It was only in such deeply contemplative life as this, in such “direct relationship” between man and the things of the outer world, that the German fairy tale could originate, the peculiarity of which consists in the fact that in it not only animals and plants, but also objects apparently inanimate, speak and act.  To thoughtful harmless people in the quiet homeliness of their lowly mountain cabins or forest huts, the inner life of these objects was gradually revealed; they acquired a necessary and consistent character, a sweet blending of fantastic humor and purely human sentiment, and thus we find in the fairy tale—­as something marvelous and yet at the same time quite natural—­the pin and the needle wandering forth from the tailor’s home and losing their way in the dark; the straw and the coal seeking to cross the brook and coming to grief; the dust-pan and broom quarreling and fighting on the stairs.  Thus the mirror, when interrogated, shows the image of the fairest lady, and even drops of blood begin to utter obscure and fearful words of the deepest compassion.  And this is the reason why our life in childhood is so infinitely significant, for then all things are of the same importance, nothing escapes our attention, there is equality in every impression; while, when more advanced in years, we must act with design, busy ourselves more exclusively with particulars, carefully exchange the pure gold of observation for the paper currency of book definitions, and win in breadth of life what we lost in depth.

Now, we are grown-up, respectable people, we often inhabit new dwellings; the housemaid daily cleans them and changes at her will the position of the furniture, which interests us but little, as it is either new or may belong today to Jack, tomorrow to Isaac.  Even our very clothes are strange to us; we hardly know how many buttons there are on the coat we wear—­for we change our garments as often as possible, and none of them remains deeply identified with our external or inner history.  We can hardly remember how that brown vest once looked, which attracted so much laughter, and yet on the broad stripes of which the dear hand of the loved one so gently rested!

The old dame who sat behind the stove opposite the clothes-press wore a flowered dress of some old-fashioned material, which had been the bridal robe of her departed mother.  Her great-grandson, a fair-haired boy, with flashing eyes, clad in a miner’s dress, sat at her feet and counted the flowers on her dress.  It may be that she has narrated to him many a story connected with that dress—­many serious and pretty stories, which the boy will not readily forget, which will often recur to him when he, a grown-up man, works alone in the midnight galleries of the “Caroline,” and which he in turn will narrate when the dear grandmother has long been dead, and he himself, a silver-haired, tranquil old man, sits amid the circle of his grand-children behind the stove, opposite the great clothes-press.