family aspiration.

The boy himself was very susceptible at this time to religious
impressions. Sister Christophine carried with her through life a vivid
memory of his appearance at family worship, when the captain would
solemnly intone the rimed prayers that he himself had composed for a
private ritual. 'It was a touching sight', she says in her
recollections[3] of this period, 'to see the reverent expression on the
child's winsome face. The pious blue eyes lifted to heaven, the light
yellow hair falling about his forehead, and the little hands folded in
worship, suggested an angel's head in a picture.' From the same source
we learn that Fritz was very fond of playing church, with himself in the
role of preacher. Another reminiscence tells how he one day ran away
from school and, having unexpectedly fallen under the paternal eye in
his truancy, rushed home to his mother in tearful excitement, got the
rod of correction and besought her to give him his punishment before his
sterner parent should arrive on the scene. Still another, from a
somewhat later period, relates how the mother was once walking with her
children and told them a Bible story so touchingly that they all knelt
down and prayed. This is about all that has come down concerning
Schiller's early childhood. He may have seen the passion-play at Gmuend,
but this is uncertain. In any case it only added one more to the
religious impressions that already dominated his life.

Toward the end of the year 1766, having exhausted his private resources
at Lorch, Captain Schiller applied for relief and was transferred to
duty at Ludwigsburg, where the family remained under somewhat more
tolerable conditions for about nine years. At Ludwigsburg he began to
interest himself in agriculture and forestry. In 1769 he published
certain 'Economic Contributions', which exhibit him as a sensible,