a fool of when I was told there was no word in
French for our verb, "to stand." I had learnt the German "stehen" and
the ditto "schtehe," and I had conjugated every tense of the Latin
"stare," and now I refused to believe that the French language could
have a _locus standi_ amongst civilised nations without an equivalent
for those words. I did not know then how much civilisation can put up
with, and it took me a long while to overcome my mistrust of a language
so evidently unsound at its base.

We all know to what wearisome length an average schoolmaster can draw
out a single hour, and my teachers were no exception to the rule. Time
went slowly, as did all things fifty years ago in Carlsruhe.

What a blessed relief it was then when a holiday came round! Perhaps it
was when we were liberated in honour of our glorious Grand-Duke's
birthday, perhaps when we were to join in the commemoration of some
great deed or greater misdeed of one of his ancestors, or perhaps--best
of all--when once or twice Mother Earth was clad in so much loveliness,
that it was just impossible to keep masters and boys indoors, dissecting
dead languages and putting historical bones together. Nature herself
seemed to proclaim a free pardon for us prisoners and for our warders:
off we went all together to the woods.

How we ran and shouted when we got into those avenues of trees behind
the Grand-Ducal Palace, how madly we raced, how heroically we fought the
boys we hated, and how solemnly we swore eternal friendship with the
ones we loved! We climbed trees, cut sticks, and did what little harm we
could to exuberant prolific Nature; we chased butterflies and deprived
spiders of their legitimate prey, and then--selfish little lords of
creation that we were--we settled down where the grass grew thickest, to
discuss large haunches of bread and red-cheeked apples, and to crack
nuts and jokes in true schoolboy fashion.

The masters forgot for the while that they were German professors, with
spectacles on their noses and Latin quotations on their lips. They were
just human, and felt themselves as much at home in the woods as we did,
gratefully inhaling the same balmy air, and greedily swallowing the same
glittering dust. They knew something, too, to tell us about God's
creation, and in those blessed hours taught us wonderful and beautiful
things that stirred our little souls, and made us glad to live and
wonder and worship.

Oscar--I have forgotten his s