Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/372

 However, we were little disposed to give ourselves to the contemplation of nature. Kinkel had spent two, and I three nights in a carriage on the highroad. We were extremely fatigued and in a few minutes lay sound asleep.

The next day Wiggers returned with the news that there was only one brig on the roads, but that she was not ready to sail. A friend of his, Mr. Brockelmann, a merchant and manufacturer, thought it safest to send us across the sea on one of his own ships and to shelter us in his own house until that ship could be started. Thus we left our hotel, and a Warnemünde pilotboat carried us up the Warnow River. We landed near a little village, where Brockelmann awaited us with his carriage.

We saw before us a stalwart man of about fifty years, with gray hair and whiskers, but with rosy complexion and youthful vivacity in expression and movement. He welcomed us with joyous cordiality, and after the first few minutes of our acquaintance, we were like old friends. In him we recognized a self-made man in the best sense of the term, a man who had carved his own fortune, who could look back with self-respect upon what he had accomplished and who found in his successes an inspiration for further endeavor and for an enterprising and self-sacrificing public spirit. His broad humanity, which recognized the right of everyone to a just estimation of his true value and his claim to a corresponding chance of advancement, had made him from his early youth a liberal, and after the revolution of 1848, a democrat. He had practically carried out his principles and theories as far as possible, and he was therefore widely known as a protector of the poor and oppressed. But especially his employees, his working people, of whom there was a large number in his factories, revered and loved him as a father. When he offered us his house as an asylum he could well assure us that he had workingmen enough