Children don't fight regularly with those whom they despise. Our
"Knoten" was only a smart answer to their "Geheimrathsjoren." If they
had called us boobies we should probably have called them blockheads, or
something of that sort.

This troop, which was not over-well-dressed even before the beginning of
the conflict, was led by some boys whose father kept a so-called flower
cellar--that is, a basement shop for plants, wreaths, etc.--at the head
of Leipzigerstrasse. They often sought us out, but when they did not we
enticed them from their cellar by a particular sort of call, and as soon
as they appeared we all slipped into some courtyard, where a battle
speedily raged, in which our school knapsacks served as weapons of
offence and defence. When I got into a passion I was as wild as a
fighting cock, and even quiet Ludo could deal hard blows; and I can say
the same of most of the "Geheimrathsjoren" and "Knoten." It was not
often that any decided success attended the fight, for the janitor or
some inhabitant of the house usually interfered and brought it all to an
untimely end. I remember still how a fat woman, probably a cook, seized
me by the collar and pushed me out into the street, crying: "Fie! fie!
such young gentlemen ought to be ashamed of themselves."

Hegel, however, whose influence at that time was still great in the
learned circles of Berlin, had called shame "anger against what is
natural," and we liked what was natural. So the battles with the
"Knoten" were continued until the Berlin revolution called forth more
serious struggles, and our mother sent us away to Keilhau.

Our sisters went to school also, a school kept by Fraulein Sollmann in
the Dorotheenstrasse. And yet we had a tutor, I do not really know why.
Whether our mother had heard of the fights, and recognized the