followed, which we older
ones stopped.

Thus many bands of pupils invented games of their own, but, thank
Heaven, rarely devised such absurdities. Our later Homeric battles any
teacher would have witnessed with pleasure. Froebel would have greeted
them as signs of creative imagination and "individual life" in the boys.

CHAPTER XV. SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES

Wholly unlike these, genuinely and solely a product of Keilhau, was
the great battle-game which we called Bergwacht, one of my brightest
memories of those years.

Long preparations were needed, and these, too, were delightful.

On the wooded plain at the summit of the Kolm, a mountain which belonged
mainly to the institute, war was waged during the summer every Saturday
evening until far into the night, whenever the weather was fine, which
does not happen too often in Thuringia.

The whole body of pupils was divided into three, afterwards into four
sections, each of which had its own citadel. After two had declared
war against two others, the battle raged until one party captured the
strongholds of the other. This was done as soon as a combatant had set
foot on the hearth of a hostile fortress.

The battle itself was fought with stakes blunted at the tops. Every one
touched by the weapon of an enemy must declare himself a prisoner. To
admit this, whenever it happened, was a point of honour.

In order to keep all the combatants in action, a fourth division was
added soon after our arrival, and of course it was necessary to build a
strong hold like the others. This consisted of a hut with a stone roof,
in which fifteen or twenty boys could easily find room and rest, a
strong wall which protected us up to our foreheads, and surrounded the
front of the citadel in a semicircle, as well as a large altar-like
hearth which rose in the midst of the semicircular space surrounded by
the wall.

We built this fortress ourselves, except that our teacher of
handicrafts, the sapper Sabum, sometimes gave us a hint. The first thing
was to mark out the plan, then with the aid of levers pry the rocks out
of the fields, and by means of a two-wheeled cart convey them to the
site chosen, fit them neatly together, stuff the interstices with moss,
and finally put on a roof made of pine logs which we felled ourselves,
earth, moss, and branches.

How quickly we learned to use the plummet, take levels, hew the stone,
wield the axes! And what a delight it was when the work