was celebrated under the
village linden, with plenty of cakes, and a dance of the peasants, in
which we older ones took part. But we were obliged to devote several
hours of every day to describing our journey for our relatives at home.
Each one filled a large book, which was to be neatly written. The
exercise afforded better practice in describing personal experiences than
a dozen essays which had been previously read with the teacher.

CHAPTER XVI.

AUTUMN, WINTER, EASTER AND DEPARTURE

Autumn had come, and this season of the year, which afterwards was to be
the most fraught with suffering, at that time seemed perhaps the
pleasantest; for none afforded a better opportunity for wrestling and
playing. It brought delicious fruit, and never was the fire lighted more
frequently on the hearth in the plots of ground assigned to the
pupils--baking and boiling were pleasant during the cool afternoons.

No month seemed to us so cheery as October. During its course the apples
and pears were gathered, and an old privilege allowed the pupils "to
glean"--that is, to claim the fruit left on the trees. This tested the
keenness of our young eyes, but it sometimes happened that we confounded
trees still untouched with those which had been harvested. "Nitimur in
vetitum semper cupimusque negata,"--[The forbidden charms, and the
unexpected lures us.]--is an excellent saying of Ovid, whose truth, when
he tested it in person, was the cause of his exile. It sometimes brought
us into conflict with the owners of the trees, and it was only natural
that "Froebel's youngsters" often excited the peasants' ire.

Gellert, it is true, has sung:

"Enjoy what the Lord has granted,
Grieve not for aught withheld."

but the popular saying is, "Forbidden fruit tastes sweetest," and the
proverb was right in regard to us Keilhau boys.

Whatever fruit is meant in the story related in Genesis of the fall of
man, none could make it clearer to German children than the apple. The
Keilhau ones were kept in a cellar, and through the opening we thrust a
pole to which the blade of a rapier was fastened. This sometimes brought
us up four or five apples at once, which hung on the blade like the flock
of ducks that Baron Munchausen's musket pierced with the ramrod.

We were all honest boys, yet not one, not even the sons of the heads of
the institute, ever thought of blaming or checking the zest for this
appropriation of other people