cult to furnish continual rounds of entertainment for
the young women, and would perhaps have proved impossible, if it had
not been for the horses. Almost every afternoon, when the weather was
good, the carriage drove up to our door, and such days during the
bathing season, when we were often almost completely overwhelmed with
visitors, were probably the only times when my mother, without in the
least sacrificing her fundamental convictions, was temporarily
reconciled to the existence of horse and carriage. Whoever knows
Swinemuende, and there are many who do know the place, is aware of the
fact that one is never embarrassed there for a beautiful spot to visit
on afternoon drives, and even in those days this was as true as it is
today. There was the trip along the beach to Heringsdorf, or, on the
other side, out to the moles; but the most popular drives, because
they afforded protection from the sun, were those back into the
country, either through the dense beech forest toward Corswant, or
better still to the village of Camminke, situated near the Haff of
Stettin and the Golm (mountain). There was a much frequented
skittle-alley there, where women played as well as men. I myself liked
to stand by the splintery lath trough, in which the skittle-boy rolled
back the balls. My only reason for choosing this position was because
I had heard a short time before that one of the players at this very
alley, in catching a ball as it rolled to him, had run a long lath
splinter under the nail of his index finger. That had made such an
impression on me that I always stood there shuddering for fear of a
repetition of the accident, which fortunately did not occur. When I
finally grew tired of waiting I stepped through a lattice gate, always
hanging aslant and always creaky, into a garden plot running along
close by the skittle-alley and parallel with it. It was a genuine
peasant's garden, with touch-me-nots and mignonette in bloom, and in
one place the mallows grew so tall that they formed a lane. Then when
the sun went down behind the forest the Golm, which lay to the west,
was bathed in red light, and the metal ball on its tall pillar looked
down, like a sphere of gold, upon the village and the skittle-garden.
Myriads of mosquitoes hung in the air, and the bumble bees flew back
and forth between the box-edged beds.

Our visitors usually left at the beginning of August, and when
September came the last of the hotel guests departed fr