where I spent
six days in much sin, and though my absence from home had been found out
by my father before I returned from thence, yet I took all the money I
could obtain, and went to Brunswick, after I had, through a number of
lies, obtained permission from my tutor. I spent a week at Brunswick,
in an expensive hotel. At the end of the week my money was expended. I
then went, without money, to another hotel, in a village near Brunswick,
where I spent another week in an expensive way of living. At last, the
owner of the hotel, suspecting that I had no money, asked for payment,
and I was obliged to leave my best clothes as security. I then walked
about six miles, to Wolfenbuttel, went to an inn, and began again to
live as if I had plenty of money. On the second or third morning