The other boys were not up, but Barop, Middendorf, and several other teachers had risen to take leave of her.
A few more kisses, a wave of her handkerchief, and the carriage vanished in the village.

Ludo and I were alone, and I vividly remember the moment when we suddenly began to weep and sob as bitterly as if it had been an eternal farewell.

How often one human being becomes the sun of another's life! And it is most frequently the mother who plays this beautiful 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.