hat I affirm. The great mysterious Destiny alone can educate
him. All that we can do is, to work with him, and to help him rule over
and apply whatever strength he has."

"To rule over and to apply," Sonnenkamp murmured to himself; "that
sounds well, and I must say that you confirm an impression which has
often before this been made upon me. Only a soldier, only a man who has
developed and trained his own inborn courageous energies, only such an
one can accomplish anything great in our time; nothing can be done by
sermons and books, for they cannot overcome the old, nor create the new
age."

In a changed, almost cringingly humble tone, Sonnenkamp continued,--

"It may appear in the highest degree strange, that I, a man of little
knowledge, who have not had time in the active business of life to
learn anything rightly,--that I should seem to subject you to
examination; but you must be convinced that I do it for my own
instruction. I see, already, that I have even more to learn from you
than Roland has.

"I pray you then to tell me what training--imagine yourself a father in
my circumstances--what training you would give your own son."

"I believe," Eric answered, "that fantasy can call up all sorts of
pictures, but a relation which is one of the mysteries of nature can
only be known through experience, and cannot be apprehended by any
stretch of the imagination. Permit me then to answer from my own
outside point of view."

"Very well."

"My father was the educator of a prince, and I think his task was the
easier one."

"You would then place wealth above sovereignty?"

"Not at all; but in a prince the sense of duty is very early awakened.
Not only pride but duty is a means, every moment, of inducing him to
conduct himself as a prince. The formal assumption of state dignity, in
which those in the highest rank are so accomplished, appears from a
very early age as an essential feature of their position, as a duty,
and becomes a second nature. Taste becomes connoisseurship. Pardon my
scholastic ways," Eric laughingly said, breaking in upon his
exposition.

"Don't stop--to me it is in the highest degree interesting."

Sonnenkamp leaned back in his seat, and gave himself up to the
enjoyment of Eric's discourse, as if it were some choice tid-bit: very
well for this man to go off into the regions of speculation, who in the
meanwhile could not call his own the chair on which he sat, nor the
spot of earth on which he