I went
quietly out of the yard, and then ran off; but being suspected and
observed, and therefore seen to go off, I was immediately called after,
and so had to return. I was arrested, and being suspected to be a thief,
was examined for about three hours, and then sent to jail. I now found
myself, at the age of sixteen, an inmate of the same dwelling with
thieves and murderers. I was locked up in this place day and night,
without permission to leave my cell.

I was in prison from Dec. 18, 1821, till January 12, 1822, when the
keeper told me to go with him to the police office. Here I found that
the commissioner before whom I had been tried, had acquainted my father
with my conduct; and thus I was kept in prison till my father sent the
money which was needed for my travelling expenses, to pay my debt in the
inn, and for my maintenance in the prison. So ungrateful was I now for
certain little kindnesses shown to me by a fellow-prisoner, that,
although I had promised to call on his sister, to deliver a message from
him, I omitted to do so; and so little had I been benefited by this, my
chastisement, that, though I was going home to meet an angry father,
only two hours after I had left the town where I had been imprisoned, I
chose an avowedly wicked person as my travelling companion for a great
part of my journey.

My father, who arrived two days after I had reached Heimersleben, after
having severely beaten me, took me home to Schoenebeck, intending, at
Easter, to send me to a classical school at Halle, that I might be under
strict discipline and the continual inspection of a tutor. Easter came,
and I easily persuaded him to let me stay at home till Michaelmas. But
after that period he would not consent to my remaining any longer with
him, and I left home, pretending to go to Halle to be examined. But
having a hearty dislike to the strict discipline of which I had heard, I
went to Nordhausen, and had myself examined to be received into that
school. I then went home, but never told my father a word of all this
deception till the day before my departure, which obliged me to invent a
whole chain of lies. He was then very angry; but at last, through my
entreaties and persuasion, he gave way and allowed me to go. This was in
October, 1822.

I continued at Nordhausen two years and six months. During this time I
studied with considerable diligence the Latin classics, French, history,
my own language, etc.; but did little in Heb