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[59]
thereby made her peace with the society which she had defied and scandalized.
Of my German studies I have already made mention.
I began them with a class of ladies under the tuition of Dr. Nordheimer.
But it was with the later aid of Dr. Cogswell that I really mastered the difficulties of the language.
It was while I was thus engaged that my eldest brother returned from Germany.
In conversing with him, I acquired the use of colloquial German.
Having, as I have said, the command of his fine library, I was soon deep in Goethe's ‘Faust’ and ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ reading also the works of Jean Paul, Matthias Claudius, and Herder.
Thus was a new influence introduced into the life of one who had been brought up after the strictest rule of New England Puritanism.
I derived from these studies a sense of intellectual freedom so new to me that it was half delightful, half alarming.
My father undertook one day to read an English translation of ‘Faust.’
He presently came to me and said,—
‘My daughter, I hope that you have not read this wicked book!’
I must say, even after an interval of sixty years, that I do not consider ‘Wilhelm Meister’ altogether good reading for the youth of our country.
Its great author introduces into his recital scenes and personages calculated to awaken
Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1899.
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