Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/79

 made upon the simple mind of a pupil, to criticise them, which privilege I exercised with frankness. He did me the honor of putting two or three of my little compositions, without essential change, into his book, as examples of his rules faithfully followed. From the thirty-fifth edition of Bone's “Lesebuch,” received by me from Germany some years ago, I will quote one of them as illustrating the principles fixed by him for the beginner. It is a “Hunting Scene.”

“The mountains and meadows were covered with glistening snow. The sky shone red with the rising of dawn. I saw three huntsmen standing under a tall oak. The large branches on the tree bore a heavy weight of snow; the small twigs sparkled with icicles. The huntsmen were clad in light green jackets, adorned with shining buttons. At their feet lay a large stag; its red blood colored the white snow. Three brown dogs stood beside the dead body, their tongues hanging quivering out of their mouths.”

In turning the pages of this reader, many delightful evening hours passed with my teacher arise in my memory. In many of those conversations he sought to guide my reading and especially to make me acquainted with the beauty of old German poetry. He also encouraged me to read historical works. I possessed Becker's Universal History. This I read from beginning to end, and reread what had especially interested me. Through the extracts given in Becker's work I first became acquainted with Homer. Those extracts in fluent prose stimulated my desire to learn more of that poet so much that I procured the translation of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” by Johann Heinrich Voss. Never until then, and I believe never since, has poetry moved me so tremendously as in the great passages describing Hector's leave-taking from Andromache at the city gate, when the hero lifts little Astyanax upon his arm and invokes the