selves
for ever on their minds, and when they are men and women come crowding
back with surprising and often painful distinctness, and away frisk all
the cherished little illusions in flocks.

I had an awful reverence for my grandfather. He never petted, and he
often frowned, and such people are generally reverenced. Besides, he was
a just man, everybody said; a just man who might have been a great man
if he had chosen, and risen to almost any pinnacle of worldly glory.
That he had not so chosen was held to be a convincing proof of his
greatness; for he was plainly too great to be great in the vulgar sense,
and shrouded himself in the dignity of privacy and potentialities. This,
at least, as time passed and he still did nothing, was the belief of the
simple people around. People must believe in somebody, and having pinned
their faith on my grandfather in the promising years that lie round
thirty, it was more convenient to let it remain there. He pervaded
our family life till my sixth year, and saw to it that we all behaved
ourselves, and then he died, and we were glad that he should be in
heaven. He was a good German (and when Germans are good they are very
good) who kept the commandments, voted for the Government, grew prize
potatoes and bred innumerable sheep, drove to Berlin once a year with
the wool in a procession of waggons behind him and sold it at the annual
Wollmarkt, rioted soberly for a few days there, and then carried most
of the proceeds home, hunted as often as possible, helped his friends,
punished his children, read his Bible, said his prayers, and was
genuinely astonished when his wife had the affectation to die of a
broken heart. I cannot pretend to explain this conduct. She ought, of
course, to have been happy in the possession of so good a man; but good
men are sometimes oppressive, and to have one in the house with you
and to live in the daily glare of his goodness must be a tremendous
business. After bearing him seven sons and three daughters, therefore,
my grandmother died in the way described, and afforded, said my
grandfather, another and a very curious proof of the impossibility
of ever being sure of your ground with women. The incident faded more
quickly from his mind than it might otherwise have done for its having
occurred simultaneously with the production of a new kind of potato, of
which he was justly proud. He called it Trost in Trauer, and quoted the
text of Scripture Auge um Auge, Zabn