Noble Sir,

Esteemed Herr Professor,

With sincerest pleasure I take this opportunity, while carrying out an assignment I have been given, to let you know of my great sympathy for your excellent school, the Philanthropin.

Herr Robert Motherby, a local English merchant and my dear friend, would like to entrust his only son, George Motherby, to the care of your school. Herr Motherby's principles agree completely with those upon which your institution is founded, even in those respects in which it is farthest removed from ordinary assumptions about education. The fact that something is unusual will never deter him from freely agreeing to your proposals and arrangements in all that is noble and good. His son will be six years old on the seventh of August this year. But though he has not reached the age you require, I believe that his natural abilities and motivations are already such as to satisfy the intent of your requirement. That is why his father wants no delay in bringing the boy under good guidance, so that his need for activity may not lead him to any bad habits that would make his subsequent training more difficult. His education thus far has been purely negative, which I regard as the best that can be done for a child in those years. He has been allowed to develop his nature and his healthy reason in a manner appropriate to his years, without compulsion, and has been restrained only from those things that might set his mind in a wrong direction.