our and a half years there was no epidemic disease
among the boys, and on the fiftieth jubilee of the institute, in 1867,
which I attended, the statement was made that during the half century of
its existence only one pupil had died, and he had had heart disease when
his parents sent him to the school.

We must have arrived on Sunday, for we met on the road several peasants
in long blue coats, and peasant women in dark cloth cloaks with
gold-embroidered borders, and little black caps from which ribbons three
or four feet long hung down the wearers' backs. The cloaks descended
from mother to daughter. They were very heavy, yet I afterward saw
peasant women wear them to church in summer.

At last we drove into the broad village street. At the right, opposite
to the first houses, lay a small pond called the village pool, on which
ducks and geese floated, and whose dark surface, glittering with many
hues, reflected the shepherd's hut. After we had passed some very fine
farmhouses, we reached the "Plan," where bright waters plashed into
a stone trough, a linden tree shaded the dancing-ground, and a pretty
house was pointed out as the schoolhouse of the village children.

A short distance farther away the church rose in the background. But
we had no time to look at it, for we were already driving up to the
institute itself, which was at the end of the village, and consisted
of two rows of houses with an open space closed at the rear by the wide
front of a large building.

The bakery, a small dwelling, and the large gymnasium were at our left;
on the right, the so-called Lower House, with the residences of the
head-masters' families, and the school and sleeping-rooms of the smaller
pupils, whom we dubbed the "Panzen," and among whom were boys only eight
and nine years old.

The large house before whose central door--to which a flight of stone
steps led--we stopped, was the Upper House, our future home.

Almost at the same moment we heard a loud noise inside, and an army of
boys came rushing down the steps. These were the "pupils," and my heart
began to throb faster.

They gathered around the Rudolstadt carriage boldly enough and stared
at us. I noticed that almost all were bareheaded. Many wore their hair
falling in long locks down their backs. The few who had any coverings
used black velvet caps, such as in Berlin would be seen only at the
theatre or in an artist's studio.

Middendorf had stepped quickly among the la