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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Werner Siemens's earliest recollection of 

 his life at Lenthe was of what in his Reminiscences he calls an act 

 of heroism. When he was about five years old his sister came 

 crying into his father's room where he was playing. She had 

 been sent to the Pfarhaus to take her lesson, but found her way 

 obstructed at the gate by a gander, which snapped at her when- 

 ever she attempted to pass. The father gave Werner his staff 

 and told him to go with his sister and to cudgel the gander well 

 when it appeared. The boy did so, and the gander ran away in 

 panic. " It is remarkable," he says, " how deep and enduring an 

 impression this first victory made on my childish mind. Even 

 now, after nearly seventy years, all the persons and scenes con- 

 nected with this important event stand clearly before my eyes. 

 With it is also associated my only recollection of the appearance 

 of my parents in their younger days ; and many a time, in later 

 difficult experiences, has the victory over the gander unconscious- 

 ly incited me not to shun threatening dangers but to meet them 

 with vigorous resistance." 



The Siemens children were taught by their grandmother 

 Deichmann, and then by their father, whose brilliant and original 

 sketches of history and ethnology, dictated to them, formed the 

 foundation, Siemens says, of his later views. He was next sent 

 to the Biirgerscliule, in the neighboring town of Schonberg, 

 whither he walked when the roads were not too bad, and where 

 he seems to have spent a year of battling with his mates, " to the 

 hardening of his powers, but with only the most insignificant 

 results in knowledge/' Then he had tutors of opposite charac- 

 ters, and after them he was sent to the gymnasium at Liibeck. 

 Not satisfied with the progress he was making in mathematics 

 and in the ancient languages, he gave his attention to the only 

 technical branch taught in the school — engineering. To prepare 

 for entrance into the engineering school at Berlin, he took private 

 lessons in mathematics and surveying. Instead of entering this 

 school, which was expensive, his teacher advised him to go into 

 the Prussian engineering service, where he would be taught the 

 same things. His father fell in with this plan, and prophetically 

 gave as his reason that the present conditions could not last in 

 Germany, that in time everything must go down. The only firm 

 point in Germany was the state of Frederick the Great, with the 

 Prussian army ; and in the time of trouble that was coming it 

 would be better to be the hammer than the anvil. Fortune 

 favored him in the examinations, for which his preparation had 

 been very superficial, and in the fall of 1835 he was admitted 

 to the United Artillery and Engineers' School in Berlin. His 

 mother dying in July, 1839, and his father six months later, he 

 became the guardian of his younger brothers and sisters. Some 





