th Nature, "become one with her," as
Middendorf said, we had not learned.

I once read in a novel by Jensen, as a well-attested fact, that during an
inquiry made in a charity school in the capital a considerable number of
the pupils had never seen a butterfly or a sunset. We were certainly not
to be classed among such children. But our intercourse with Nature had
been limited to formal visits which we were permitted to pay the august
lady at stated intervals. In Keilhau she became a familiar friend, and we
therefore were soon initiated into many of her secrets; for none seemed
to be withheld from our Middendorf and Barop, whom duty and inclination
alike prompted to sharpen our ears also for her language.

The Keilhau games and walks usually led up the mountains or into the
forest, and here the older pupils acted as teachers, but not in any
pedagogical way. Their own interest in whatever was worthy of note in
Nature was so keen that they could not help pointing it out to their less
experienced companions.

On our "picnics" from Berlin we had taken dainty mugs in order to drink
from the wells; now we learned to seek and find the springs themselves,
and how delicious the crystal fluid tastes from the hollow of the hand,
Diogenes's drinking-cup!

Old Councillor Wellmer, in the Crede House, in Berlin, a zealous
entomologist, owned a large collection of beetles, and had carefully
impaled his pets on long slender pins in neat boxes, which filled
numerous glass cases. They lacked nothing but life. In Keilhau we found
every variety of insect in central Germany, on the bushes and in the
moss, the turf, the bark of trees, or on the flowers and blades of grass,
and they were alive and allowed us to watch them. Instead of neatly
written labels, living lips told us their names.

We had listened to the notes of the birds in the Thiergarten; but our
mother, the tutor, the placards, our nice clothing, prohibited our
following the feathered songsters into the thickets. But in Keilhau we
were allowed to pursue them to their nests. The woods were open to every
one, and nothing could injure our plain jackets and stout boots. Even in
my second year at Keilhau I could distinguish all the notes of the
numerous birds in the Thuringian forests, and, with Ludo, began the
collection of eggs whose increase afforded us so much pleasure. Our
teachers' love for all animate creation had made them impose bounds on
the zeal of the egg-hunters, who w