Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/81

 and the eager desire to learn more of the story or the argument urges him on from line to line, and from page to page, then grammar becomes to him a welcome aid, and not a mere drudgery, and he acquires the language almost without knowing how.

I fully experienced this when under Bone's guidance I read Cornelius Nepos and Cæsar's Gallic wars, and still more in translating Cicero's Orations. Most of these appear to the student at first rather difficult. But if he begins each time by examining the circumstances under which the oration was delivered, the purpose it was to serve, the points upon which special stress was to be laid, and the personalities which were involved in the proceeding, he will be imperceptibly hurried along by the desire to discover with what representations and arguments, what attacks and defenses, what appeals to reason, honor, or passion, the orator has sought to carry his cause, and the quickened interest in the subject will soon overcome all the linguistic difficulties. I remember that, so stimulated, I usually exceeded in my translations the task set to me for the next recitation, and, besides, by this zealous reading a sense was created for what I may call the music of the language, which later greatly helped me in the idiomatic construction of my Latin compositions.

Professor Bone ceased only too soon to be my teacher, for his extraordinary capacities attracted wide attention outside of the gymnasium, and he received a call to undertake the directorship of an educational institution founded by some Rhenish noblemen for the education of their sons. He left the gymnasium in compliance with this call. I did not see him again for many years. When traveling in 1888 through Germany I heard from an old school fellow that Bone, in failing health, had retired to Wiesbaden. I resolved at once to seek him out.