It was also at this time that I entered the primary school, which was nothing unusual, inasmuch as I was going on seven years of age.  I was quick to learn and made progress, but my mother considered it her duty to help me on, now and then, especially in reading, and so every afternoon I stood by her little sewing table and read to her all sorts of little stories out of the Brandenburg Children’s Friend, a good book, but illustrated, alas, with frightful pictures.  My performance was probably quite tolerable, for the ability to read and write well—­by the way, a very important thing in life—­is a sort of inheritance in the family.  But my mother was not easy to satisfy; furthermore she acted on the assumption that recognition and praise spoil character, a point of view which even now I do not consider right.  At the slightest mistake she brought into play the “quick hand” always at her service.  But she displayed no temper in doing it; she was always merely proceeding in accordance with her principle, “anything but coddling.”  One blow too many could never do any harm and, if it turned out that I had really not deserved any particular one, it was reckoned as offsetting some of my naughty pranks that had happened to escape discovery.  “Anything but coddling.”  That is indeed a very good principle, and I do not care to criticise it, in spite of the fact that its application did not help me, not even as a hardening process; but whatever one may think of it, my mother now and then carried her harsh treatment too far.

I had long blond hair, less to my own delight than to my mother’s; for to keep it in its would-be state of beauty I was subjected to the most interminable and occasionally the most painful combing ordeals, especially those with the fine comb.  If I had been called upon at the time to name the medieval instruments of torture, the “fine comb” would have stood among those at the head of my list.  Until the blood came there was no thought of stopping.  The following day the scarcely healed spot was again scrutinized with suspicious eye, and thus one torture was followed by another.  To be sure, if, as may be possible, I owe it to this procedure that I still have a fairly good head of hair, I did not suffer in vain, and I humbly apologize.

This careful treatment of my scalp was accompanied by an equally painstaking treatment of my complexion, and this painful care also showed a tendency to apply too drastic remedies.  If my skin was chapped by the east wind or the severe heat of the sun, my mother was immediately at hand with a slice of lemon as an unfailing remedy.  And it always helped.  Cold cream and such things would have been more to my fancy and would doubtless have accomplished the same end.  But my mother showed the same relentlessness toward herself, and one who valiantly leads the way into the battle may properly command others to follow.