own in his
own life, and what more can a Nuremberg child have to say of her early
growth and school life than ever another. The blades in one field and the
trees in one wood share the same lot without any favour. It is true that
in many ways I was unlike other children; for my cousin Maud would often
say that I would not abide rule as beseems a maid, and Herdegen's lament
that I was not born a boy still sounds in my ears when I call to mind our
wild games. Any one who knows the window on the first floor, at the back
of our house, from which I would jump into the courtyard to do as my
brothers did, would be fairly frightened, and think it a wonder that I
came out of it with whole bones; but yet I was not always minded to riot
with the boys, and from my tenderest years I was a very thoughtful little
maid. But there were things; in my young life very apt to sharpen my
wits.

We Schoppers are nearly allied with every worshipful family in the town,
or of a rank to sit in the council and bear a coat of arms; these being,
in fact, in Nuremberg, the class answering to the families of the
Signoria in Venice, whose names are enrolled in the Libro d'Oro. What the
Barberighi, the Foscari, the Grimaldi, the Giustiniani and the like, are
there, the families of Stromer, Behaim, Im Hoff, Tucher, Kresz,
Baumgartner, Pfinzing, Pukheimer, Holzschuher, and so forth, are with us;
and the Schoppers certainly do not rank lowest on the list. We who hold
ourselves entitled to bear arms, to ride in tournaments, and take office
in the Church, and who have a right to call ourselves nobles and
patricians, are all more or less kith and kin. Wherever in Nuremberg
there was a fine house we could find there an uncle and aunt, cousins and
kinsmen, or at least godparents, and good friends of our deceased
parents. Wherever one of them might chance to meet us, even if it were in
the street, he would say: "Poor little orphans! God be good to the
fatherless!" and tears would sparkle in the eyes of many a kindhearted
woman. Even the gentlemen of the Council--for most of the elders of our
friends were members of it--would stroke my fair hair and look at me as
pitifully as though I were some poor sinner for whom there could be no
mercy in the eyes of the judges of a court of justice.

Why was it that men deemed me so unfortunate when I knew no sorrow and my
heart was as gay as a singing bird? I could not ask cousin Maud, for she
was sorely troubled if I had bu