the midst of the thickest woods and were performing Paradise and the Fall
of Man, as they had probably just been taught in their religious lesson.
For the expulsion of Adam and our universal mother Eve, the angel--in
this case there were two of them--used, instead of the flaming sword,
stout hazel rods, with which they performed their part of warders so
overzealously that a quarrel followed, which we older ones stopped.

Thus many bands of pupils invented games of their own, but, thank Heaven,
rarely devised such absurdities. Our later Homeric battles any teacher
would have witnessed with pleasure. Froebel would have greeted them as
signs of creative imagination and "individual life" in the boys.




CHAPTER XV.

SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES

Wholly unlike these, genuinely and solely a product of Keilhau, was the
great battle-game which we called Bergwacht, one of my brightest memories
of those years.

Long preparations were needed, and these, too, were delightful.

On the wooded plain at the summit of the Kolm, a mountain which belonged
mainly to the institute, war was waged during the summer every Saturday
evening until far into the night, whenever the weather was fine, which
does not happen too often in Thuringia.