ranged freely over life and
its many-sided aspects. My own life and its object were also brought
forward and talked over. I spoke openly, manifesting myself just as I
was, saying what I knew and what I did not know about myself.

"Oh," said Gruner, turning to me, "give up architecture; it is not your
vocation at all. Become a teacher. We want a teacher in our own school.
Say you agree, and the place shall be yours."

My friend was for accepting Gruner's proposal, and I began to hesitate.
Added to this, an external circumstance now came to my knowledge which
hastened my decision. I received the news namely, that the whole of my
testimonials, and particularly those that I had received in Jena, which
were amongst them, had been lost. They had been sent to a gentleman who
took a lively interest in my affairs, and I never found out through what
mischance they were lost. I now read this to mean that Providence itself
had thus broken up the bridge behind me, and cut off all return. I
deliberated no longer, but eagerly and joyfully seized the hand held out
to me, and quickly became a teacher in the Model School of
Frankfurt-on-the-Main.[40]

The watchword of teaching and of education was at this time the name of
PESTALOZZI. It soon became evident to me that Pestalozzi was to be the
watchword of my life also; for not only Gruner, but also a second
teacher at the school, were pupils of Pestalozzi, and the first-named
had even written a book on his method of teaching. The name had a
magnetic effect upon me, the more so as during my self-development and
self-education it had seemed to me an aspiration--a something perhaps
never to be familiarly known, yet distinct enough, and at all events
inspiriting. And now I recalled how in my early boyhood, in my father's
house, I had got a certain piece of news out of some newspaper or
another, or at least that is how the matter stood in my memory. I
gathered that in Switzerland a man of forty, who lived retired from the
world,--Pestalozzi by name,--had taught himself, alone and unaided,
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Just at that time I was feeling the
slowness and insufficiency of my own development, and this news quieted
me, and filled me with the hope and trust that I, too, might, through my
own endeavour, repair the deficiencies of my bringing-up. As I have
grown older I have also found it consolatory to remark how the culture
of vigorous, capable men has not seldom been acquired r