even grandfather's stick can neigh, and become a horse, with head,
legs and tail. With some children, this knowledge slips away later
than with others, and people say of these, that they are very
backward, that they remain children fearfully long.--People say so
many things!

"Come with me, little Rudy, out on the roof!" was about the first
thing that the cat said, that Rudy understood. "It is all imagination
about falling; one does not fall, when one does not fear to do so.
Come, place your one paw so, and your other so! Take care of your
fore-paws! Look sharp with your eyes, and give suppleness to your
limbs! If there be a hole, jump, hold fast, that's the way I do!"

And Rudy did so, and that was the reason that he sat out on the roof
with the cat so often; he sat with her in the tree-tops, yes, he sat
on the edge of the rocks, where the cats could not come. "Higher,
higher!" said the trees and bushes. "See, how we climb! how high we
go, how firm we hold on, even on the outermost peaks of the rocks!"

And Rudy went generally on the mountain before the sun rose, and then
he got his morning drink, the fresh, strengthening mountain air, the
drink, that our Lord only can prepare, and men can read its recipe,
and thus it stands written: "the fresh scent of the herbs of the
mountains and the mint and thyme of the valleys."

All heaviness is imbibed by the hanging clouds, and the wind sends it
out like grape-shot into the fir-woods; the fragrant breeze becomes
perfume, light and fresh and ever fresher--that was Rudy's morning
drink.