"Docendo discimus" ("by teaching we learn") says the Latin proverb, and according to this I must have had the very best opportunities for acquiring those scientific accomplishments necessary to the attainment of the object I had in view. Nevertheless it was with a heavy heart that I left the school, where I ought to have remained to finish the regular course of my studies, and went out into the world as--_a wild student_, without discipline, without system, without even the supervision which my age and inexperience demanded. Being on a visit to my uncle at Zsámbokrét, in the county of Neutra, I first made the acquaintance of Mr. von Petrikovich, a small landowner and postmaster. He was a clever, unprejudiced, and worthy man, who had had his eye on me for some time because of my readiness in foreign languages, and he now engaged me as tutor, or rather as teacher of languages, to his two sons. I was to receive full board and a salary of 150 florins, a very modest honorarium, but quite in keeping with the very modest services which I was able to render. For, apart from my knowledge of Hungarian and Latin, my learning was very deficient, and as regards my office of prefect--such was my title--I was rather pupil than master. Mrs. von Petrikovich, a highly-accomplished woman, who had been brought up in very aristocratic surroundings, and thought a great deal of good behaviour, manners and dress, soon found to her grief that the prefect, in spite of his linguistic accomplishments, was a very unpolished individual, who could scarcely be expected to teach her sons drawing-room manners. She therefore undertook the difficult task of first educating the tutor, and the trouble the good lady took to instruct me on all possible points of etiquette, showing me how to handle my serviette, fork and knife at table, how to salute, walk, stand, and sit, was indeed a brilliant proof of her kind-heartedness. I became a totally different being during this, my first sojourn, in a gentleman's family, and I was so much in earnest that I spent whole hours over my toilet, and in practising bows, and the elegant movements of head and hands. I attended fairly well to my duties as tutor, but my own studies suffered considerably under the influence of this training. I became seriously inclined to vanity, and wasted not only my time before the looking-glass and in the drawing-room, but also my substance; and the few florins which I ought to have saved to recommence my studies dwindled away so fast, that at the end of the year I had not even the sixteen florins left, which I owed to the Lutheran Lyceum at Presburg, and without which I could not get my certificate, or rather testimonial of merit. It was indeed unpardonable thoughtlessness which had thus led me into debt, an offence for which I had to suffer many sharp pricks of conscience, and which cost me dear. Was it because for the first time in my life I enjoyed the comfort of living free from care? Was it this that so enthralled my senses and captivated my whole being? Or was it the outcome of some hidden, frivolous trait in my character? I cannot account for it. All I know is that I felt very miserable when, in the autumn of 1851, I went to Pest with Mr. Petrikovich, this worthy man having taken his sons there to attend the public school. Thus I left the quiet haven of the Petrikovich's home, and found myself once more launched on the stormy sea of wretchedness and disappointment.