Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/66

 form of sport which I confess I no longer approve. In these lonely walks, when roe, fox, rabbit and now and then a wild boar rustled past me, I learned to love the woods and to feel the fascination of the forest-solitude, with its mysterious silence under the great leaf-roof and the whisper of the winds in the treetops. Soon I cared less for the bird-trapping than for the enjoyment of that woodland charm, and even on the way to and from school I learned to avoid the highroad and to strike into the shade on the right or left, wherever I could find a path. This love for the woods has never left me, and often in later life, at the aspect of a beautiful spreading landscape or of the open sea, I have asked myself whether what I had seen and felt in the forest did not surpass all else.

Summer was for us a period of festivities. Already in May occurred the kirmess in Lind, Ohm Peter's home, and late in the autumn the kirmess in Herrig, where Ohm Rey lived; and between those there were still a great many more kirmesses on farms of uncles and cousins. To most of them the whole family went, including the children. For such occasions a two-wheeled chaise was not sufficient. So the kirmess-car, an ordinary two-wheeled cart, covered with tent cloth and furnished with seats that consisted of wooden boards or bundles of straw, was put into requisition, and the number of human beings which the kirmess-car could take seemed beyond calculation. The horse, or when the roads were bad, the horses, shone in their most resplendent brass-ornaments, and the vehicle was decorated with green boughs and flowers. We found at the kirmess a crowd of boys and girls of our kin, who, like ourselves, during these festive days, enjoyed full freedom. At the midday-meals, at which the older guests usually spent from four to six hours, we children did not sit very long. Only when for the entertainment of the