g them together out of any virtue or
praiseworthy intent, but simply because I could not bear to stand alone,
or with only one ring linked to me.

Alas! how far behind me lies the bright, happy youth of which I now
write! I have reached the top of life's hill, nay, I have long since
overstepped the ridge; and, as I look back and think of all I have seen
and known, it is not to the end that I may get wisdom for myself whereby
to do better as I live longer. My old bones are stiff and set; it would
be vain now to try to bend them. No, I write this little book for my own
pleasure, and to be of use and comfort to my children and grandchildren.
May they avoid the rocks on which I have bruised my feet, and where
I have walked firmly on may they take example by an old woman's brave
spirit, though I have learned in a thousand ways that no man gains
profit by any experience other than his own.

So I will begin at the beginning.

I could find much to tell of my happy childhood, for then everything
seems new; but it profits not to tell of what every one has known in his
own life, and what more can a Nuremberg child have to say of her early
growth and school life than ever another. The blades in one field and
the trees in one wood share the same lot without any favour. It is true
that in many ways I was unlike other children; for my cousin Maud would
often say that I would not abide rule as beseems a maid, and Herdegen's
lament that I was not born a boy still sounds in my ears when I call to
mind our wild games. Any one who knows the window on the first floor, at
the back of our house, from which I would jump into the courtyard to do
as my brothers did, would be fairly frightened, and think it a wonder
that I came out of it with whole bones; but yet I was not always
minded to riot with the boys, and from my tenderest years I was a very
thoughtful little maid. But there were things; in my young life very apt
to sharpen my wits.

We Schoppers are nearly allied with every worshipful family in the town,
or of a rank to sit in the council and bear a coat of arms; these
being, in fact, in Nuremberg, the class answering to the families of the
Signoria in Venice, whose names are enrolled in the Libro d'Oro. What
the Barberighi, the Foscari, the Grimaldi, the Giustiniani and the like,
are there, the families of Stromer, Behaim, Im Hoff, Tucher, Kresz,
Baumgartner, Pfinzing, Pukheimer, Holzschuher, and so forth, are with
us; and the Schop