Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/852

832 Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Werner Siemens's earliest recollection of his life at Lenthe was of what in his Reminiscences he calls an act of heroism. When he was about five years old his sister came crying into his father's room where he was playing. She had been sent to the Pfarhaus to take her lesson, but found her way obstructed at the gate by a gander, which snapped at her whenever she attempted to pass. The father gave Werner his staff and told him to go with his sister and to cudgel the gander well when it appeared. The boy did so, and the gander ran away in panic. "It is remarkable" he says, "how deep and enduring an impression this first victory made on my childish mind. Even now, after nearly seventy years, all the persons and scenes connected with this important event stand clearly before my eyes. With it is also associated my only recollection of the appearance of my parents in their younger days; and many a time, in later difficult experiences, has the victory over the gander unconsciously incited me not to shun threatening dangers but to meet them with vigorous resistance."

The Siemens children were taught by their grandmother Deichmann, and then by their father, whose brilliant and original sketches of history and ethnology, dictated to them, formed the foundation, Siemens says, of his later views. He was next sent to the Bürgerschule, in the neighboring town of Schönberg, whither he walked when the roads were not too bad, and where ho seems to have spent a year of battling with his mates, "to the hardening of his powers, but with only the most insignificant results in knowledge." Then he had tutors of opposite characters, and after them he was sent to the gymnasium at Lübeck. Not satisfied with the progress he was making in mathematics and in the ancient languages, he gave his attention to the only technical branch taught in the school—engineering. To prepare for entrance into the engineering school at Berlin, he took private lessons in mathematics and surveying. Instead of entering this school, which was expensive, his teacher advised him to go into the Prussian engineering service, where he would be taught the same things. His father fell in with this plan, and prophetically gave as his reason that the present conditions could not last in Germany, that in time everything must go down. The only firm point in Germany was the state of Frederick the Great, with the Prussian army; and in the time of trouble that was coming it would be better to be the hammer than the anvil. Fortune favored him in the examinations, for which his preparation had been very superficial, and in the fall of 1835 he was admitted to the United Artillery and Engineers' School in Berlin. His mother dying in July, 1839, and his father six months later, he became the guardian of his younger brothers and sisters. Some