Very delightful, too, were the picnics arranged between us and our friends at some of the beautiful spots around Dresden, for these excursions were always brightened by a certain artistic spirit and general good cheer.  I remember one such outing we arranged to Loschwitz, where we made a kind of gypsy camp, in which Carl Maria von Weber played his part in the character of cook.  At home we also had some music.  My sister Rosalie played the piano, and Clara was beginning to sing.  Of the various theatrical performances we organised in those early days, often after elaborate preparation, with the view of amusing ourselves on the birthdays of our elders, I can hardly remember one, save a parody on the romantic play of Sappho, by Grillparzer, in which I took part as one of the singers in the crowd that preceded Phaon’s triumphal car.  I endeavoured to revive these memories by means of a fine puppet show, which I found among the effects of my late stepfather, and for which he himself had painted some beautiful scenery.  It was my intention to surprise my people by means of a brilliant performance on this little stage.  After I had very clumsily made several puppets, and had provided them with a scanty wardrobe made from cuttings of material purloined from my sisters, I started to compose a chivalric drama, in which I proposed to rehearse my puppets.  When I had drafted the first scene, my sisters happened to discover the Ms. and literally laughed it to scorn, and, to my great annoyance, for a long time afterwards they chaffed me by repeating one particular sentence which I had put into the mouth of the heroine, and which was—­Ich hore schon den Ritter trapsen (’I hear his knightly footsteps falling’).  I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre, with which, even at this time, my family was in close touch.  Den Freischutz in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on account of its ghostly theme.  The emotions of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind.  From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised an enormous influence over me.  If I were left alone in a room for long, I remember that, when gazing at lifeless objects such as pieces of furniture, and concentrating my attention upon them, I would suddenly shriek out with fright, because they seemed to me alive.  Even during the latest years of my boyhood, not a night passed without my waking out of some ghostly dream and uttering the most frightful shrieks, which subsided only at the sound of some human voice.  The most severe rebuke or even chastisement seemed to me at those times no more than a blessed release.  None of my brothers or sisters would sleep anywhere near me.  They put me to sleep as far as possible away from the others, without thinking that my cries for help would only be louder and longer; but in the end they got used even to this nightly disturbance.