Hilda's earliest recollections did not go back beyond the time when she
had been brought to the Black Forest, and the singular simplicity of
her life made the past years seem strangely short. Children whose first
remembrances are full of new impressions, grow old quickly, while those
to whose perceptions little is offered grow up more slowly, and more
naturally. Other conditions being the same, these latter will be
calmer, healthier and more reasonable. The best horse is not the one
which is made to do the most work as a colt, though performing dogs
must learn their tricks as puppies if they are to learn them at all.
Much in life depends upon the truth of our first impressions, and as
this, in its turn, depends directly upon our ability to judge what we
see and hear, it is clear that children may be injured permanently if
too many things be brought within the sphere of their observation
before they have learned the uses of hearing and sight.

The grand solitudes of the forest, the imposing calm of nature when at
rest, the indescribable magnificence of the winter storms, had
furnished Hilda with her first deep impressions. That death, of which
her mother sometimes spoke, was the disappearance of all that lived
beneath the soft, silent snow. That mysterious resurrection of the dead
was nature's irresistible glad leap to meet the sun, as the noonday
shadows shortened day by day; that happy life to come was the far-off
summer, when the wind would sigh and whisper again among the branches
he had so rudely handled in his wrath, when all the air would smell of
the warm pines, when the mayflower would follow the hawthorn, and the
purple gentian take the mayflower's place, when the wild pea-blossom
would elbow the forest violet, and the clover and wild thyme and mint
would spring up thick and crisp and sweet for the dainty roebuck and
his doe. Hilda used to think that the souls of the blessed would at