The cottage is not provided with a cellar but the burgher-house is, though not indeed on account of the wine but of the potatoes and turnips. The poorer classes keep these out doors under a goodly pile of earth, which they raise above them in the autumn, and in winter, in time of hard frost, carefully cover over with straw or dung as well. Now to reach the cellar is really much more difficult than to climb to the attic, but where is the child who does not know how to satisfy this longing too in one way or another! He can go to the neighbors and hang on coaxingly to the maid's apron when she goes down to get something, or can even watch for the moment when the door is left open by mistake, and venture down on his own account. That is dangerous to be sure, for the door may be suddenly closed, and the sixteen-legged spiders, that crawl around the walls in the most hideous deformed shapes, as well as the trickling greenish water that gathers in the cavities intentionally left here and there, do not invite one to tarry long. But what does it matter? One has one's throat after all, and whoever screams lustily will be heard sooner or later. Now if the house itself suffices, under all circumstances, to make such an impression upon the child, how must the town strike him! When he is taken along by mother or father for the first time, he surely does not start to walk through the tangle of streets without a feeling of astonishment, and it is still less likely that he reaches home again without experiencing a sensation of giddiness. Nay, be perhaps brings back lasting typical conceptions of many objects, lasting in the sense that in after life they imperceptibly stretch and widen _ad infinitum_, but never allow themselves to be effaced; for the primitive impressions of things are indestructible and maintain themselves against all later ones, no matter how far these, in themselves, may surpass the old. For me too, then, it was a moment never to be forgotten, and one whose influence continues to be felt to the present day, when my mother took me with her for the first time on the evening walk which she indulged in on Sundays and holidays during the beautiful summer months. Good gracious, how large this Wesselburen was! Five-year old legs were nearly tired out before they had made the entire round! And what did one not meet on the road! The very names of the streets and squares sounded so puzzling and fantastic! "Now we are on the Lollard's Foot! That is White Meadow! This way goes over to Bell Mountain! There stands the Oak Nest!" The less apparent reason there was for these names, the more certain it seemed that they concealed some mystery! And then the objects themselves! The church whose pealing voice I had already heard so often; the graveyard with its dark trees and its crosses and tombstones; a very old house, in which a, "forty-eighter" had lived, and in the cellar of which a treasure was said to lie buried,