know that had no more
injurious consequences for me than my belief in the real horns and claws
of the devil, or in the scythe of death, and I learned, as soon as there
was any necessity for it, to distinguish perfectly between the Saviour
and the reformer.

For the rest the modest acquisitions that I had made at Susanna's
sufficed to procure for me a certain respect at home. To Master Ohl it
was immensely impressive that I soon knew better than he himself all
that the true Christian believes, and my mother was almost moved to
tears when for the first time I read the evening blessing aloud by
lamp-light, without faltering or stammering. Indeed she felt so edified
that she gave over to me forever the office of reader, the duties of
which I hereafter performed for a considerable length of time with much
zeal and not without self-complacency.

Toward the end of my sixth year a great change, nay a complete
transformation, took place in the school-system in Holstein, and
consequently in that of my own little fatherland. Up to that time the
State had not interfered at all in primary instruction and but little in
the secondary. Parents could send their children wherever they wished
and the primary schools were purely private institutions, about which
even the ministers scarcely troubled themselves, and which often sprang
up in the most curious manner. Thus Susanna had arrived in Wesselburen
one stormy autumn evening, in wooden shoes, without a penny, and an
entire stranger. She had been given a night's lodging, for sweet
charity's sake, by the compassionate widow of a pastor. The latter
discovers that the pilgrim can read and write and also knows quite a
little about the Bible and thereupon makes her on the spot the
proposition to remain in the town, in her very house, and teach. The
youth of the place, or at least the crawling part of the same, had, as
it happened, just been orphaned. The former teacher, for a long time
highly praised on account of his strict discipline, had undressed a
saucy little girl and set her upon a hot stove in punishment for some
naughtiness, perhaps in order to procure still greater praise thereby,
and that had been too much for even the most unqualified reverers of the
rod. Susanna was quite alone in the world, and did not know where she
should turn or what she should take up. She therefore gladly, although
according to her own words not without misgivings, exchanged the
accustomed labor with her