It is difficult, and to us of an older generation perhaps impossible, to discover what impression the events of 1848 must have made on a child's mind.
For my part, I have learned through this son, that failure on the part of the parents induces in their offspring a feeling which can best be described as pity mingled with a want of respect. Like William Tell, we had long carried the arrow of revolution in our bosoms, but when we sent it forth it missed the mark.
In the autumn of 1848 my wife came to visit me at Frankfort and brought Ernst with her.
Old Arndt was particularly fond of the lad, and often took him on his knee and called him his "little pine-tree." When the Regent, on the day after his triumphal entry, appeared in public, he met Ernst and kissed him.
During the summer Ernst attended a preparatory school in the neighboring town. But he seemed to have no real love for study, while the teachers were over-indulgent with the handsome lad, who was always ready with his bold glances and saucy remarks.
When I asked him what he intended to become, he would always answer me, "Chief forester of the state."
To my great horror, I learned that he often repeated the party cries with which members of the different factions taunted each other. I sent him home after September, for I saw that his intercourse with those who were high in station was making him haughty and disrespectful.
I am unable to judge as to the proper period at which a youthful mind should be induced to interest itself in political questions. I am sure, however, that if such participation in the affairs of the country be chiefly in the way of opposition, it must prove injurious, for its immediate effect is to destroy every feeling of veneration.
Years passed on, Ernst was educated at the house of my wife's nephew, who was a professor at the Gymnasium at the capital. He also spent much of his time with his sister Bertha, who had married Captain Von Carsten.
I must here remark that my son-in-law, in spite of the obstinate opposition of his haughty family, and the strongly marked disapproval of all of his superiors, up to the Prince himself, had married the daughter of a member of the opposition, and had become the brother-in-law of a refugee who was under sentence of death. He is a man of sterling character.