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in summer I went there barefoot and in my frieze smock. In spring father often had to take the cattle long distances to find hay for them, and paid high prices for it.

2. My boyhood years:

At that time I cared not a straw for all this. Indeed I knew nothing about it, and was as carefree a lad as ever was. Every day I thought three times about food and that was all. So long as father spared me tedious or strenuous work, or if I could escape from it for a while, I was content. In summer I gambolled in the pasture and by the brooks, plucking grasses and flowers to make bunches as big as a broom-head, or chasing the birds among the bushes, or scrambling up trees to look for their nests. Sometimes I collected piles of snail-shells or coloured pebbles. If I was tired, I would sit down in the sunshine and carve toy fence-posts, then birds and even cows, to each of which I gave a name. I would fence in a meadow for them, build them stalls and give them fodder, then I would sell one or other of them off and make others yet more fine. At other times I built toy ovens and hearths, and cooked a tasty brew of sand and clay. In winter I would roll in the snow and slide down the banks, sometimes on a piece of broken earthenware and sometimes just on my backside. So I took what sport the season offered, until father whistled on his fingers for me, or anything else made me notice that time was passing.

I had as yet no playmates, but at school I made the acquaintance of a boy who often visited me and offered to sell me all manner of trifles, because he knew that from time to time I received half a batzen as pocket-money. Once I bought from him news of a bird's nest in a mousehole. I went to look at it every day. One day, however, the young ones had gone, and this vexed me more than if all my father's cows had been stolen.

On another occasion, it was on a Sunday, he brought with him some gunpowder - until then I had never heard of the hellish stuff - and taught me how to make fireworks. One evening I had an idea: I would shoot with it too! To this end I took an old piece of iron pump-spout, stopped up one end of it with clay, and made a firing-pan, also of clay, in which I placed the powder, and set burning tinder to it. When it did not go off at once I blew on it - Bang! Fire and clay exploded in my face. (This happened at the back of the house, for I was well aware that what I was doing was wrong.) Along came my mother, who had heard the explosion. I was in a pitiful state. Amid lamentations she helped me to my feet. Father, too, had seen the flash from the pasture above, for it was nearly dark. When he came home and found me in bed, and learnt the cause, he was furiously angry. But his wrath was soon quieted when he saw my scorched face. I was in great pain, but endured it in silence for fear lest I should get a beating over and above it, and I knew that I had well deserved it. However, my father felt, indeed, that I had had punishment enough.

For a fortnight I saw nothing and not a single hair of my brows and eyelashes was left. Everyone was very anxious about my sight; but at last, from day to day it gradually grew better. Now, as soon as I was fully restored to health, father treated me as Pharaoh did the Israelites, [Exodus I, v 13-4] making me work very hard, judging that this was the best way to keep me out of mischief. In this he was right, but at the time I could not see the matter in that light, and thought him a tyrant when he made me rise from sleep early in the morning and drove me to my work. I thought that there was no need for work anyway, as the cows would give their milk of their own accord.

13. Description of our property at Dreyschlatt:

Dreyschlatt is a wild, remote place [...]; in the old days it was a cattle-range. The summer is always short here and the winter long, in winter there are huge snowfalls which often lie several fathoms deep as late as the month of May. Once on Whitsun Eve we had to clear a path with a shovel as we brought home a cow that we had just acquired. In the shortest days we had the sunlight for only an hour and a quarter. Here rises our stream, the Rotenbach [...]; it is the most

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