back to the
institute-rang out, and a hymn, the march back, a bath in the pond, and
finally the most delicious rest, if good luck permitted, on the heaps of
hay which had not been gathered in. On the Sunday following the Bergwacht
we were not required to attend church, where we should merely have gone
to sleep. Barop, though usually very strict in the observance of
religious duties, never demanded anything for the sake of mere
appearances.

And the bed of my own planning! It consisted of wood and stones, and was
covered with a thick layer of moss, raised at the head in a slanting
direction. It looked like other beds, but the place where it stood
requires some description, for it was a Keilhau specialty, a favour
bestowed by our teachers on the pupils.

Midway up the slope of the Kolm where our citadels stood, on the side
facing the institute, each boy had a piece of ground where he might
build, dig, or plant, as he chose. They descended from one to another:
Ludo's and mine had come down from Martin and another pupil who left the
school at the same time. But I was not satisfied with what my
predecessors had created. I spared the beautiful vine which twined around
a fir-tree, but in the place of a flower-bed and a bench which I found
there Ludo and I built a hearth, and for myself the bed already
mentioned, which my brother of course was permitted to occupy with me.

How many hours I have spent on its soft cushions, reading or dreaming or
imagining things! If I could only remember them as they hovered before
me, what epics and tales I could write!

No doubt we ought to be grateful to God for this as well as for so many
other blessings; but why are we permitted to be young only once in our
lives, only once to be borne aloft on the wings of a tireless power of
imagination, so easily satisfied with ourselves, so full of love, faith,
and hope, so open to every joy and so blind to every care and doubt, and
everything which threatens to cloud and extinguish the sunlight in the
soul?

Dear bed in my plot of ground at Keilhau, you ought, in accordance with a
remark of Barop, to cause me serious self-examination, for he said,
probably with no thought of my mossy couch, "From the way in which the
pupils use their plots of ground and the things they place in them, I can
form a very correct opinion of their dispositions and tastes." But you,
beloved couch, should have the best place in my garden if you could
restore me but for