10 MENZENDORF. 



at the conclusion, that violence had been offered to 

 the creatures, inasmuch as they had been driven 

 into the stall against their will! And my father 

 had to think himself lucky that he got off with a 

 heavy fine. 



This is a picture in little of the then condition 

 of the "Royal Hanoverian Province of Great Britain"', 

 as my dear countrymen were pleased to call their 

 country with a certain pride. But even in the other 

 German lands the state of things was not overmuch 

 better, in spite of French Revolution and the glorious 

 War of Liberation. It were \vell if the relatively 

 fortunate youth of the present day now and again 

 compared their own condition with the woes and often 

 hopeless cares of their fathers, as a prophylactic 

 against pessimistic ideas and fancies. 



The freeer surroundings, which my father sought, 

 he really found in the principality of Ratzeburg 

 appertaining to Mecklenburg-Strelitz. where he obtained 

 a lease of the grand- ducal domain of Menzendorf for 



o 



a long term of years. In this favoured little terri- 

 tory besides domains and peasant villages there was 

 only a single nobleman's estate. The peasants it is 

 true were still bound on the demesnes to services 

 incident to socage tenure, but in the years immediately 

 following our settling there these were abolished, and 

 the possession of the peasant was freed from all bur- 

 dens and even from almost all imposts. 



Those were happy years of childhood which I and 

 my brothers and sisters passed in Menzendorf. growing 



