THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
lives solely to this exalted duty, and that therefore we should not fritter away our time and our strength in commonplace philistine occupations.
I must admit that in a simple-hearted, naïve way I shared this illusion—I was still only twenty years old—as to the imminence of a new revolutionary uprising. But the tavern had no charm for me whatever, and soon the life of a refugee began to yawn at me like a horrible void. A restless craving for systematic mental activity seized upon me. First I thought of the tasks which, as a young man, I would have to perform in the anticipated new struggles in Germany. With my nearest friends, who had all been officers in the Prussian army, and were excellent teachers, I reviewed and studied the military operations in Baden on a map specially drawn by us for that purpose. Then followed a series of military studies, of tactics and strategy, for which my friends furnished me the necessary material and instruction, and which I carried on with great zeal. Who could have thought that the knowledge thus gathered would be of use to me on a field of operations far away from Germany, and that one of my teachers, Schimmelpfennig, would then be a brigadier in my command!
This work, however, did not altogether satisfy me. My old love for historical studies was as strong as ever, and as I succeeded in gaining access to a good library, in which I found the works of the historian Ranke and many other books of value, I was soon again profoundly immersed in the history of the Reformation.
When winter came my lodgings in the house of the good baker's widow became uncomfortable on account of the cold. Then I took, with a companion in the Palatinate revolution, an old Prussian head forester by the name of Emmermann, two cosy rooms in the house of a merchant on the
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