t the devil trying to enter some
chimney or other with his shining money bags.

But however the matter may have stood in general,--and I repeat my
conviction that in this case the happy medium is hard to find,--to me
the reform was a great blessing. For Wesselburen, like the other towns,
acquired an elementary school and a man was chosen as teacher of it
whose name I cannot write down without a feeling of the deepest
gratitude, because in spite of his modest position, he exercised an
immeasurable influence on my development. He was called Franz Christian
Detlefsen and came to us from the neighboring town of Eiderstedt, where
he had already held a small official position.

IX

No house is so small as not to seem to the child who has been born in it
like a world whose wonders and mysteries he discovers only little by
little. Even the poorest cottage has at least a garret to which a ladder
leads up, and with what feelings is this climbed for the first time!
Some old rubbish is sure to be found up there, which, useless and
forgotten, points back to days long past, and reminds us of men whose
last bone has already moldered to dust. Behind the chimney there is
surely a worm-eaten, wooden chest which excites curiosity. The dust is
lying on it hand high, the lock is still there, but there is no need to
look for the key; for one can forage in it wherever one wants, and when
with fear and trembling the child does so, he pulls out a torn boot, or
the broken distaff of a spinning wheel which was laid aside half a
century ago. Shuddering he flings away the double find, because
involuntarily he asks himself where is the leg that wore the boot and
where is the hand that set the wheel in motion. But the mother carefully
picks up the one or the other because she happens to need a strap which
can be cut out of grandfather's boot, or because she believes that she
can start the fire again with great-aunt's distaff.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF KRIEMHILD _From the Painting by Schnorr von
Carolsfeld_]

Even though the chest had found its way into the tiled stove during the
last hard winter, when people were even forced to burn dried cakes of
dung, there is still hidden away in the garret a rusty sickle which once
went off to the fields, shining and merry, and stretched low at one
swing of the arm a thousand golden-green stalks; and above it hangs the
uncanny scythe which a farm-hand once ran into a long time ago, so that
he cut off his