part.

Yet the anguish of parting did not last very long, and whoever had
watched the boys playing ball an hour later would have heard our voices
among the merriest. Afterwards we rarely had attacks of homesickness,
there were so many new things in Keilhau, and even familiar objects
seemed changed in form and purpose.

From the city we were in every sense transferred to the woods.

True, we had grown up in the beautiful park of the Thiergarten, but only
on its edge; to live in and with Nature, "become one with her," as
Middendorf said, we had not learned.

I once read in a novel by Jensen, as a well-attested fact, that during an
inquiry made in a charity school in the capital a considerable number of
the pupils had never seen a butterfly or a sunset. We were certainly not
to be classed among such children. But our intercourse with Nature had
been limited to formal visits which we were permitted to pay the august
lady at stated intervals. In Keilhau she became a familiar friend, and
we therefore were soon initiated into many of her secrets; for none
seemed to be withheld from our Middendorf and Barop, whom duty and
inclination alike prompted to sharpen our ears also for her language.

The Keilhau games and walks usually led up the mountains or into the
forest, and here the older pupils acted as teachers, but not in any
pedagogical way. Their own interest in whatever was worthy of note in
Nature was so keen that they could not help pointing it out to their less
experienced companions.