and _Schuldthurm_
(Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast:
a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps
had tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonized creature,
loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, and
become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to
whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has
malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; which
the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more
foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that
mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome!

"Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I
was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards
me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone."
His school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he
says, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which
bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to
death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong
tyrannize over the weak." He admits that though "perhaps in an unusual
degree morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain
have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his small
personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was "incredibly nimble"),
than to his "virtuous principles:" "if it was disgraceful to be beaten,"
says he, "it was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as
fought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element
of school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." On the
whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so notable in Teufelsdrockh's
childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "He wept
often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the
Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed
not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst
forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestum_) under
which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at
least of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree
and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and
ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only,