The nearer Christmas came the busier were the workshops; and while usually there was no noise, they now resounded with Christmas songs, among which: "Up, up, my lads! why do ye sleep so long?
The night has passed, and day begins to dawn"; or our Berlin one: "Something will happen to-morrow, my children," were most frequently heard.
Christmas thoughts filled our hearts and minds.

Christmas at home had been so delightful that the first year I felt troubled by the idea that the festival must be celebrated away from my mother and without her.

But after we had shared the Keilhau holiday, and what preceded and followed it, we could not decide which was the most enjoyable.
Once our mother was present, though the cause of her coming was not exactly a joyous one.

About a week before the Christmas of my third year at Keilhau I went to the hayloft at dusk, and while scuffling with a companion the hay slipped with us and we both fell to the barn-floor.
My school-mate sustained an internal injury, while I escaped with the fracture of two bones, fortunately only of the left arm.

The severe suffering which has darkened so large a portion of my life has been attributed to this fracture, but the idea is probably incorrect; otherwise the consequences would have appeared earlier.
At first the arm was very painful; yet the thought of having lost the Christmas pleasures was almost worse.