f them, only at times a bit worse. You always want to play the
young gentleman, but young gentlemen don't lick honey from their
plates, or at least don't deny it if they have done so, in fact they
never tell lies. Not long ago I heard you prating about honor, but I
want to tell you, _that_ doesn't look to me like honor." She insisted
upon truthfulness, treated boasting with fine ridicule, and was chary
of compliments. But when she did praise it was effective. She did me
many a good turn, and not until late in life, when I was past fifty,
did I meet another woman, this time an elderly lady, who exerted such
an educational influence upon me. Even now I am still taking lessons
and learn from people who are young enough to be my grandchildren.

Thus much about the good Schroeder girl, and after this digression in
memory of her I ask once more: "Well, how did we live?" I propose to
show how we lived, by means of a series of pictures, and in order to
introduce order and clarity into the description it will be well to
divide our life as we lived it into two halves, a summer life and a
winter life.

First, then, there was the summer life. About the middle of June we
regularly had the house full of visitors; for my mother, in accordance
with the old custom, still kept in touch with her relatives, a trait
which we children only very imperfectly inherited from her. But let it
be understood, she kept in touch with her relatives, not to derive
advantages from them, but to bestow advantages. She was incredibly
generous, and there were times when we, after we had grown up, asked
ourselves the question, which passion really threatened us most, the
gaming passion of our father, or the giving and presenting passion of
our mother. But we finally discovered the answer to the question. What
our father did was simply money thrown away, whereas the excessive
amounts given away by our mother were always unselfishly given and
carried with them a quiet blessing. No doubt a certain desire to be,
so far as possible, a _grande dame_, if only in a very small degree,
had something to do with it, but then all our doings show some
elements of human weakness. Later in life, when we talked with her
about these things, she said: "Certainly, I might have refrained from
doing many things. We spent far more than our income. But I said to
myself: 'What there is will be spent anyhow, and so it is better for
it to go my way than the other.'"

These summer mo