ainly was that you cannot eat flowers. Their
spirits required no refreshment, but their bodies needed much, and
therefore radishes were more precious than wallflowers. Nor was my
youth wholly destitute of radishes, but they were grown in the decent
obscurity of odd kitchen garden corners and old cucumber frames, and
would never have been allowed to come among the flowers. And only
because I was not a boy here they were profaning the ground that used
to be so beautiful. Oh, it was a terrible misfortune not to have been a
boy! And how sad and lonely it was, after all, in this ghostly garden.
The radish bed and what it symbolised had turned my first joy into
grief. This walk and border me too much of my father reminded, and of
all he had been to me. What I knew of good he had taught me, and what
I had of happiness was through him. Only once during all the years we
lived together had we been of different opinions and fallen out, and
it was the one time I ever saw him severe. I was four years old, and
demanded one Sunday to be taken to church. My father said no, for I had
never been to church, and the German service is long and exhausting. I
implored. He again said no. I implored again, and showed such a pious
disposition, and so earnest a determination to behave well, that he gave
in, and we went off very happily hand in hand. "Now mind, Elizabeth," he
said, turning to me at the church door, "there is no coming out again
in the middle. Having insisted on being brought, thou shalt now sit
patiently till the end." "Oh, yes, oh, yes," I promised eagerly,
and went in filled with holy fire. The shortness of my legs, hanging
helplessly for two hours midway between the seat and the floor, was the
weapon chosen by Satan for my destruction. In German churches you do
not kneel, and seldom stand, but sit nearly the whole time, praying
and singing in great comfort. If you are four years old, however, this
unchanged position soon becomes one of torture. Unknown and dreadful
things go on in your legs, strange prickings and tinglings and dartings
up and down, a sudden terrifying numbness, when you think they must have
dropped off but are afraid to look, then renewed and fiercer prickings,
shootings, and burnings. I thought I must be very ill, for I had
never known my legs like that before. My father sitting beside me was
engrossed in the singing of a chorale that evidently had no end, each
verse finished with a long-drawn-out hallelujah, af