In October 1816 I left my post, and quitted Berlin, without as yet confiding to any one exactly what outward aim I had in view, simply saying that I would write and give some account of myself as soon as I had found what I set out to seek.  In November of the same year my dearly loved brother,[111] the eldest now living, whom I made my confidant so far as that was possible, and who was at that time a manufacturer at Osterode in the Harz district, gave me his two sons to educate.  They were his only sons, though not his only children; two boys of six and eight years old respectively.  With these boys I set out for a village on the Urn called Griesheim, and there I added to my little family, first two, then a third, that is, altogether three other nephews, the orphan sons of my late dearest brother,[112] he who had always best sympathised with me through life.  He had been minister at Griesheim, and his widow still lived there.  He had died of hospital fever in 1813, just after the cessation of the war.  I reckon, therefore, the duration of my present educational work from November 16th, 1816.

Already I had written from Osterode to Middendorff at Berlin, inviting him and Langethal to join me and help in working out a system of life and education worthy of man.  It was only possible for Middendorff to reach me by April 1817, and Langethal could not arrive until even the following September.  The latter, however, sent me, by Middendorff, his brother, a boy of eleven years old;[113] so that I now had six pupils.  In June of the same year (1817) family reasons caused me to move from Griesheim to this place, Keilhau.[114] Next came other pupils also, with Langethal’s arrival in September.  My household was growing fast, and yet I had no house of my own.  In a way only comprehensible to Him Who knows the workings of the mind, I managed by November to get the school that I now occupy built as a frame-house, but without being in possession of the ground it stood on.

I pass over the space of a year, which was nevertheless so rich in experiences of trouble and joy, of times when we were cast down, and other times when we were lifted up, that its description would easily fill many times the space even of this long letter.  In June of the following year I became in the most remarkable way possessor of the little farm which I still hold, in Keilhau, and thus for the first time possessor also of the land upon which the schoolhouse had already been erected.[115] As yet there were no other buildings there.

In September 1818 I brought to the household, still further increased, and now so rich with children and brothers, its housewife, in the person of a lady whom a like love of Nature and of childhood with my own, and a like high and earnest conception of education, as the preparation for a life worthy of man, had drawn towards me.  She was accompanied by a young girl whom she had some time before adopted as a daughter, and who now came with her to assist her in the duties of the household.[116]