As a young married man, I always anticipated as the greatest future
happiness taking pedestrian tours with my sons like the Keilhau ones;
but Fate ordained otherwise.

On our return to the institute we were received with great rejoicing;
and how much the different parties, now united, had to tell one another!

Study recommenced on the first of October, and during the leisure days
before that time the village church festival 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--