, traveled,
clever--strong in body and robust in health.

In wandering with his parents, he had met Goethe, Wieland, Madame De
Stael, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and many other distinguished
people, for his mother was a famous lion-hunter, and wherever they went,
the great ones were tracked to their lairs. But however much Madame
Schopenhauer indulged in hero-worship, she had no expectations or
ambitions for her son. She apprenticed him as a clerk and did her utmost
to immerse him in commerce. What she desired was freedom for herself,
and the popular plan to gain freedom is to enslave others. Madame
Schopenhauer moved to Weimar and opened there a sort of literary salon.
She wrote verses, novels, essays, and her home became the center of a
certain artistic group. The fortune her husband had left was equal to
about forty thousand dollars, one-third of which was to go to Arthur
when he was twenty-one. The mother had the handling of it all until that
time, and as the funds were well invested, her income was equal to about
two thousand dollars a year.

A handsome widow, under forty, with no encumbrances to speak of, and a
fair income, is very fortunately situated. Indeed, a great writer has
recently written an essay showing that widows, discreetly bereaved, are
the happiest creatures on earth.

Young Schopenhauer, at his desk in Hamburg, grieved over the death of
his father. That which is lost becomes valuable--bereavement softens the
heart. The only tenderness that is revealed in the writings of
Schopenhauer refers to his father. He affirms the sterling honesty of
the man, and lauds the merchant who boldly states that he is in business
to make money, and compares him with the philosophers who clutch for
power and fame and yet pretend they are working for humanity. When
Schopenhauer was past sixty, he dedicated his complete works to the
memory of his father. As nothing purifies like fire, so does nothing
sanctify like death--the love we lose is the only love we keep.

Mathematics, bills and balance-sheets were odious to young Schopenhauer.
He reverenced the memory of his father, but his mother had endowed him
with a strong impulse for expression. He wrote little essays on the
backs of envelopes, philosophized over his bills, sneaked out of the
countingroom the back way to attend the afternoon lectures by the great
Doctor Gall, and finally, boldly followed his mother to Weimar, that he
might bask in the shadow of the m