Dear little Ingo!  At the age when so many small boys are pert, impudent, self-conscious, he was the simplest, happiest, gravest little creature.  His hobby was astronomy, and often I would find him sitting quietly in a corner with a book about the stars.  On clear evenings we would walk along the road together, in the mountain hush that was only broken by the brook tumbling down the valley, and he would name the constellations for me.  His little round head was thrilled through and through by the immense mysteries of space; sometimes at meal times he would fall into a muse, forgetting his beef and gravy.  Once I asked him at dinner what he was thinking of.  He looked up with his clear gray-blue eyes and flashing smile:  “Von den Sternen!” ("Of the stars.”)

The time after supper was reserved for games, in which Wolfgang, Ingo’s smaller brother (aged seven), also took part.  Our favourite pastimes were “Irrgarten” and “Galgenspiel,” in which we found enormous amusement.  Galgenspiel was Ingo’s translation of “Hangman,” a simple pastime which had sometimes entertained my own small brother on rainy days; apparently it was new in Germany.  One player thinks of a word, and sets down on paper a dash for each letter in this word.  It is the task of the other to guess the word, and he names the letters of the alphabet one by one.  Every time he mentions a letter that is contained in the word you must set it down in its proper place in the word, but every time he mentions a letter that is not in the word you draw a portion of a person depending from a gallows; the object of course being for him to guess the word before you finish drawing the effigy.  We played the game entirely in German, and I can still see Ingo’s intent little face bent over my preposterous drawings, cudgelling his quick and happy little brain to spot the word before the hangman could finish his grim task.  “Quick, Ingo!” I would cry.  “You will get yourself hung!” and he would laugh in his own lovable way.  There was never a jollier way of learning a foreign language than by playing games with Ingo.

The other favourite pastime was drawing mazes on paper, labyrinths of winding paths which must be traversed by a pencil point.  The task was to construct a maze so complicated that the other could not find his way out, starting at the middle.  We would sit down at opposite ends of the room to construct our mysteries of blind alleys and misleading passages, then each one would be turned loose in the “irrgarten” drawn by the other.  Ingo would stand at my side while I tried in obstinate stupidity to find my way through his little puzzle; his eager heart inside his sailor blouse would pound like a drum when I was nearing the dangerous places where an exit might be won.  He would hold his breath so audibly, and his blue eyes would grow so anxious, that I always knew when not to make the right turning, and my pencil would wander on in hopeless despair until he had mercy on me and led me to freedom.