" She insisted
upon truthfulness, treated boasting with fine ridicule, and was chary
of compliments. But when she did praise it was effective. She did me
many a good turn, and not until late in life, when I was past fifty,
did I meet another woman, this time an elderly lady, who exerted such
an educational influence upon me. Even now I am still taking lessons
and learn from people who are young enough to be my grandchildren.
Thus much about the good Schroeder girl, and after this digression in
memory of her I ask once more: "Well, how did we live?" I propose to
show how we lived, by means of a series of pictures, and in order to
introduce order and clarity into the description it will be well to
divide our life as we lived it into two halves, a summer life and a
winter life.
First, then, there was the summer life. About the middle of June we
regularly had the house full of visitors; for my mother, in accordance
with the old custom, still kept in touch with her relatives, a trait
which we children only very imperfectly inherited from her. But let it
be understood, she kept in touch with her relatives, not to derive
advantages from them, but to bestow advantages. She was incredibly
generous, and there were times when we, after we had grown up, asked
ourselves the question, which passion really threatened us most, the
gaming passion of our father, or the giving and presenting passion of
our mother. But we finally discovered the answer to the question.
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