Someone who is not accustomed to see the deeper meanings might say now that here again I have come to such a point, where the support of my fellow men had been pulled out from under my feet, so that spiritually I was finally hovering in thin air. But the very opposite is the case. Nothing has been taken from me, but much, very much has been given, though no support, no save hiding-place down in the soil, but rather a rope, sufficiently strong and firm, to be saved by rising upwards, if ever the abyss should open up beneath me, the abyss I was destined for, as fatalists would say, from the very start. By starting to talk about this abyss, I enter those areas of my so-called boyhood, where the morasses were to be found and still are found, from which all the mists and all the poisons arise, which have turned my life into an uninterrupted, endless torment.
The name of this abyss is, to call it by its proper name right from the start -- -- reading. By no means did I plummet into it, suddenly, surprisingly, and unexpectedly, but rather I descended into it, step by step, slowly and purposefully, always guided by my father's hand. Granted, he suspected as little as I, where this path would lead us. My first reading material consisted of the fairy-tales, the herbal book, and the illustrated Bible with our ancestors' annotations. This was followed by the various school-books of the present and the past, which were to be found in our little town. Then came all sorts of other books, father borrowed from all around. Besides this, there was the Bible. Not just a selection of biblical stories, but the entire, complete Bible, which I have read repeatedly as a boy, from the first word to the last, with all that is in it. Father thought this was a good thing, and no one of my teachers spoke out against him, not even the minister. He did not permit me to even give the appearance of having nothing to keep me busy. And he was against any kind of participation in the "misdoings" of other boys. He brought me up as one would manufacture a prototypical specimen, to promote one's work before others. I had to be at home all the time, to write, to read, and to "learn"! By and by, I was exempt from sewing gloves. Even when he left the house, this did not give me any relief, because he took me with him. When I saw children of my own age jumping, running, playing, and laughing in the market square, I rarely dared to utter the wish to join them, because when father was not in a good mood, this was very dangerous. Then, when I sat sadly or even with a hidden tear with my book, mother occasionally pushed my out of the door and mercifully said: "So just go out for a bit; but be back within ten minutes, or he'll beat you up. I'll say, I'd sent you somewhere!" Oh, this mother, this uniquely good, poor, quiet mother! If you want to know what else I think of her, even today, turn to the poem on page 105 of my book "Himmelsgedanken" <Thoughts of Heaven>. And the poem on page 109 refers to my grandmother, out of whose soul the character of Marah Durimeh has grown, this oriental princess, which symbolises to my and my readers the "soul of mankind".
After I had read so about everything that was to be found in the private households of Hohenstein-Ernstthal in the form of books of every genre, and had also copied or made notes of much, very much of it, father started looking around for new sources. There had been three of them, these were the libraries of the cantor, the principal, and the minister. The cantor proved to be the most reasonable one of the three in this respect as well. He said, he had no books for entertainment, but only books for learning, and I was still far too young for those, then. But nevertheless, he parted with one of them, for the thought, it might be very useful for me as member of the choir to learn how to translate the Latin texts of our hymns into the the German language. This book was on Latin grammar; the title page was missing, but on the next page it read:
"A boy must get his lessons down,
for him to be a dominus, [a]
but if he learns just with a frown,
thus he will be an asinus!"
[a] dominus (Latin) = master, lord
asinus (Latin) = donkey, ass
Father was truly delighted about this four-lined rhyme and stated that I should take good care that would not become an asinus, but rather a dominus. So, now I was to get busy and quickly learn some Latin!
Soon afterwards, some families of Ernstthal arrived at the decision to emigrate to America, in the coming year. Therefore, their children were to learn as much English as possible during this period of time. It goes without saying that I had to join them! And then it happened that in some manner, I do not recall how, a book came into our possession, containing French songs of the Freemasons, both lyrics and melodies. It had been printed in the year 1782 in Berlin and was dedicated to "His Royal Highness, Friedrich Wilhelm, prince of Prussia". Just for that, it had to be good and of a very high value! The title read: "Chansons maçonniques", and the melody I liked the most had seven four-lined stanzas to be sung to it, the first of which I would like to quote here:
"Nous vénérons de l'Arabie
La sage et noble antiquité,
Et la célèbre Confrairie
Transmise à la postérité." [a]