The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 72

I can remember an unpleasant incident of another kind which took place in my earliest childhood. It is the first that I recollect and it may have happened in my third year, if not in my second. I can tell about it without offending against the sacred memory of my parents; for whoever sees in it anything out of the ordinary is not acquainted with the lower cla.s.ses. My father when following his trade generally had his meals provided by the persons for whom he worked. Then we at home, like all other families, ate our usual midday meal. Occasionally, however, he had to furnish his own food, in return for extra wages. Then dinner was deferred, and in order to ward off hunger a simple bread and b.u.t.ter sandwich was partaken of at twelve o'clock. It was an economical arrangement for the little household which could not afford two large meals. On one such day my mother baked some pancakes, certainly more to please us children than to satisfy any desire of her own. We ate them with the utmost relish and promised not to say anything about them to our father in the evening. When he arrived we had already gone to bed and were sound asleep. I do not know whether he may have been accustomed to find us still up and the contrary event made him suspect that the rule of the household had been broken. Suffice it to say he awoke me, petted me, took me in his arms and asked me what I had eaten.

"Pancakes," I answered, sleepily. He then proceeded to reproach my mother with it. She had nothing to say, and placed his food before him, throwing me a glance, however, which foretold evil to come. When we were alone again the next day, she, to use her own expression, gave me with a rod a forcible lesson in silence. At other times, on the contrary, she inculcated in me the strictest love of truth. One would be inclined to think that these contradictions might have had disastrous consequences.

It was not the case and never will be the case, for life entails many other similar ones, and human nature can adapt itself even to them.

Certain it is that I acquired one piece of information which it is better for a child to acquire late or not at all, namely, that at times the father wishes one thing, and the mother another.

I do not remember that I really went hungry in my earliest childhood, as I did later, but I do recollect that my mother sometimes had to content herself with looking on while we children ate, and did so gladly, because otherwise we could not have had our fill.

III

The princ.i.p.al charm of childhood consists in the fact that every creature down to the household pets is friendly and kindly disposed toward children; for out of this arises a feeling of security which disappears with the first step out into the hostile world and never returns. This is especially the case among the lower cla.s.ses. The child cannot play before the door without being presented with a flower by the neighboring servant-maid who has been sent across the street to make a purchase, or to draw water. The fruit-woman throws it a cherry or a pear out of her basket, or a prosperous burgher perhaps even gives it a small coin with which it can buy itself a roll. The driver cracks his whip in pa.s.sing; the musician as he goes by draws some tones from his instrument, and whoever does none of all these things at least asks its name and age, or smiles at it. To be sure, the child must be kept neat and clean.

My brother and I came in for a bountiful share of this goodwill, especially on the part of the tenants of our house, our special neighbors who were almost as much to us as our mother and more than our severe father. In summer they had their work and could not pay much attention to us, but then at that season it was not necessary that they should, as we played in the garden from early till late, from one bed-time to the next, and the b.u.t.terflies were company enough. But in winter, in the rain and snow, when we were confined to the house, almost everything that entertained and enlivened us came from them.

The wife of the day laborer, Meta by name, was a gigantic figure, somewhat bent forward, with a stern Old-Testament face, of which I was vividly reminded by Michaelangelo's c.u.maean sybil in the Sistine Chapel.

She usually came over to us at twilight in the long winter evenings, with a red cloth wound around her head, and stayed until the lights were lit. Then she told us stories of witches and goblins, that sounded more impressive from her lips than from any other. We heard of the Blocksberg and the witches-Sabbath; the broomstick, so contemptible in appearance, acquired a weird importance, and the dark hole in the chimney, which in every house, and therefore in ours also, can be misused in such malignant fashion by the powers of h.e.l.l and their handmaids, inspired us with dread. I can still remember perfectly the impression made upon me by the story of the wicked miller's wife, who transformed herself at night into a cat, and how I consoled myself with the fact that in the end she did indeed receive due punishment for this wicked prank. The cat, namely, when once starting out on her nightly walk, had a paw chopped off by the miller's apprentice, who thought she looked suspicious, and the next day the miller's wife lay in bed with a b.l.o.o.d.y right arm minus a hand.

When the light was lit we usually went over to neighbor Ohl's, and in his room we certainly felt more at ease than in Meta's company. Neighbor Ohl was a man whom I have never seen cross, no matter how often he had occasion to be so. With an empty stomach, indeed with what in his case meant more, an empty pipe, he danced, sang, and whistled something for us whenever we came; and in spite of his considerably reddened nose--which, according to a tale of my mother's, I once wished for longingly when looking up at him while being danced upon his knees--and in spite of the felt cap tapering to a point, which he wore continually, his always friendly, merry face still gleams before me like a star.

There had been a time when he was the only mason in the place and the employer of from twenty to thirty journeymen, of whom many later set up as masters and took the work away from him. At that time, so it was said later, he could have a.s.sured himself a future free from care if he had not visited the bowling alley too often, and loved a good gla.s.s of wine too well. But whoever bore evil fortune as he did, could not be reproached for careless enjoyment of the good. I cannot think of him without emotion; how would it be possible for me to do sot He once, at fair-time, presented my brother and me with a kettle-drum and a trumpet which he had, with the greatest difficulty, obtained on credit from the toy merchant, and as his poverty did not permit him to pay off the small debt until much later, he had to submit to being dunned for it years after, when I, already tall and knowing beyond my years, was walking at his side. He was inexhaustible in inventing ways to amuse us, and as with children nothing is necessary but goodwill, he never failed to do so. It was a source of great delight to us when he took a piece of chalk in his hand, sat himself down with us at his round table and began to draw-mills, houses, animals, and all sorts of other things. At the same time he cracked the merriest jokes, which still resound in my ears. Even the chief of his pleasures was not one for him if we did not share it.

It consisted in drinking slowly a half jug of brandy, in remembrance of better days, and in smoking a pipe at the same time, on Sunday morning after the sermon and before dinner. We each had to have a thimble full of this brandy or he did not enjoy it himself. The drink was certainly not the best thing for us, but the quant.i.ty was small enough to prevent disastrous consequences. My father, however, forbade this kind of Sunday treat when he came to find out about it. This troubled the good old man exceedingly, but did not prevent him, I am forced to add, from having us drink with him again; only this took place quite secretly, and he urgently recommended us to keep out of our father's way, so that he should not have occasion to kiss one of us and thus discover the transgression. It was a kiss, to wit pressed upon my father's lips, that had betrayed the secret the first time.

Sometimes one or the other of his two unmarried brothers, who as a rule tramped around the country and were probably good-for-nothings, would spend the winter with him. They always found a ready welcome and remained until the spring or hunger drove them away. He never turned them out. Small as his piece of bread might be he gladly divided it once again, but when he had nothing at all, then indeed he could not give away anything. It was a regular treat for us when Uncle Hans or Johann arrived, for they brought news of the world to our nest. They told us of woods and their adventures in them; of robbers and murderers whom they had escaped from with great difficulty; of the dark giblet stew which they had eaten in lonely forest-taverns, and of men's fingers and toes which they pretended to have found at last in the bottom of the dish.

The swaggering, parasitic brothers-in-law were extremely unwelcome to the housewife, for she did not bear the burden of existence as light-heartedly as her husband did, and she knew they would not leave again so long as there was a piece of bacon hanging in the chimney; but she contented herself with complaining in private, and at times pouring out her heart to my mother. She, too, was fond of us children, and in summer, as often as she could, she presented us with red and white currants, which she, in turn, begged from a stingy friend. I, however, avoided her too close proximity, for she made it her business to cut my nails as often as it was necessary, and I detested this on account of the p.r.i.c.kly feeling in the nerve ends which it caused. She read the Bible diligently, and long before I could read it myself I received from her my first strong, nay terrible, impression from this gloomy book, when she read to me out of Jeremiah the horrible pa.s.sage in which the angry prophet foretells that in the time of great distress the mothers would slaughter their own children and eat them. I can remember yet with what terror this pa.s.sage inspired me when I heard it, perhaps because I did not know whether it referred to the past or to the future, to Jerusalem or to Wesselburen, and because I was myself a child and had a mother.

IV

In my fourth year I was sent to a primary-school. It was kept by an old spinster, Susanna by name, of tall and masculine stature, with friendly blue eyes, which shone forth like candles from out a pale grayish face.

We children were planted around the walls of the s.p.a.cious chamber which served as school-room, and which was rather dark. The boys were on one side, the girls on the other; Susanna's table, piled high with school books, stood in the middle, and she herself, a white clay pipe in her mouth and a cup of tea before her, sat behind it in an ancestral arm chair which inspired no little respect. Before her lay a long ruler, which, however, was not used for drawing lines but for chastising us when we were no longer to be held in check by frowning and clearing of the throat. A cornucopia full of currants, destined as a reward for extraordinary virtues, lay beside it. The raps, however, fell more regularly than the currants; indeed, the cornucopia, sparingly as Susanna made use of the contents, was sometimes completely empty; we thus learned Kant's categorical imperative sufficiently early.

Children large and small were called up to the table from time to time, the more advanced pupils for instruction in writing, the mult.i.tude to repeat their lessons and to receive raps on the fingers with the ruler, or currants, as the case might be. A sullen maid-servant, who even occasionally took a hand in inflicting punishment, went up and down the room, and was at times occupied in a most unpleasant manner with the youngest pupils, for which reason she kept sharp watch that they should not partake too freely of the sweet things which they brought with them.

Behind the house was a small yard, adjoining which was Susanna's little garden. During recess we played our games in the yard; the garden was kept locked up from us. It was full of flowers, whose fantastic shapes I can still see swaying in the sultry summer wind. Susanna, when in a good humor, used sometimes to pluck a few of these flowers for us, not, however, until it was nearly time for them to fade; before that she would not rob of a particle of their adornment the neatly laid-out, carefully-weeded beds, between which ran footpaths that hardly seemed wide enough for the birds to hop on. Susanna, moreover, distributed her gifts with great partiality. The children of well-to-do parents received the best and were allowed to give voice to their desires, which were frequently lacking in modesty, without being reproved; the poorer had to be satisfied with what remained, and received nothing at all if they did not await the act of grace in silence. This was most flagrantly apparent at Christmas time. Then a great distribution of cakes and nuts took place, but in most faithful adherence to the words of the Gospel: "To him who hath, shall be given." The daughters of the parish clerk, a mightily respected person, the sons of the doctor, and so forth, were loaded with half-dozens of cakes, with whole handkerchiefs full of nuts; on the contrary the poor devils whose prospects for Christmas Eve, unlike those of the rich children, were entirely dependent upon Susanna's charitable hands, were scantily portioned off. The reason was that Susanna counted upon return gifts, doubtless was forced to count upon them, and could not expect any from people who even had difficulty in getting together the school-money. I was not entirely neglected, as Susanna received her tribute from our pear-tree regularly every autumn, and besides, on account of my "good head," I enjoyed a sort of advantage over many of the others. Nevertheless I too felt the difference, and in especial had much to suffer from the maid-servant, who put a spiteful construction upon my most innocent actions; for example, she once interpreted the pulling out of my handkerchief as a sign that I wished to have it filled, which drove the most burning blushes to my cheeks and tears to my eyes. As soon as I became conscious of Susanna's partiality and the injustice of her maid I stepped outside the magic circle of childhood. It occurred very early.

V

Two incidents which took place in this school-room are still vividly present before me. I remember, to begin with, that I received there my first awful impression of nature and the invisible power which prophetic man surmises behind it. The child has a period, which lasts a fairly long time, when it believes that the whole world is subject to its parents, at least to the father who always remains standing somewhat mysteriously in the background, and when it would be just as likely to beg them for good weather as for a plaything. This period naturally comes to an end when the child, to its astonishment, undergoes the experience that things occur which are quite as unwelcome to its parents as a beating is to itself, and with this period disappears a great part of the mystic spell which surrounds the sacred head of the father: indeed not until it is past does real human independence begin. My eyes were opened on this subject by a fearful thunderstorm, which was accompanied by a cloud burst and hail.

It was a sultry afternoon, one of those which scorch up the earth and roast all its creatures. We children sat around on our benches, lazy and depressed, with our catechisms or primers. Susanna herself nodded sleepily, and indulgently allowed to pa.s.s unnoticed the jokes and teasing, by means of which we tried to keep ourselves awake. Not even the flies were buzzing, except the very small ones which are always lively, when all of a sudden the first thunderclap sounded and reverberated, crashing and roaring, among the worm-eaten rafters of the old, dilapidated house. In the most desperate combination, such as only occurs during storms in the north, a clatter of hail stones now followed, which in less than a minute demolished all the window-panes on the windy side, and immediately after this, indeed in the midst of it, came a downpour of rain which seemed to be the prelude of a new deluge.

We children, starting up terrified, ran about screaming and clamoring.

Susanna herself lost her head, and her maid succeeded in closing the shutters only when there was nothing more to be saved; and there needed only the Egyptian darkness added to the flood which had already overtaken us, to heighten the general terror and increase the prevailing confusion. In the pauses between one thunderclap and the next Susanna did indeed collect herself somewhat and tried to calm and comfort her charges, who according to their age were either hanging on to her ap.r.o.n or crouching by themselves with closed eyes in the corners of the room.

But suddenly a bluish flame of lightning flashed once more through the cracks of the shutters and the words died on her lips, while the maid, almost as frightened as the youngest child, howled and screamed out, "The good G.o.d is angry!" When it was dark again in the room she added with pedagogical moroseness, "You're all of you good for nothing, anyhow!" These words, no matter how odious the mouth from which they fell, made a deep impression on me; they forced me to look upward, above myself and above everything which surrounded me, and kindled in me the spark of religious emotion.

On my return from school to my father's house, I found there, too, the horrors of devastation. Our pear-tree had lost not only its young fruit but likewise all its beautiful leaves, and stood there bare as in winter: what is more, a very fruitful plum-tree, which used to supply not only ourselves but half the town besides, and, at the very least, our fairly numerous kinsfolk, had even been despoiled of the richest of its branches, and in its mutilation looked like a man with a broken arm.

Though my mother found a sorry comfort in the fact that our pig was now supplied with dainty fare for a week, I could derive none at all from it, and even the pieces of gla.s.s lying around in abundance--from which the most excellent mirrors could be made in the easiest way in the world by sticking them together with damp earth--offered scarcely any compensation for the irrecoverably lost autumn pleasures. Now, however, I understood all at once why my father always went to church on Sunday, and, why I was never allowed to put on a clean shirt without saying: "G.o.d's mercy upon us!" when I did so. I had learned to know the Lord of Lords; his angry servants, thunder and lightning, hail and storm, had opened wide the portals of my heart to him, and he had entered in all his majesty.

What had taken place in my soul was made manifest shortly afterward. For one evening when once again the wind blew mightily down the chimney, and the rain beat hard upon the roof as I was being put to bed, the mechanical babbling of my lips was suddenly transformed into a real, anxious prayer, and therewith the spiritual navel-string, which up to that time had bound me exclusively to my parents, was broken. Indeed things soon went so far that I began to complain to G.o.d of my father and mother when I thought I had been unjustly treated by them.

Further there is connected with this school-room my first and perhaps most bitter martyrdom. In order to make plain what I would say I must explain a little. Even in the infant-school all the elements are to be found which the maturer man later encounters in an intensified degree, in the world. Brutality, deceit, vulgar cleverness, hypocrisy, all are represented, and a pure mind always stands there, like Adam and Eve in the picture, among the wild beasts. How much of this is to be ascribed to nature, how much to early education, or rather to neglect in the home, must remain undecided here; the fact admits of no doubt. This, then, was likewise the case in Wesselburen. Every species was to be met with, from the brutal boy who plucked the feathers from the living birds and pulled the legs off the flies, down to the light-fingered little rascal, who stole the bright colored book-marks out of the primers of his comrades. The fate which their better-behaved fellow-pupils--who were condemned to suffer on that account--sometimes angrily prophesied for the young sinners, when the good boys had happened to be the object of their jeers or their malicious tricks, was fulfilled to the letter in the case of more than one of them. The gamins always have instinct enough to know whom their sting will strike first and sharpest, and therefore I was, for a time, the one most exposed to their spite.

Sometimes a boy pretended to be reading very zealously in the catechism, which he held close before his face, but instead he whispered over the top of the page all sorts of scurrilous things in my ear, and asked me if I were still stupid enough to believe that children came out of the well, and that the stork fetched them up? Sometimes another called to me "If you want an apple, take it out of my pocket, I brought one along for you!" And when I did so, he cried! "Susanna, I am being robbed," and denied having said anything to me. A third even spat upon his book and then began to howl and declared with a brazen face that I had done it.

Although I was almost the only one exposed to vexations of this kind, partly because I felt them most keenly, and partly because they succeeded best with me on account of my extreme unwariness, there were other annoyances which all, without exception, had to put up with.

Foremost among these was the bragging of certain overgrown young rogues who were considerably ahead of us others in years, but in spite of that still sat on the A.B.C. bench, and from time to time played truant.

They got nothing out of it at the time but double and threefold boredom, for as they dared not go home and could not find any playmates, there was nothing for them to do but crouch down behind a hedge or lurk in a dried-up ditch until the hour of deliverance struck, and then to mingle with us on the way home as though they really had been where they belonged. But they knew how to make up for it and get some fun for themselves afterward, when they came back to school and related their adventures. They would tell us how once their father had gone by right close to the hedge, the cane with which he used to thrash them in his hand, and yet had not noticed them; how another time their mother, accompanied by the spitz dog, had come up to the ditch, the dog had smelt them out, their mother had discovered them, but the lie that they had been sent there by Susanna herself to pick camomile flowers for her, had helped them through in spite of all. Then they plumed themselves like old soldiers who are telling their heroic deeds to wondering recruits, and the moral always was: we risk the whip and the cane, you at most the switch, and yet you do not dare to do anything.

This was irritating and all the more so as it was not possible absolutely to deny the truth of their a.s.sertions. Hence when the son of a cobbler once came to school with his back black and blue, and told us his father had caught him and punished him severely with his shoemaker's stirrup, but that he was only going to try it now all the oftener, for he was no coward, I also determined to show my courage, and that, too, that very afternoon.

When, therefore, my mother sent me away at the usual hour, provided with two juicy pears to quench my thirst, I did not go to Susanna's, but crept, with a beating heart and anxiously peering behind me, into the woodshed of our neighbor, the joiner, encouraged and a.s.sisted to do so by his son, who was much older than I and already worked in his father's shop. It was very hot and my hiding place was both dark and close; the two pears did not last long, besides I could not eat them without some twinges of conscience, and an old cat cowering in the background with her young ones, who growled fiercely at my least movement, did not contribute very much to my amus.e.m.e.nt. The sin carried its punishment along with it; I counted every quarter and every half hour of the clock, the strokes of which penetrated from the high tower to where I was with a harsh, and it seemed to me, threatening sound. I tormented myself wondering whether I could get out of the shed again without being noticed, and I thought only very rarely and fleetingly of the triumph which I hoped to celebrate on the morrow.

It was already getting rather late when my mother came into the garden and glancing gaily and contentedly about her, went over to the well to draw some water. She almost pa.s.sed directly in front of me, and that in itself arrested my breathing. But how was it with me when my confidant suddenly asked her if she knew where Christian was, and to her astonished reply, "With Susanna!" rejoined half mischievously, half maliciously "No! no, with the cat!" and winking and blinking showed her my hiding place! Beside myself with rage, I sprang out and would have kicked the grinning traitor. My mother, however, her whole face aflame, set her pail down on one side and seized me by the arms and hair to take me to school after all. I tore myself away, I rolled on the ground, I howled and screamed, but in vain. The discovery of such a criminal in her quiet darling, whom every one praised, incensed her so that she would not listen to me, but dragged me away by force; and my continued resistance had no other result than to cause all the windows on the street to be opened and all heads to pop out. When I arrived my companions were just being dismissed; they crowded around me, however, and heaped mockery and derision upon me, while Susanna, who may have realized that the lesson was too severe, tried to pacify me. Since that day I believe I know how the man feels who runs the gauntlet.

VI

I should really have mentioned, above, a third experience, but this last, whether in retrospect one rate it high or low, is, in any case, so unique and incomparable in the life of man that one dares not place it in the same category with any other. In Susanna's gloomy school-room, namely, I learned to know love, and that, too, in the very same hour in which I entered it; therefore in my fourth year.

The first love! Who does not smile when he reads these words; before whose vision does not an Aennchen or a Gretchen hover, who once seemed to him to wear a starry crown and be arrayed in the blue of heaven and the gold of the morning, and who now perhaps--it would be criminal to paint the reverse of the picture. But who does not say to himself, too, that at that time he was carried, as though on wings, past every honey-cup in the garden of earth, too quickly indeed to become intoxicated, but slowly enough to breathe in the sacred morning fragrance. It is therefore with emotion that I now smile when I think of the beautiful May morning on which actually took place that great event, long since resolved upon, repeatedly deferred, and at last unalterably appointed for a definite day--I mean my departure from the paternal home to school. "He will cry!" said Meta on the evening before, and nodded sibylline fashion, as though she knew everything. "He will not cry, but he will get up too late!" rejoined neighbor Ohl's wife. "He will behave bravely, and be out of his bed at the right time, too!" threw in the good-natured old man. Then he added, "I have something for him, and I'll give it to him when he comes in at my door at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, washed and combed."

At seven o'clock I was at our neighbor's and as a reward was presented with a little wooden cuckoo. Up to half past seven I was in good spirits and played with our pug-dog, at quarter to eight I began to weaken, but toward eight I was a man again, because Meta entered with a face full of malicious enjoyment, and I sat out courageously, the new primer, with John Ballhorn's egg-laying c.o.c.k under my arm. My mother went with me in order to introduce me ceremoniously; the pug followed; I was not yet entirely forsaken, and stood in Susanna's presence before I realized it.

In school-master fashion Susanna patted me on the cheek and stroked back my hair. My mother, in a severe tone which she had great pains in a.s.suming, bade me be industrious and obedient, and departed hastily, so as not to allow her emotion to get the better of her; the pug was undecided for some little time, but at last he went off to join her. I was presented with a gold paper saint, then my place was shown me and I was incorporated into the humming, buzzing child-beehive, which, glad of the interruption, had watched the scene inquisitively.

It was some time before I dared to look up, for I felt that I was being inspected and this embarra.s.sed me. At last I did so, and my first glance fell upon a pale, slender girl who sat directly opposite to me; she was called Emilia and was the daughter of the parish clerk. A thrill of emotion pa.s.sed through me, the blood rushed to my heart, but a feeling of shame also mingled at once with my first sensation, and I dropped my eyes to the ground again as quickly as though they had committed a crime.

From this hour I could not banish Emilia from my mind. School, formerly so much feared, now became my favorite abiding place, because there only could I see her; Sundays and holidays, which separated me from her, were as hateful to me as they would otherwise have been welcome; I was genuinely unhappy if she happened to stay away. She hovered before me wherever I went and I never grew tired of repeating her name softly to myself when I was alone; her black eyebrows and her very rosy lips, in particular, were always present before me; on the other hand, I do not remember that her voice made any impression upon me, although later everything, for me, depended upon that.

It can easily be understood that I soon gained out of all this the reputation of being the most constant attendant at school and the best pupil. I felt rather strangely about it though, for I knew very well that it was not the primer which attracted me to Susanna's, and that it was not in order to learn to read quickly that I spelled away so busily. However, no one must ever be allowed to divine what was going on with me, and least of all Emilia. I avoided her most anxiously, so as, by any and all means, to keep from betraying myself. When the games in common nevertheless brought us together, I was hostile toward her rather than in the least friendly. I pulled her back hair in order to touch her at least for once, and hurt her in doing it, so as not to arouse suspicion. Once, however, nature forcibly a.s.serted itself, because put to too severe a test. One afternoon in the romping hour which always preceded lessons--for the children a.s.sembled slowly and Susanna liked to take a midday nap--a distressing sight greeted me as I entered the school-room; Emilia was being ill-treated by a boy, and he was one of my best comrades. He pulled her about and buffeted her l.u.s.tily, and I bore it, though not without great difficulty and with ever increasing, silent exasperation. At last, however, he drove her into a corner, and when he let her out again, her mouth was bleeding, probably because he had scratched her somewhere. Then I could control myself no longer, the sight of the blood drove me mad, I fell upon him, threw him to the ground and gave him back his thumps and slaps double and threefold. But Emilia, far from being grateful to me, herself called for aid and a.s.sistance for her enemy when I showed no signs of desisting, and thus betrayed involuntarily that she liked him better than the avenger.

Susanna, awakened from her slumbers by the noise, hurried to the scene and, naturally being cross and angry, demanded strict account of my sudden outburst of rage. What I stammered and stuttered forth in excuse was incomprehensible and foolish, and thus I received a rude chastis.e.m.e.nt as a reward for my first gallant service. My affection for Emilia lasted until my eighteenth year and pa.s.sed through very many phases; I must therefore often refer to it again.

VII

Even in my earliest years my imagination was very vivid. When I was put to bed in the evening the rafters above me began to crawl, from every nook and corner of the room distorted visages made grimaces, and the most familiar objects, such as the cane on which I myself used to ride, the foot of the table, yes, even the coverlet on my bed with its flowers and figures, grew strange and filled me with terror. I believe it is well to distinguish here between the vague general fear, which is natural to all children without exception, and a greater one which embodies its terrifying images in clear-cut distinct forms and really makes them objective to the young soul. The former fear was shared by my brother, who lay beside me, but his eyes always closed very soon and then he slept quietly until bright daylight; the latter tormented me alone, and not only did it keep sleep far from me, but when sleep finally came, often frightened it away again and made me call for help in the middle of the night. How deeply the phantasms of this same fear impressed themselves upon me can be gathered from the fact that they return in full force in every serious illness. As soon as the feverishly seething blood rushes over my brain and drowns my consciousness, the oldest devils, driving out and disarming all laterborn ones, come back again, and that best shows, without doubt, how they must once have tortured me.

But by day, as well, my imagination was unusually, and perhaps unhealthily, active. Ugly people, for example, whom my brother laughed at and mimicked, filled me with dread. A little hunch-backed tailor--on either side of whose triangular, deathly-pale face, immoderately long ears stood out, ears moreover which were bright red and transparent--could not pa.s.s by without my running with screams into the house; and it almost caused my death when he once, in a pa.s.sion, followed me, scolding and calling me a stupid youngster, and upbraiding my mother because he thought she was making him play the bug-bear in her domestic discipline. I could not endure the sight of a bone and buried even the smallest one that came to light in our garden; nay later, when in Susanna's school, I obliterated with my nails the word "rib" in my catechism, because it always brought before me the disgusting object which it designated as vividly as though the object itself lay there in repulsive decay before my eyes. On the other hand, a rose-leaf, which a breeze blew to me over the hedge, was as much to me as--nay, more than the rose itself was to others, and words like tulip and lily, cherry and apricot, apple and pear, immediately transplanted me into spring, summer, and autumn; so that in the primer I liked to spell aloud the pieces in which they occurred better than any others, and grew angry each time when it was not my turn to do so. Only, unhappily, in the world one needs the diminishing gla.s.s much oftener than the magnifying, and this holds good even of the beautiful days of youth, except in very rare cases. For as it is said of horses that they respect man only because, on account of the construction of their eye, they see in him a giant, so the child endowed with imagination stands still before a grain of sand only because it seems to him an insuperable mountain. Things in themselves therefore cannot set the standard here; on the contrary, one must inquire about the shadows which they cast; hence the father can often laugh while the son is enduring the tortures of h.e.l.l because the scales by which they weigh are fundamentally different.

An incident, comical in itself, belongs in this place because it throws a very clear light precisely on this point, so important for education.

I was once sent to get a roll for dinner. The baker's wife handed it to me and good-humoredly gave me at the same time an old nut-cracker, which had probably turned up somewhere when she was cleaning house. I had never seen a nut-cracker before. I was not acquainted with any of its hidden qualities, and took it like any other doll which appealed to me by reason of its red cheeks and staring eyes. Joyously starting on my way home and pressing the nut-cracker, like a newly acquired favorite, tenderly to my breast, I noticed all of a sudden that it opened its jaws and in grat.i.tude for my caresses showed me its cruel white teeth. One may imagine my fright! I shrieked loudly, I ran across the street as though pursued, but I had not sense or courage enough to throw the demon away, and as it naturally sometimes closed its mouth and sometimes opened it again, according to the movements I made while running, I could not help considering it alive, and arrived home half dead. Here I was, of course, laughed at and enlightened as to the truth, at last even scolded. It was all of no avail. It was impossible for me to become reconciled again to the monster although I recognized its innocence, and I did not rest until I had received permission to give it away to another boy. When my father learned of the matter he was of the opinion that there was no other youngster alive to whom such a thing could happen. That was very possible, for there was perhaps no other at whom the cousins of the nut-cracker had made faces from the floor and from the walls in the evening when he was just going to sleep. This very night the activity of my seething imagination culminated in a dream, which was so monstrous and left such an impression upon me that for that very reason it returned seven times in succession. It seemed to me as though the dear Lord, of whom I had already heard so much, had stretched a rope between heaven and earth, had set me upon it, and placed Himself beside it to swing me. Then without rest or pause I flew up and down with dizzy speed; now I was high up among the clouds, my hair fluttering in the wind, and I held on convulsively and closed my eyes; now I was so near the earth again that I could plainly see the yellow sand and the little red and white stones--indeed could even reach them with my toes.

I wished to throw myself off; that, however, required resolution, and before I succeeded, I went up in the air again, and there was nothing for me to do but seize the rope once more so as not to fall and be dashed to pieces. The week in which this dream occurred was perhaps the most terrible one of all my childhood, for the memory of it did not leave me the whole day. When, in spite of my struggles, I was put to bed I carried the fear of its return with me, even immediately into my sleep so that it was no wonder the dream continually recurred, until by degrees it faded out.

VIII

I remained in Susanna's school until my sixth year and learned there to read fluently. I was not permitted to learn to write yet on account of my youth, as it was said; it was the last thing that Susanna had to teach and therefore she prudently held it in reserve. But I had already started with the first necessary exercises in memory; for as soon as the youngster had been promoted from the s.e.xless frock to trousers, and from the primer to the catechism, he had to learn by heart the ten commandments and the chief articles of the Christian Faith as Doctor Martin Luther, the great reformer, formulated them three hundred years ago for the guidance of the Protestant Church. Memorizing went no farther and the tremendous dogmas, which without explanation or elucidation pa.s.sed from the book into the undeveloped childish brain, became transformed into wonderful and in part grotesque pictures. These, however, did the young mind no manner of harm, but gave it a healthy impetus and stirred it up to prophetic activity. For what does it matter if the child, when it hears of original sin, or of death and the devil, forms a conception or a fantastic image of those profound symbols? To fathom them is the task of our whole lifetime, but the developing man is warned at the very beginning of an all-disposing higher power, and I doubt if the same end could be reached by early initiation into the mysteries of the rule of three or into the wisdom of aesop's fables. The remarkable part of it was, to be sure, that in my imagination Luther came to stand almost directly beside Moses and Jesus Christ, but without doubt the reason was that his thundering "What is that?" always resounded immediately after the majestic laconic utterances of Jehovah, and that moreover his rough, expressive face, out of which the spirit speaks all the more forcibly because it must manifestly first gain the victory over the thick resisting flesh, was reproduced in the front of the catechism in heavy black ink. But so far as I know that had no more injurious consequences for me than my belief in the real horns and claws of the devil, or in the scythe of death, and I learned, as soon as there was any necessity for it, to distinguish perfectly between the Saviour and the reformer.

For the rest the modest acquisitions that I had made at Susanna's sufficed to procure for me a certain respect at home. To Master Ohl it was immensely impressive that I soon knew better than he himself all that the true Christian believes, and my mother was almost moved to tears when for the first time I read the evening blessing aloud by lamp-light, without faltering or stammering. Indeed she felt so edified that she gave over to me forever the office of reader, the duties of which I hereafter performed for a considerable length of time with much zeal and not without self-complacency.

Toward the end of my sixth year a great change, nay a complete transformation, took place in the school-system in Holstein, and consequently in that of my own little fatherland. Up to that time the State had not interfered at all in primary instruction and but little in the secondary. Parents could send their children wherever they wished and the primary schools were purely private inst.i.tutions, about which even the ministers scarcely troubled themselves, and which often sprang up in the most curious manner. Thus Susanna had arrived in Wesselburen one stormy autumn evening, in wooden shoes, without a penny, and an entire stranger. She had been given a night's lodging, for sweet charity's sake, by the compa.s.sionate widow of a pastor. The latter discovers that the pilgrim can read and write and also knows quite a little about the Bible and thereupon makes her on the spot the proposition to remain in the town, in her very house, and teach. The youth of the place, or at least the crawling part of the same, had, as it happened, just been orphaned. The former teacher, for a long time highly praised on account of his strict discipline, had undressed a saucy little girl and set her upon a hot stove in punishment for some naughtiness, perhaps in order to procure still greater praise thereby, and that had been too much for even the most unqualified reverers of the rod. Susanna was quite alone in the world, and did not know where she should turn or what she should take up. She therefore gladly, although according to her own words not without misgivings, exchanged the accustomed labor with her hands for the difficult labor with her head, and the speculation succeeded perfectly, and in the shortest s.p.a.ce of time imaginable.

To the boys and girls of more advanced age severe, sombre gymnasiums and grammar-schools did indeed open their doors. These were under a sort of supervision and in case of necessity were recruited by the secular arm, if new comers did not enlist of their own accord. But in these inst.i.tutions too, only the merest manual training was given, in spite of the pompous sounding names which they flaunted, and which to this hour have remained a mystery to me. A brother of my mother's, universally admired on account of his talents--whom the princ.i.p.al, though by no means over modest, had dismissed with the solemn declaration that he could teach him nothing further because he knew as much as he himself--was indeed a mighty calligrapher, and decorated his New Year's cards with tints and flourishes in India ink as the old printers Fust and Schoffer did their incunabula, but nevertheless he could not achieve a single grammatical sentence.

These conditions, undeniably defective and much in need of improvement, were now once and for all to be brought to an end. The people were to be educated from the cradle up, superst.i.tion was to be exterminated root and branch. Whether thorough consideration was given to that which should have been considered above everything else must remain in doubt; for the conception of culture is extremely relative, and just as the most disgusting intoxication follows the nipping from every bottle, so superficial encyclopedical knowledge, which at the most can be made broad, engenders precisely the most repulsive kind of arrogance. It will no longer bow to any authority and yet never penetrates to the depths in which the multifarious logical inconsistencies and contradictions find their own solution.

Probably the right method was adopted when they founded normal schools on the one hand and primary schools on the other, so that the essence which had been distilled in the former and poured into the empty schoolmaster heads in the form of rationalism, could from the latter spread itself immediately over the whole land. The result was that a somewhat superst.i.tious generation was followed by an excessively overwise one; for it is astonishing how the grandchild feels when he knows that a nocturnal fiery meteor is composed merely of inflammable gases, while his grandfather sees in it the devil trying to enter some chimney or other with his shining money bags.