Before this praiseworthy deed we had, however, thrown snow at a young lady in wanton mischief.  I forgive our heedlessness as we were forgiven, but it is really a painful thought to me that we should have snowballed a poor insane man, well known in the Thiergarten and Lennestrasse, and who seriously imagined that he was made of glass.

I began to relate this, thinking of our uproarious laughter when the poor fellow cried out:  “Let me alone!  I shall break!  Don’t you hear me clink?” Then I stopped, for my heart aches when I reflect what terrible distress our thoughtlessness caused the unfortunate creature.  We were not bad-hearted children, and yet it occurred to none of us to put ourselves in the place of the whimpering man and think what he suffered.  But we could not do it.  A child is naturally egotistical, and unable in such a case to distinguish between what is amusing and what is sad.  Had the cry, “It hurts me!” once fallen from the trembling lips of the “glass man,” I think we should have thrown nothing more at him.

But our young hearts did not, under all circumstances, allow what amused us to cast kinder feelings into the shade.  The “man of glass” had a feminine ‘pendant’ in the “crazy Frau Councillor with the velvet envelope.”  This was a name she herself had given to a threadbare little velvet cloak, when some naughty boys—­were we among them?—­were snowballing her, and she besought us not to injure her velvet envelope.  But when there was ice on the ground and one of the boys was trying to get her on to a slide, Ludo and I interfered and prevented it.  Naturally, there was a good fight in consequence, but I am glad of it to this day.

CHAPTER VII.

What A Berlin child enjoyed on the spree and at his grandmother’s in Dresden.

In the summer we were all frequently taken to the new Zoological Garden, where we were especially delighted with the drollery of the monkeys.  Even then I felt a certain pity for the deer and does in confinement, and for the wild beasts in their cages, and this so grew upon me that many a visit to a zoological garden has been spoiled by it.  Once in Keilhau I caught a fawn in the wood and was delighted with my beautiful prize.  I meant to bring it up with our rabbits, and had already carried it quite a distance, when suddenly I began to be sorry for it, and thought how its mother would grieve, upon which I took it back to the spot where I had found it and returned to the institution as fast as I could, but said nothing at first about my “stupidity,” for I was ashamed of it.