E.S.E., the latest thermometer from Berlin shews 8 degrees, the barometer is rising and at 8.28.  I tell you this as an example how in your letters you might write to father more the small events of your life; they amuse him immensely; tell him who has been to see you, whom you have been calling on, what you had for dinner, how the horses are, how the servants behave, if the doors creak and the windows are firm—­in short, facts and events.  Besides this, he does not like to be called papa, he dislikes the expression. Avis au lecteur.”

On another occasion he says: 

“Only with difficulty can I resist the temptation of filling a whole letter with agricultural lamentations over frosts, sick cattle, bad reap, bad roads, dead lambs, hungry sheep, want of straw, fodder, money, potatoes, and manure; outside Johann is persistently whistling a wretched schottische out of tune, and I have not the cruelty to interrupt it, for he seeks to still by music his violent love-sickness.”

Then we have long letters from Nordeney, where he delighted in the sea, but space will not allow us to quote more.  It is only in these letters, and in those which he wrote in later years to his wife, that we see the natural kindliness and simplicity of his disposition, his love of nature, and his great power of description.  There have been few better letter-writers in Germany or any other country.

His ability and success as an agriculturist made a deep impression on his neighbours.  As years went on he became much occupied in local business; he was appointed as the representative of his brother, who was Landrath for the district; in 1845 he was elected one of the members for the Provincial Diet of Pomerania.  He also had a seat in the Diet for the Saxon province in which Schoenhausen was situated.  These local Diets were the only form of representative government which existed in the rural districts; they had little power, but their opinion was asked on new projects of law, and they were officially regarded as an efficient substitute for a common Prussian Parliament.  Many of his friends, including his brother, urged him again to enter the public service, for which they considered he was especially adapted; he might have had the post of Royal Commissioner for Improvements in East Prussia.

He did make one attempt to resume his official career.  At the beginning of 1844 he returned to Potsdam and took up his duties as Referendar, but not for long; he seems to have quarrelled with his superior.  The story is that he called one day to ask for leave of absence; his chief kept him waiting an hour in the anteroom, and when he was admitted asked him curtly, “What do you want?” Bismarck at once answered, “I came to ask for leave of absence, but now I wish for permission to send in my resignation.”  He was clearly deficient in that subservience and ready obedience to authority which was the best passport to promotion in the Civil Service; there was in his disposition already a certain truculence and impatience.  From this time he nourished a bitter hatred of the Prussian bureaucracy.