Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/162

 More on account of his duties than of his personal qualities he was highly unpopular with the students. We thought that such an officer, a product of the period of deepest degradation, did not fit the new order of things and must speedily be abolished. A meeting of students was therefore called at the riding academy, from which, our object having been rumored about, the professors prudently absented themselves. My impromptu speech in the Aula caused my election as president of this meeting. We resolved to present an address to the academic senate, demanding that the officer in question should at once be removed. As chairman of the meeting I was charged with the duty to write the address on the spot. This was done. It was couched in very peremptory language and consisted only of four or five lines. The meeting approved it forthwith, and resolved—as in those days we loved to do things in dramatic style—to proceed in mass to the house of the rector of the university and personally to present the paper to him. So we marched, seven or eight hundred men, in dense column, to the dwelling of the rector and rang the bell. The rector, Herr van Calker, professor of philosophy, an oldish, anxious-looking little man, soon appeared on the doorstep, and I read to him the energetic sentences of our address. For a moment he timidly looked at the crowd of students, and then told us in halting and stammering phrases how rejoiced he was to behold the soaring spirit of German youth and how the students could accomplish in these important days great things, and that he would be happy to submit our address to the academic senate and to the government for speedy consideration and adjustment. We read upon the face of the good little man, toward whom everyone of us felt most kindly, that he contemplated the soaring spirit of German youth with a certain uneasiness, thanked him for his good-will, took our leave politely and