It was from this man, who was as fond of the beautiful as he was of children, that I first heard the names of the Greek heroes; and I remember that, after returning from one of these walks, I begged my mother to give us Schwab’s Tales of Classic Antiquity, which was owned by one of our companions.  We received it on Ludo’s birthday, in September, and how we listened when it was read to us—­how often we ourselves devoured its delightful contents!

I think the story of the Trojan War made a deeper impression upon me than even the Arabian Nights.  Homer’s heroes seemed like giant oaks, which far overtopped the little trees of the human wood.  They towered like glorious snow mountains above the little hills with which my childish imagination was already filled; and how often we played the Trojan War, and aspired to the honor of acting Hector, Achilles, or Ajax!

Of Herr Liebe, our teacher, I remember only three things.  On his daughter’s birthday he treated us to cake and wine, and we had to sing a festal song composed by himself, the refrain of which changed every year: 

       “Clara, with her fair hair thick,
        Clara, with her eyes like heaven,
        Can no more be called a chick,
        For to-day she’s really seven.”

I remember, too, how when she was eight years old we had to transpose the words a little to make the measure right.  Karl von Holtei had a more difficult task when, after the death of the Emperor Francis (Kaiser Franz), he had to fit the name of his successor, Ferdinand, into the beautiful “Gotterhalte Franz den Kaiser,” but he got cleverly out of the affair by making it “Gott erhalte Ferdinandum.”—­[God save the Emperor Francis.]

My second recollection is, that we assisted Herr Liebe, who was a churchwarden and had the honour of taking up the collection, to sort the money, and how it delighted us to hear him scold—­with good reason, too—­when we found among the silver and copper pieces—­as, alas! we almost always did—­counters and buttons from various articles of clothing.

In the third place, I must accuse Herr Liebe of having paid very little attention to our behaviour out of school.  Had he kept his eyes open, we might have been spared many a bruise and our garments many a rent; for, as often as we could manage it, instead of going directly home from the Schulgartenstrasse, we passed through the Potsdam Gate to the square beyond.  There lurked the enemy, and we sought them out.  The enemy were the pupils of a humbler grade of school who called us Privy Councillor’s youngsters, which most of us were; and we called them, in return, ‘Knoten,’ which in its original meaning was anything but an insult, coming as it does by a natural philological process from “Genote,” the older form of “Genosse” or comrade.

But to accuse us of arrogance on this account would be doing us wrong.  Children don’t fight regularly with those whom they despise.  Our “Knoten” was only a smart answer to their “Geheimrathsjoren.”  If they had called us boobies we should probably have called them blockheads, or something of that sort.