emory.

I never sat in my grandmother's lap. When we wished to talk with her
we had to sit beside her; and if we kept still she would question us
searchingly about everything--our play, our friends, our school.

This silence, which always struck us children at first with
astonishment, was interrupted very gaily by our aunt, whose liveliness
broke in upon it like the sound of a horn amid the stillness of a
forest. Her cheerful voice was audible even in the hall, and when she
crossed the threshold we flew to her, and the spell was broken. For she,
the only daughter, put no restraint on herself in the reserved presence
of her mother. She kissed her boisterously, asked how she was, as if
she were the mother, the other the child. Indeed, she took the liberty
sometimes of calling the old lady "Henrietta"--that was her name--or
even "Hetty." Then, when grandmother pointed to us and exclaimed
reproachfully, "Why, Sophie!" our aunt could always disarm her with gay
jests.

Though the two were generally at a distance, their existence made itself
felt again and again either through letters or presents or by their
coming to Berlin, which always brought holidays for us.

These journeys were accomplished under difficulties. Our aunt had always
used an open carriage, and was really convinced that she would stifle in
a closed railway compartment. But as she would not forego the benefit
of rapid transit, our grandmother was obliged, even after her daughter's
marriage, to hire an open truck for her, on which, with her faithful
maid Minna, and one of her dogs, or sometimes with her husband or
a friend as a companion, she established herself comfortably in an
armchair of her own, with various other conveniences about her. The
railway officials knew her, and no doubt shrugged their shoulders, but
the warmheartedness shining in her eyes and her unvarying cheerfulness
carried everything before them, so that her eccentricity was readily
overlooked. And she had plenty of similar caprices. I was visiting her
once in the Christmas holidays, when I was a schoolboy in the upper
class, and we had retired for the night. At one o'clock my aunt suddenly
appeared at my bedside, waked me, and told me to get up. The first snow
had fallen, and she had had the horses harnessed for us to go sleighing,
which she particularly enjoyed.

Resistance was useless, and the swift flight over the snow by moonlight
proved to be very enjoyable. Between four and five