I have passed over the Rudolstadt Schutzenfest, its music, its merry-go-round, and the capital sausages cooked in the open air, and have intentionally omitted many other delightful things.  I cannot help wondering now where we found time for all these summer pleasures.

True, with the exception of a few days at Whitsuntide, we had no vacation from Easter until the first of September.  But even in August one thought, one joyous anticipation, filled every heart.  The annual autumn excursion was coming!

After we were divided into travelling parties and had ascertained which teacher was to accompany us—­a matter that seemed very important—­we diligently practised the most beautiful songs; and on many an evening Barop or Middendorf told us of the places through which we were to pass, their history, and the legends which were associated with them.  They were aided in this by one of the sub-teachers, Bagge, a poetically gifted young clergyman, who possessed great personal beauty and a heart capable of entering into the intellectual life of the boys who were entrusted to his care.

He instructed us in the German language and literature.  Possibly because he thought that he discovered in me a talent for poetic expression, he showed me unusual favor, even read his own verses aloud to me, and set me special tasks in verse-writing, which he criticised with me when I had finished.  The first long poem I wrote of my own impulse was a description of the wonderful forms assumed by the stalactite formations in the Sophie Cave in Switzerland, which we had visited.  Unfortunately, the book containing it is lost, but I remember the following lines, referring to the industrious sprites which I imagined as the sculptors of the wondrous shapes: 

    “Priestly robes and a high altar the sprites created here,
     And in the rock-hewn cauldron poured the holy water clear,
     Within whose depths reflected, by the torches’ flickering rays,
     Beneath the surface glimmering my own face met my gaze;
     And when I thus beheld it, so small it seemed to me,
     That yonder stone-carved giant looked on with mocking glee. 
     Ay, laugh, if that’s your pleasure, Goliath huge and old,
     I soon shall fare forth singing, you still your place must hold.”

Another sub-teacher was also a favourite travelling-companion.  His name was Schaffner, and he, too, with his thick, black beard, was a handsome man.  To those pupils who, like my brother Ludo, were pursuing the study of the sciences, he, the mathematician of the institute, must have been an unusually clear and competent teacher.  I was under his charge only a short time, and his branch of knowledge was unfortunately my weak point.  Shortly before my departure he married a younger sister of Barop’s wife, and established an educational institution very similar to Keilhau at Gumperda, at Schwarza in Thuringia.