e of the older pupils a party of us surprised some
"Panzen"--as we called the younger ones--one hot afternoon engaged in a
very singular game of their own invention. They had undressed to the skin
in the midst of the thickest woods and were performing Paradise and the
Fall of Man, as they had probably just been taught in their religious
lesson. For the expulsion of Adam and our universal mother Eve, the
angel--in this case there were two of them--used, instead of the flaming
sword, stout hazel rods, with which they performed their part of warders
so overzealously that a quarrel followed, which we older ones stopped.

Thus many bands of pupils invented games of their own, but, thank Heaven,
rarely devised such absurdities. Our later Homeric battles any teacher
would have witnessed with pleasure. Froebel would have greeted them as
signs of creative imagination and "individual life" in the boys.

CHAPTER XV.

SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES

Wholly unlike these, genuinely and solely a product of Keilhau, was the
great battle-game which we called Bergwacht, one of my brightest memories
of those years.

Long preparations were needed, and these, too, were delightful.

On the wooded plain at the summit of the Kolm, a mountain which belonged
mainly to the institute, war was waged during the summer every Saturday
evening until far into the night, whenever the weather was fine, which
does not happen too often in Thuringia.

The whole body of pupils was divided into three, afterwards into four
sections, each of which had its own citadel. After two had declared war
against two others, the battle raged until one party captured the
strongholds of the other. This was done as soon as a combatant had set
foot on the hearth of a hostile fortress.

The battle itself was fought with stakes blunted at the tops. Every one
touched by the weapon of an enemy must declare himself a prisoner. To
admit this, whenever it happened, was a point of honour.

In order to keep all the combatants in action, a fourth division was
added soon after our arrival, and of course it was necessary to build a
strong hold like the others. This consisted of a hut with a stone roof,
in which fifteen or twenty boys could easily find room and rest, a strong
wall which protected us up to our foreheads, and surrounded the front of
the citadel in a semicircle, as well as a large altar-like hearth which
rose in the midst of the semicircular space surrounded by t