Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/32

 and seated themselves on benches around the great hearth in the hall, to tell stories and to indulge in what passed with them for wit. In the summer evenings they sat around in the courtyard, or leaned upon the bridge-railing, chatting or singing. Two or three times during the year, in accordance with ancient custom, all assembled in the folk-hall for a romp; blindman's bluff and other games were played, and there was no end to the tumbling and pulling, shrieking and laughing, until, at a fixed hour, the foreman stalked in, like stern fate, and sent them all off to bed.

Such were the surroundings in which I first became aware of existence, and in which the earliest years of my childhood were passed. It is remarkable how memory can hark back to the time of the first development of consciousness. So I have still before me a picture of myself, when I could not have been much more than two years of age. On the road, bordered with horse-chestnut trees, leading from the castle to the village, there was a pit enclosed in masonry, in which the count kept some wild boars. I can see myself distinctly, a small child in petticoats and a little white bonnet on my head, sitting upon the wall, looking down with a mixed feeling of delight and terror upon the great black monsters, with their terrible white tusks. As I sat there, an old man with shining buttons on his coat approached, talked with the woman who had charge of me, and gave me some cake. My mother, to whom in later life I recalled this, told me that the man wearing the castle livery must have been old Bernhard, the count's body-servant, who died when I was in my third year.

Another picture I see before me: A large flock of sheep, with the lambs, returning home from the pasture in the dusk of the evening, bleating and crowding with impatient haste through the gateway into the court. Sitting on my mother's arm, I watched them; the old shepherd approaches to allow me