Behind every house was a pigsty, behind
nearly every one a cowshed. The men looked strong and hearty; the
women, carrying dinner to their husbands in the fields, or sitting
knitting on the benches in front of their doors, all presented
bright and cheerful faces, and the school would hardly contain the
crowd of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed children, whose rounded cheeks
gave evidence of a never-failing and amply spread dinner-table.
In the beginning, all this made a vast impression on Wilhelm. As the
struggle with nature is man's real and normal task, he instinctively
feels an emotion almost amounting to joy wherever he comes upon
evidences of victory. But, as usual with Wilhelm, this first
instinctive emotion was followed by the usual fatal speculations,
and he said to himself, "Paul has converted swamps into cornfields,
has enriched himself thereby, and supports some hundreds of
families. Good! but what further? This great achievement has as its
primary result, that people are fed who otherwise perhaps would not
eat so much or so well, or merely would not feed on this spot at
all. But is the filling of one's own and other people's stomachs the
first and highest aim of life?"
Paul tried hard to interest him in the details of farming.
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