I never saw such masses of the largest flakes, and just outside the village where the girls were to turn back the horses could barely force their way through the white mass which transformed the whole landscape into a single snowy coverlet.
The clouds seemed inexhaustible, and when the time for departure came the driver declared that it would be impossible to go back to Cassel.
The girls, who, exhilarated by the swift movement through the cold, bracing air, had entered into our merriment, grew more and more anxious.
Our well-meant efforts to comfort them were rejected; they were angry with us for placing them in such an unpleasant position.
The lamps were lighted when I thought of taking the landlady into our confidence and asking her to care for the poor frightened children.

She was a kind, sensible woman, and though she at first exclaimed over their heedlessness, she addressed them with maternal tenderness and showed them to the room they were to occupy.
They came down again at supper reassured, and we ate the rustic meal together very merrily.

One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance, and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the road would not be passable before noon.
Yet, gay as our companions were at breakfast, the thought of entertaining them longer seemed irksome, and as the church bells were ringing some one proposed that we should go.
A path had been shovelled, and we were soon seated in the country church.

The pastor, a fine-looking man of middle age, entered, and though I no longer remember his text, I recollect perfectly that he spoke of the temptations which threaten to lure us from the right paths and the means of resisting them.
One of the most effectual, he said, was the remembrance of those to whom we owe love and respect.

I thought of my mother and blind old Langethal, of Tzschirner, and of Herbert Pernice, and, dissatisfied with myself, resolved to do in the future not only what was seemly, but what the duty of entering more deeply into the science which I had chosen required.
The childish faith which Feuerbach's teachings had threatened to destroy seemed to gaze loyally at me with my mother's eyes.