Germans; they sang and were merry fellows, and many a coarse joke of
theirs filled the place with loud laughter. I heard them, and I there
learned that, to the innocent ears of a child, the impure remains very
unintelligible. It took no hold upon my heart. I was possessed at that
time of a remarkably beautiful and high soprano voice, and I knew it;
because when I sang in my parents' little garden, the people in the
street stood and listened, and the fine folks in the garden of the
states-councillor, which adjoined ours, listened at the fence. When,
therefore, the people at the manufactory asked me whether I could sing,
I immediately began, and all the looms stood still: all the journeymen
listened to me. I had to sing again and again, whilst the other boys
had my work given them to do. I now told them that I also could act
plays, and that I knew whole scenes of Holberg and Shakspeare.
Everybody liked me; and in this way, the first days in the manufactory
passed on very merrily. One day, however, when I was in my best singing
vein, and everybody spoke of the extraordinary brilliancy of my voice,
one of the journeymen said that I was a girl, and not a boy. He seized
hold of me. I cried and screamed. The other journeymen thought it very
amusing, and held me fast by my arms and legs. I screamed aloud, and
was as much ashamed as a girl; and then, darting from them, rushed home
to my mother, who immediately promised me that I should never go there
again.

I again visited Madame Bunkeflod, for whose birthday I invented and
made a white silk pincushion. I also made an acquaintance with another
old clergyman's widow in the neighborhood. She permitted me to read
aloud to her the works which she had from the circulating library. One
of them began with these words: "It was a tempestuous night; the rain
beat against the window-panes."