[History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia<br> Volume IV. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia
Volume IV. (of XXI.)

CHAPTER VIII
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From utmost Memel on the Russian border, down to Wesel on the French, all Prussia, in every nook of it, garrison, marching-regiment, board of management, is rigorously reviewed by Majesty once a year.
There travels little military Fritz, beside the military Majesty, amid the generals and official persons, in their hardy Spartan manner; and learns to look into everything like a Rhadamanthine Argus, and how the eye of the master, more than all other appliances, fattens the cattle.
On his hunts, too, Papa took him.

For Papa was a famous hunter, when at Wusterhausen in the season:--hot Beagle-chase, hot Stag-hunt, your chief game deer; huge "Force-Hunt" (PARFORCE-JAGD, the woods all beaten, and your wild beasts driven into straits and caudine-forks for you); Boar-hunting (SAUHETZE, "sow-baiting," as the Germans call it), Partridge-shooting, Fox- and Wolf-hunting;--on all grand expeditions of such sort, little Fritz shall ride with Papa and party.

Rough furious riding; now on swift steed, now at places on WURSTWAGEN,--WURSTWAGEN, "Sausage-Car" so called, most Spartan of vehicles, a mere STUFFED POLE or "sausage" with wheels to it, on which you sit astride, a dozen or so of you, and career;--regardless of the summer heat and sandy dust, of the winter's frost-storms and muddy rain.

All this the little Crown-Prince is bound to do;--but likes it less and less, some of us are sorry to observe! In fact he could not take to hunting at all, or find the least of permanent satisfaction in shooting partridges and baiting sows,--"with such an expenditure of industry and such damage to the seedfields," he would sometimes allege in extenuation.

In later years he has been known to retire into some glade of the thickets, and hold a little Flute-Hautbois Concert with his musical comrades, while the sows were getting baited.


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