CHAPTER V
Correspondent and School-Teacher.—1857-8
I HAD saved enough money to keep me for a few months,
and concluded to remain in Racine till spring.
Although without any regular employment, I was not idle. I
continued my contributions to the Neue Zeit, even venturing
to alternate letters with brief essays on social and
political subjects, which were as readily accepted. I was
justified then in believing that I should succeed as a German
writer. I also knew that, owing to the limited field open
to German journalism and literature in this country, a
career as such would hardly be satisfactory as regarded
either material profit or reputation. I saw, too, the
incomparably wider sphere in both respects of the Anglo-American
journalist. I had acquired such familiarity with
English that there seemed to be no reason why I should not,
with proper diligence, succeed before long in learning to
write with sufficient fluency and correctness to enable me
to enter that wider arena. I therefore determined to
devote myself unremittingly to the task. I practised
English composition for several hours every day, unless absent
from home. I had to be my own teacher, and I followed
a very simple and, as the result proved, effective method.
I took a newspaper article or magazine, or a chapter in
a novel, or some standard matter, read it over carefully
several times, and then tried to reproduce it with pen and
paper. Having the model before me, I could always
correct my own work. After two months practice, I felt able
to venture an article on European politics for the Daily
Advocate, the local Republican paper. I took it to the
editor myself, explaining that it was my first attempt
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