more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that
mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome!

"Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I was
among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me; the
young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." His
school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he says,
"mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the
deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any
broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannize over
the weak." He admits that though "perhaps in an unusual degree morally
courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; a
result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in
passionate seasons he was "incredibly nimble"), than to his "virtuous
principles:" "if it was disgraceful to be beaten," says he, "it was only a
shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways
at once, and in this important element of school-history, the war-element,
had little but sorrow." On the whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so
notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting
nourishment. "He wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed
_Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth
year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young
soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestum_)
under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or
at least of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree
and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and
ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and
not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to its
_breadth_?