Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/161

 opinion of the subject which was under discussion, but did not attend the meeting with the intention of taking part in the debate. Suddenly I heard some of the speakers say something very repugnant to my feelings, and following a sudden impulse, I found myself the next moment speaking to the assembly. I have never been able to recollect what I said. I only remember that I was in a nervous condition until then entirely unknown to me; that thoughts and words came to me in an uninterrupted flow; that I spoke with vehement rapidity, and that the applause following my speech wakened me out of something like a dream. This was my first public speech. When the meeting had adjourned I met at the exit of the hall Professor Ritschl. As I attended some of his lectures he knew me. He put his hand upon my shoulder and asked:

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen years.”

“Too bad; still too young for our new German parliament.” I blushed all over; that I should become a member of any parliament—that was a thought to which my ambition had never soared. I feared the good professor had permitted himself to joke with me.

Before long I was again in the foreground. Like all other orders of society in those days, we university men had our peculiar grievances which in the “new time” were to be redressed. The Prussian Government kept at the universities an official one of whose principal duties it was to watch the political tendencies of professors and students. This office had been created at the time of the “persecution of demagogues,” after the notorious ministerial conferences at Carlsbad, and was therefore in bad odor with liberal-minded men. The officer in question was at that time Herr von Bethmann Hollweg.