s an absolutely useless creature.

"All night long I cried bitterly--I felt so entirely forsaken, and I
pitied myself so that I wanted to die. I dreaded the break of day, and
did not know what to do. I longed for any possible kind of ability,
and could not understand at all why I was more stupid than the other
children of my acquaintance. I was on the verge of despair.

"When the day dawned, I got up, and, scarcely realizing what I was
doing, opened the door of our little cabin. I found myself in the open
field, soon afterward in a forest, into which the daylight had hardly
yet shone. I ran on without looking back; I did not get tired, for I
thought all the time that my father would surely overtake me and treat
me even more cruelly on account of my running away.

"When I emerged from the forest again the sun was already fairly high,
and I saw, lying ahead of me, something dark, over which a thick mist
was resting. One moment I was obliged to scramble over hills, the next
to follow a winding path between rocks. I now guessed that I must be
in the neighboring mountains, and I began to feel afraid of the
solitude. For, living in the plain, I had never seen any mountains,
and the mere word mountains, whenever I heard them talked about, had
an exceedingly terrible sound to my childish ear. I hadn't the heart
to turn back--it was indeed precisely my fear which drove me onwards.
I often looked around me in terror when the wind rustled through the
leaves above me, or when a distant sound of chopping rang out through
the quiet morning. Finally, when I began to meet colliers and miners
and heard a strange pronunciation, I nearly fainted with fright.

"You must forgive my prolixity. As often as I tell this story I
involuntarily become garrulous, and Eckbert, the only person to whom I
have told it, has spoiled me by his attention.

"I passed through several villages and begged, for I now felt hungry
and thirsty. I helped myself along very well with the answers I gave
to questions asked me. I had wandered along in this way for about four
days, when I came to a small foot-path which led me farther from the
highway. The rocks around me now assumed a different, far stranger
shape. They were cliffs, and were piled up on one another in such a
way that they looked as if the first gust of wind would hurl them all
together into a heap. I did not know whether to go on or not. I had
always slept over night either in out-of-the-way shepher