We must have arrived on Sunday, for we met on the road several peasants in long blue coats, and peasant women in dark cloth cloaks with gold-embroidered borders, and little black caps from which ribbons three or four feet long hung down the wearers’ backs.  The cloaks descended from mother to daughter.  They were very heavy, yet I afterward saw peasant women wear them to church in summer.

At last we drove into the broad village street.  At the right, opposite to the first houses, lay a small pond called the village pool, on which ducks and geese floated, and whose dark surface, glittering with many hues, reflected the shepherd’s hut.  After we had passed some very fine farmhouses, we reached the “Plan,” where bright waters plashed into a stone trough, a linden tree shaded the dancing-ground, and a pretty house was pointed out as the schoolhouse of the village children.

A short distance farther away the church rose in the background.  But we had no time to look at it, for we were already driving up to the institute itself, which was at the end of the village, and consisted of two rows of houses with an open space closed at the rear by the wide front of a large building.

The bakery, a small dwelling, and the large gymnasium were at our left; on the right, the so-called Lower House, with the residences of the head-masters’ families, and the school and sleeping-rooms of the smaller pupils, whom we dubbed the “Panzen,” and among whom were boys only eight and nine years old.

The large house before whose central door—­to which a flight of stone steps led—­we stopped, was the Upper House, our future home.

Almost at the same moment we heard a loud noise inside, and an army of boys came rushing down the steps.  These were the “pupils,” and my heart began to throb faster.

They gathered around the Rudolstadt carriage boldly enough and stared at us.  I noticed that almost all were bareheaded.  Many wore their hair falling in long locks down their backs.  The few who had any coverings used black velvet caps, such as in Berlin would be seen only at the theatre or in an artist’s studio.

Middendorf had stepped quickly among the lads, and as they came running up to take his hand or hang on his arm we saw how they loved him.

But we had little time for observation.  Barop, the head-master, was already hastening down the steps, welcoming my mother and ourselves with his deep, musical tones, in a pure Westphalian dialect.

Entering the institute.

Barop’s voice sounded so sincere and cordial that it banished every thought of fear, otherwise his appearance might have inspired boys of our age with a certain degree of timidity, for he was a broad-shouldered man of gigantic stature, who, like Middendorf, wore his grey hair parted in the middle, though it was cut somewhat shorter.  A pair of dark eyes sparkled under heavy, bushy brows, which gave them the aspect