ottom of the dish.

The swaggering, parasitic brothers-in-law were extremely unwelcome to
the housewife, for she did not bear the burden of existence as
light-heartedly as her husband did, and she knew they would not leave
again so long as there was a piece of bacon hanging in the chimney; but
she contented herself with complaining in private, and at times pouring
out her heart to my mother. She, too, was fond of us children, and in
summer, as often as she could, she presented us with red and white
currants, which she, in turn, begged from a stingy friend. I, however,
avoided her too close proximity, for she made it her business to cut my
nails as often as it was necessary, and I detested this on account of
the prickly feeling in the nerve ends which it caused. She read the
Bible diligently, and long before I could read it myself I received from
her my first strong, nay terrible, impression from this gloomy book,
when she read to me out of Jeremiah the horrible passage in which the
angry prophet foretells that in the time of great distress the mothers
would slaughter their own children and eat them. I can remember yet with
what terror this passage inspired me when I heard it, perhaps because I
did not know whether it referred to the past or to the future, to
Jerusalem or to Wesselburen, and because I was myself a child and had a
mother.

IV

In my fourth year I was sent to a primary-school. It was kept by an old
spinster, Susanna by name, of tall and masculine stature, with friendly
blue eyes, which shone forth like candles from out a pale grayish face.
We children were planted around the walls of the spacious chamber which
served as school-room, and which was rather dark. The boys were on one
side, the girls on the other; Susanna's table, piled high with school
books, stood in the middle, and she herself, a white clay pipe in her
mouth and a cup of tea before her, sat behind it in an ancestral arm
chair which inspired no little respect. Before her lay a long ruler,
which, however, was not used for drawing lines but for chastising us
when we were no longer to be held in check by frowning and clearing of
the throat. A cornucopia full of currants, destined as a reward for
extraordinary virtues, lay beside it. The raps, however, fell more
regularly than the currants; indeed, the cornucopia, sparingly as
Susanna made use of the contents, was sometimes completely empty; we
thus learned Kant's categorical imperative suffi