We had also both of us the pleasure of being
acquainted with some highly-cultured people, the families of the
physician, of the minister, and of the schoolmaster in the neighbouring
Protestant village, which was as yet still a fief of the Empire.[25] My
friend the tutor was a young man quite out of the common, with an
actively inquiring mind; especially fond of making plans for
wide-stretching travel, and comprehensive schemes of education. Our
intercourse and our life together were very confidential and open, for
the subjects he cared for were those dear to me; but we were of
diametrically opposite natures. He was a man of scholastic training, and
I had been deficiently educated. He was a youth who had plunged into
strife with the world and society; my thought was how to live in peace
with myself and all men. Besides, our outward lives bore such different
aspects that a truly intimate friendship could not exist between us.
Nevertheless our very contrasts bound us more closely together than we
deemed.
Practical land surveying at this time chiefly interested me, for it at
once satisfied my love for out-of-doors life, and fully occupied my
intelligence.
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