Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/65

 Although, after I could read, my books consumed much of my time, I had my full part of the games with the peasant and tradesmen's children in the village, and their faces and names are still quite familiar to me. My most intimate friend was the youngest of the three sons of a well-to-do merchant—a boy of amiable disposition and good parts. We were exactly of the same age and pursued the same studies. So we believed ourselves destined to walk through life side by side. We separated in early boyhood and did not meet again until late in life. He had studied law, had served his country with honor in the wars of 1866 against Austria and of 1870 against France, had risen to the dignity of a major of Uhlans and been decorated with the Iron Cross, an order bestowed only for personal bravery. After the French war he had been appointed a judge in Alsace, and later he retired from that place to his native village, an old bachelor in very comfortable circumstances. He inhabited a fine house on the very spot where many years before the queer old philosopher Krupp had lived. Here, in 1889, the dear comrade of my boyhood, now a portly man of years, welcomed me and my children who accompanied me with radiant heartiness and hospitality. A repast was quickly improvised, and when the dear old friend pressed his arm around my neck and in his best wine proposed my health, our eyes, like our glasses, were full to the brim.

My father interested himself greatly in the care of animals and flowers. Plants and song birds were in every room of our house. He taught me how to set snares for the field-fares which passed over our country in the autumn, and were regarded as a great table delicacy. Those snares were distributed along the hunters' trails in the forest, and I used to go before sunrise and again at twilight in the evening into the depth of the woods and secure the birds that had been