the more frightful, as it comes into the midst of a condition of repose.  A great many families, far and near, I had seen already, either overwhelmed in ruin or kept miserably hanging on the brink of it, by means of bankruptcies, divorces, seduced daughters, murders, house-robberies, poisonings; and, young as I was, I had often, in such cases, lent a hand for help and preservation.  For as my frankness awakened confidence; as my secrecy was proved; as my activity feared no sacrifice, and loved best to exert itself in the most dangerous affairs,—­I had often enough found opportunity to mediate, to hush up, to divert the lightning-flash, with every other assistance of the kind; in the course of which, as well in my own person as through others, I could not fail to come to the knowledge of many afflicting and humiliating facts.  To relieve myself I designed several plays, and wrote the arguments [Footnote:  “Exposition,” in a dramatic sense, properly means a statement of the events which take place before the action of the play commences.—­TRANS.] of most of them.  But since the intrigues were always obliged to be painful, and almost all these pieces threatened a tragical conclusion, I let them drop one after another.  “Die Mitschuldigen” ("The Accomplices”) is the only one that was finished, the cheerful and burlesque tone of which upon the gloomy family-ground appears as if accompanied by something causing anxiety; so that, on the whole, it is painful in representation, although it pleases in detached passages.  The illegal deeds, harshly expressed, wound the aesthetic and moral feeling, and the piece could therefore find no favor on the German stage; although the imitations of it, which steered clear of those rocks, were received with applause.

Both the above-mentioned pieces were, however, written from a more elevated point of view, without my having been aware of it.  They direct us to a considerate forbearance in casting moral imputations, and in somewhat harsh and coarse touches sportively express that most Christian maxim, Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.

Through this earnestness, which cast a gloom over my first pieces, I committed the mistake of neglecting very favorable materials which lay quite decidedly in my natural disposition.  In the midst of these serious, and, for a young man, fearful, experiences, was developed in me a reckless humor, which feels itself superior to the moment, and not only fears no danger, but rather wantonly courts it.  The reason of this lay in the exuberance of spirits in which the vigorous time of life so much delights, and which, if it manifests itself in a frolicsome way, causes much pleasure, both at the moment and in remembrance.  These things are so usual, that, in the vocabulary of our young university friends, they are called Suites; and, on account of the close similarity of signification, to say “play suites,” means just the same as to “play pranks.” [Footnote:  The real meaning of the passage is, that the idiom “Possen reissen” is used also with the university word “Suite,” so that one can say “Suiten reissen.”—­TRANS.]