at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.

_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
freedom are these!

_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
coerced to act against Germans.

_Kotzebue_.--I would not.

_Sandt_.--Perhaps you think so.

_Kotzebue_.--Sir, I know my duty.

_Sandt_.--We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the
will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you
left the ranks of your fellow-citizens--already have you taken the
enlisting money and marched away.

_Kotzebue_.--Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak
rather the language of books than of men.

_Sandt_.--What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect
than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men.