In church the minister’s family sat in the first pew, right under the pulpit, and we—­my father and I—­a few pews behind; and we children exchanged many a Freemason’s sign, intelligible only to ourselves.

But once Susanna wounded me deeply, even to bitter tears.  It became evident to me that she had made my father the subject of one of her lively remarks.  With his good strong voice, he used to sing the hymns in the simple country fashion, very loud; but—­what I and many others considered very effective—­at the end of each verse he added a peculiar turn to the last note, which did not belong to the tune, and was of his own composition.  This had been made a subject of remark at the parsonage, and, like a little pitcher, Susanna had ears.  When she noticed that I had found this out, she looked very unhappy.

When Carl was thirteen, he was sent to the grammar-school in Bergen, and the “expensive” tutor went away by the last steamboat that same autumn.

From this time Susanna’s education was carried on by her parents, and I was obliged to acquire my learning from the clerk, a good-natured old man, who himself knew very little more than how to play the violin, which he did with passion, and a sympathetic if uncultivated taste.

When the clerk had gained my father’s permission for me to learn the violin—­and I, like him, preferred this kind of entertainment to learning lessons—­three whole years, in other words, the time until I was sixteen years of age, were divided between violin-playing and idleness.

Perhaps if my mind, during this period of my life, had been properly kept under the daily discipline of work, much in me might have been developed differently.  At it was, the whole of my imaginary life was unfortunately put into my own power, and I laid the foundation of fancies which afterwards gained the mastery over my life, to a ruinous extent.  Some strongly impressionable natures require that the dividing line drawn in every one’s consciousness between fancy and reality, shall be constantly and thoroughly maintained, lest it be obliterated at certain points, and the real and the imaginary become confused.

Although we no longer had the same abundant opportunities for meeting as before, Susanna and I were, notwithstanding, constant and confidential playmates throughout our childhood.

When she had anything to confide to me, she generally watched by the gate that crossed the road by the parsonage lands, at the time when I went to or came from the clerk’s.

One day, as I came homewards along the road, with my books under my arm, she was sitting in her blue-checked frock and straw hat, on the steps by the side of the gate.  She looked as if she were in a very bad temper, and I could see at once that I was in for something.

She did not answer my greeting; but when I attempted to slip through the gate a little more quickly than she liked, she asked me in an irritated tone if it were true, as they said, that I was so lazy that they could make nothing of me at home.