seems new; but it profits not to tell of what every one has known in his
own life, and what more can a Nuremberg child have to say of her early
growth and school life than ever another. The blades in one field and
the trees in one wood share the same lot without any favour. It is true
that in many ways I was unlike other children; for my cousin Maud would
often say that I would not abide rule as beseems a maid, and Herdegen's
lament that I was not born a boy still sounds in my ears when I call to
mind our wild games. Any one who knows the window on the first floor,
at the back of our house, from which I would jump into the courtyard to
do as my brothers did, would be fairly frightened, and think it a wonder
that I came out of it with whole bones; but yet I was not always minded
to riot with the boys, and from my tenderest years I was a very
thoughtful little maid. But there were things; in my young life very apt
to sharpen my wits.

We Schoppers are nearly allied with every worshipful family in the town,
or of a rank to sit in the council and bear a coat of arms; these being,
in fact, in Nuremberg, the class answering to the families of the
Signoria in Venice, whose names are enrolled in the Libro d'Oro. What
the Barberighi, the Foscari, the Grimaldi, the Giustiniani and the like,
are there, the families of Stromer, Behaim, Im Hoff, Tucher, Kresz,
Baumgartner, Pfinzing, Pukheimer, Holzschuher, and so forth, are with us;
and the Schoppers certainly do not rank lowest on the list. We who hold
ourselves entitled to bear arms, to ride in tournaments, and take office
in the Church, and who have a right to call ourselves nobles and
patricians, are all more or less kith and kin. Wherever in Nuremberg
there was a fine house we could find there an uncle and aunt, cousins
and kinsmen, or at least godparents, and good friends of our deceased
parents. Wherever one of them might chance to meet us, even if it were
in the street, he would say: "Poor little orphans! God be good to the