The first two factors had had their effect upon me, and I was now to learn for the first time to reckon independently with the last; hitherto they had been watched and influenced in my favour by others.

This had been done not only by masters of the art of pedagogy, but by their no less powerful co-educators, my companions, among whom there was not a single corrupt, ill-disposed boy.

I was now to learn what circumstances I should find in my new relations, and in what way they would prove teachers to me.
I was to be placed at school in Kottbus, at that time still a little manufacturing town in the Mark.

My mother did not venture to keep me in Berlin during the critical years now approaching.

Kottbus was not far away, and knowing that I was backward in the science that Dr.Boltze, the mathematician, taught, she gave him the preference over the heads of the other boarding-schools in the Mark.
I was not reluctant to undertake the hard work, yet I felt like a colt which is led from the pastures to the stable.
A visit to my grandmother in Dresden, and many pleasures which I was permitted to share with my brothers and sisters, seemed to me like the respite before execution.
My mother accompanied me to my new school, and I can not describe the gloomy impression made by the little manufacturing town on the flat plains of the Mark, which at that time certainly possessed nothing that could charm a boy born in Berlin and educated in a beautiful mountain valley.
In front of Dr.Boltze's house we found the man to whose care I was to be entrusted.