the
impossibility of following us about everywhere, or whether the candidate
was to teach us the rudiments of Latin after we went to the Schmidt
school in the Leipziger Platz, at the beginning of my tenth year, I
neglected to inquire.

The Easter holidays always brought Brother Martin home. Then he told us
about Keilhau, and we longed to accompany him there; and yet we had so
many good schoolmates and friends at home, such spacious playgrounds and
beautiful toys! I recall with especial pleasure the army of tin soldiers
with which we fought battles, and the brass cannon that mowed down
their ranks. We could build castles and cathedrals with our blocks,
and cooking was a pleasure, too, when our sisters allowed us to act as
scullions and waiters in white aprons and caps.

Martha, the eldest, was already a grown young lady, but so sweet and
kind that we never feared a rebuff from her; and her friends, too, liked
us little ones.

Martha's contemporaries formed a peculiarly charming circle. There was
the beautiful Emma Baeyer, the daughter of General Baeyer, who afterward
conducted the measuring of the meridian for central Europe; pretty,
lively Anna Bisting; and Gretchen Bugler, a handsome, merry girl,
who afterward married Paul Heyse and died young; Clara and Agnes
Mitscherlich, the daughters of the celebrated chemist, the younger of
whom was especially dear to my childish heart. Gustel Grimm, too, the
daughter of Wilhelm Grimm, was often at our house. The queen of my
heart, however, was the sister of our playmate, Max Geppert, and at this
time the most intimate friend of my sister Paula. The two took dancing
lessons together, and there was no greater joy than when the lesson was
at our house, for then the young ladies occasionally did us the favour
of dancing with us, to Herr Guichard's tiny violin.

Warm as was my love for the beautiful Annchen, my adored one came near
getting a cold from it, for, rogue that I was, I hid her overshoes
during the lesson on one rainy Saturday evening, that I might have the
pleasure of taking them to her the next morning.

She looked at that time like the woman with whom I celebrated my silver
wedding two years ago, and certainly belonged to the same feminine
genre, which I value and place as high above all others as Simonides von
Amorgos preferred the beelike woman to every other of her sex: I mean
the kind whose womanliness and gentle charm touch the heart before one
ever thinks of