On market-days we never went out of doors at
all; and when the great annual fair-time came round, we drew down all the
front blinds and inhabited the rooms at the back.
As for the pleasures of childhood, I cannot say that I knew many of them in
those old Nuremberg days. Still I was not unhappy, nor even very dull. It
may be that, knowing nothing pleasanter, I was not even conscious of the
dreariness of the atmosphere I breathed. There was, at all events, a big
old-fashioned garden full of vegetables and cottage-flowers, at the back
of the house, in which I almost lived in Spring and Summer-time, and from
which I managed to extract a great deal of enjoyment; while for companions
and playmates I had old Karl, my aunt's gardener, a pigeon-house full of
pigeons, three staid elderly cats, and a tortoise. In the way of education
I fared scantily enough, learning just as little as it pleased my aunt to
teach me, and having that little presented to me under its driest and most
unattractive aspect.
Such was my life till I went away with my father in the Autumn of 1819. I
was then between nine and ten years of age--having lost my mother in
earliest infancy, and lived with aunt Martha Baur ever since I could
remember.
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