Wednesday, September 24:
Long discussion with R.; resolve on my part to use no more strictness toward the children, and even to stifle all thoughts of what I hold to be good in this matter. My father sends his Wartburg Songs! I have my last sitting for the bust. In the evening read Uhland.
Before that, a discussion with a clergyman named Baum about the children’s lessons in school; much shocked by the barrenness and shallowness of such an intellect. Impossible to make him understand how the children here should be taught: that bad teaching in French and English is foolish, the German language should be learned thoroughly, and the foundation should be German history and geography, on which the family should be encouraged to build further. The good man complains of the obtuseness of the pupils and wishes to overcome it with the help of the French language!...
Before this interview visited the theater in lovely weather; splendid decoration supplied by the supporting beams, which are simply to be painted over, thus the bricks provide the red background, the beams provide the lines which, painted yellow, gleam in the sunshine like gold. The whole thing stands there like a fairy tale in the midst of clumsy reality; God knows what will come of it. R. said the building supervisor was so pleased by the success of his work: “Everyone will laugh when we weep.” And yet how one’s energies droop! It is only one’s little bit of intelligence which still flutters and takes pleasure, now as before, in the great and the beautiful.