asium,' writes he, 'my evil days began. Well do I
still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full
of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of
the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and
_Schuldthurm_ (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in
to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some
human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised
creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the
Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering
Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere
does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him
on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly
and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in
that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and
epitome!

'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I
was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards
me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and
alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 'They were
Boys,' he says, 'mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude
Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the
duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on
all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits, that though
'perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded ill in
battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear,
owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he
was 'incredibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles': 'if it
was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, 'it was only a shade less
disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at
once, and in this important element of school-history, the
war-element, had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent
'Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdroeckh's childhood, is here visibly
enough again getting nourishment. 'He wept often; indeed to such a
degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which
epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite
unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth into
fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestuem_) under which the
boldest quailed, assert tha