Father Johann Rudolf Meyer, Citizen of Aarau: A Memorial

"is the best textbook, and experience the most skillful master." His benefactress, without whose advice he rarely undertook anything, encouraged him in his resolution but advised him, before visiting foreign countries, to first get to know his own fatherland, which is no less rich in wonders of nature and in curiosities of civil organization. Encouraged and gifted by her, the 26-year-old youth now wandered along the Reuss up to the Gotthard, past the sources of the great rivers, through the solitudes of the Furka, down through the cold wilderness of the Grimsel Pass to the Aar waterfall at Handegg, and over the aromatic Alps of the Scheidek in the sight of those unclimbed rocky horns that his son and grandson were one day to be the first to climb 1) See the "Journey to the Glaciers of the Canton of Bern and the Ascent of their Highest Peaks in the Summer of 1812." Aarau at Sauerländer 1813.. There, his soul was stirred by sensations he had never known in such strength. His lively feeling for nature, a main characteristic of the Swiss folk character,