Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Author:Sarah Knowles Bolton [Bolton, Sarah Knowles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

Vasari, who wrote the lives of the Italian painters, truly said, "It is not by sleeping, but by working, waking, and laboring continually, that proficiency is attained and reputation acquired." This was emphatically true of Richter, as it is of every man or woman who wins a place in the memory of men. The majority die after a commonplace life, and are never heard of; they were probably satisfied to drift along the current, with no especial purpose, save to eat, drink, and be merry.

Not so with the German boy, born in the cold Pine Mountains of Bavaria. His home was a low, thatched building, made of beams of wood, filled in with mortar, one part for the family, and the other for corn and goats. This is still the custom in Switzerland, the poor caring as tenderly for their dumb beasts as for their children. Jean Paul was born on the 21st of March, 1763: "My life and the life of the spring began the same month," he used to say in after years, and the thought of robin red-breasts and spring flowers made the poor lad happy amid the deepest trials.

His father was an under-pastor and organist in the little village of Wunsiedel, and lived on a pitiful salary; but, generous to a fault, he stripped off his own garments to clothe the poor, and sent the schoolmaster a meal every day, because, if possible, he was poorer than the preacher. In school, Jean Paul was a studious boy, almost envying every one who said his lessons well, and fond of his teachers and mates; but one of the boys having cut Paul's hand, the father at once took him home and became his instructor. A painstaking and conscientious man, he showed little aptness for his work, when he gave his boy, at nine years of age, a Latin dictionary to commit to memory! For four solid hours in the morning, and three in the afternoon, Paul and his brother learned grammatical lessons and Latin verses of which they did not understand a word. Still the boy grew more and more fond of books, and of Nature,—made clocks with pendulums and wheels; a sun-dial, drawing his figures on a wooden plate with ink; invented a new language from the calendar signs of the almanac; and composed music on an old harpsichord whose only tuning-hammer and tuning-master were the winds and the weather.

When Paul was thirteen, the family moved to Schwarzenbach, where he made the acquaintance of a young pastor, Vogel, who owned quite a valuable library, and encouraged him to educate himself. Given free access to the books, he began to read eagerly. Thinking that he should never own volumes for himself, he made blank-books, of three hundred pages each, from his father's sermon-paper, and began the almost interminable labor of copying whatever he thought he should need in law, medicine, philosophy, theology, natural history, and poetry. For nearly four years he worked thus, till he

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