INTERCOURSE WITH THE LOWER CLASSES
Christinenberg, so we will call the house, had a still more lonely situation than that in the Norrtullsgata.[1] The Grabergsgata had no pavement. Often for hours at a time one never saw more than a single pedestrian in it, and the noise of a passing cart was an event which brought people to their windows. The house stood in a courtyard with many trees, and resembled a country parsonage. It was surrounded by gardens and tobacco plantations; extensive fields with ponds stretched away to Sabbatsberg. But their father rented no land here, so that the boys spent their time in loafing about. Their playfellows now consisted of the children of poorer people, such as the miller's and the milkman's. Their chief playground was the hill on which the mill stood, and the wings of the windmill were their playthings.
The Jacob School was attended by the poorer class of children. Here John came in contact with the lower orders. The boys were ill dressed; they had sores on their noses, ugly features, and smelt bad. His own leather breeches and greased boots produced no bad effect here. In these surroundings, which pleased him, he felt more at his ease. He could be on more confidential terms with these boys than with the proud ones in the Clara School. But many of these children were very good at their lessons, and the genius of the school was a peasant boy. At the same time there were so-called "louts" in the lower classes, and these generally did not get beyond the second class. He was now in the third, and did not come into contact with them, nor did they with those in the higher classes. These boys worked out of school, had black hands, and were as old as fourteen or fifteen. Many of them were employed during the summer on the brig Carl Johann, and then appeared in autumn with tarry trousers, belts, and knives. They fought with chimney-sweeps and tobacco-binders, took drams, and visited restaurants and coffee-houses. These boys were liable to ceaseless examinations and expulsions and were generally regarded, but with great injustice, as a bad lot. Many of them grew up to be respectable citizens, and one who had served on the "louts' brig" finally became an officer of the Guard. He never ventured to talk of his sea voyages, but said that he used to shudder when he led the watch to relieve guard at Nybrohanm, and saw the notorious brig lying there.
One day John met a former school-fellow from the Clara School, and tried to avoid him. But the latter came directly towards him, and asked him what school he was attending. "Ah, yes," he said, on being told, "you are going to the louts' school."
John felt that he had come down, but he had himself wished it. He did not stand above his companions, but felt himself at home with them, on friendly terms, and more comfortable than in the Clara School, for here there was no pressure on him from above. He himself did not wish to climb up and press down others, but he suffered himself from being pressed down. He himself did not wish to ascend, but he felt a need that there should be none above him. But it annoyed him to feel that his old school-fellows thought that he had gone down. When at gymnastic displays he appeared among the grimy-looking troop of the Jacobites, and met the bright files of the Clara School in their handsome uniforms and clean faces, then he was conscious of a class difference, and when from the opposite camp the word "louts" was heard, then there was war in the air. The two schools fought sometimes, but John took no part in these encounters. He did not wish to see his old friends, and to show how he had come down.
The examination day in the Jacob School made a very different impression from that in the Clara School. Artisans, poorly clad old women, restaurant-keepers dressed up for the occasion, coach-men, and publicans formed the audience. And the speech of the school inspector was quite other than the flowery one of the Archbishop. He read out the names of the idle and the stupid, scolded the parents because their children came too late or did not turn up at all, and the hall reechoed the sobs of poor mothers who were probably not at all to blame for the easily explained non-attendances, and who in their simplicity believed that they had bad sons. It was always the well-to-do citizens' sons who had had the leisure to devote themselves exclusively to their tasks, who were now greeted as patterns of virtue.
In the moral teaching which the boy received he heard nothing of his rights, only of his duties. Everything he was taught to regard as a favour; he lived by favour, ate by favour, and went as a favour to school. And in this poor children's school more and more was demanded of them. It was demanded from them, for instance, that they should have untorn clothes—but from whence were they to get them?
Remarks were made upon their hands because they had been blackened by contact with tar and pitch. There was demanded of them attention, good morals, politeness, i.e., mere impossibilities. The æsthetic susceptibilities of the teachers often led them to commit acts of injustice. Near John sat a boy whose hair was never combed, who had a sore under his nose, and an evil-smelling flux from his ears. His hands were dirty, his clothes spotted and torn. He rarely knew his lessons, and was scolded and caned on the palms of his hands. One day a school-fellow accused him of bringing vermin into the class. He was then made to sit apart in a special place. He wept bitterly, ah! so bitterly, and then kept away from school.
John was sent to look him up at his house. He lived in the Undertakers' street. The painter's family lived with the grandmother and many small children in one room. When John went there he found George, the boy in question, holding on his knee, a little sister, who screamed violently. The grandmother carried a little one on her arm. The father and mother were away at work. In this room, which no one had time to clean, and which could not be cleaned, there was a smell of sulphur fumes from the coals and from the uncleanliness of the children. Here the clothes were dried, food was cooked, oil-colours were rubbed, putty was kneaded. Here were laid bare the grounds of George's immorality. "But," perhaps a moralist may object, "one is never so poor that one cannot keep oneself clean and tidy." Sancta simplicitas! As if to pay for sewing (when there was anything whole to sew), soap, clothes-washing, and time cost nothing. Complete cleanliness and tidiness is the highest point to which the poor can attain; George could not, and was therefore cast out.
Some younger moralists believe they have made the discovery that the lower classes are more immoral than the higher. By "immoral" they mean that they do not keep social contracts so well as the upper classes. That is a mistake, if not something worse. In all cases, in which the lower classes are not compelled by necessity, they are more conscientious than the upper ones. They are more merciful towards their fellows, gentler to children, and especially more patient. How long have they allowed their toil to be exploited by the upper classes, till at last they begin to be impatient!
Moreover, the social laws have been kept as long as possible in a state of instability and uncertainty. Why are they not clearly defined and printed like civil and divine laws? Perhaps because an honestly written moral law would have to take some cognizance of rights as well as duties.
John's revolt against the school-teaching increased. At home he learned all he could, but he neglected the school-lessons. The principal subjects taught in the school were now Latin and Greek, but the method of teaching was absurd. Half a year was spent in explaining a campaign in Cornelius. The teacher had a special method of confusing the subject by making the scholar analyse the "grammatical construction" of the sentence. But he never explained what this meant. It consisted in reading the words of the text in a certain order, but he did not say in which. It did not agree with the Swedish translation, and when John had tried to grasp the connection, but failed, he preferred to be silent. He was obstinate, and when he was called upon to explain something he was silent, even when he knew his lesson. For as soon as he began to read, he was assailed with a storm of reproaches for the accent he put on the words, the pace at which he read, his voice, everything.
"Cannot you, do not you understand?" the teacher shouted, beside himself.
The boy was silent, and looked at the pedant contemptuously.
"Are you dumb?"
He remained silent. He was too old to be beaten; besides, this form of punishment was gradually being disused. He was therefore told to sit down.
He could translate the text into Swedish, but not in the way the teacher wished. That the teacher only permitted one way of translating seemed to him silly. He had already rushed through Cornelius in a few weeks, and this deliberate, unreasonable crawling when one could run, depressed him. He saw no sense in it.
The same kind of thing happened in the history lessons. "Now, John," the teacher would say, "tell me what you know about Gustav I."
The boy stands up, and his vagrant thoughts express themselves as follows: "What I know about Gustav I. Oh! a good deal. But I knew that when I was in the lowest class (he is now in the fourth), and the master knows it too. What is the good of repeating it all again?"
"Well! is that all you know?"
He had not said a word about Gustav I., and his school-fellows laughed. Now he felt angry, and tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. How should he begin? Gustav was born at Lindholm, in the province of Roslagen. Yes, but he and the teacher knew that long ago. How stupid to oblige him to repeat it.
"Ah, well!" continues the teacher, "you don't know your lesson, you know nothing of Gustav I." Now he opens his mouth, and says curtly and decidedly: "Yes, I know his history well."
"If you do, why don't you answer?"
The master's question seems to him a very stupid one, and now he will not answer. He drives away all thoughts about Gustav I. and forces himself to think of other things, the maps on the wall, the lamp hanging from the ceiling. He pretends to be deaf.
"Sit down, you don't know your lesson," says the master. He sits down, and lets his thoughts wander where they will, after he has settled in his own mind that the master has told a falsehood.
In this there was a kind of aphasia, an incapability or unwillingness to speak, which followed him for a long time through life till the reaction set in in the form of garrulousness, of incapacity to shut one's mouth, of an impulse to speak whatever came into his mind. He felt attracted to the natural sciences, and during the hour when the teacher showed coloured pictures of plants and trees the gloomy class-room seemed to be lighted up; and when the teacher read out of Nilsson's Lectures on Animal Life, he listened and impressed all on his memory. But his father observed that he was backward in his other subjects, especially in Latin. Still, John had to learn Latin and Greek. Why? He was destined for a scholar's career. His father made inquiries into the matter. After hearing from the teacher of Latin that the latter regarded his son as an idiot, his amour propre must have been hurt, for he determined to send his son to a private school, where more practical methods of instruction were employed. Indeed, he was so annoyed that he went so far in private as to praise John's intelligence and to say some severe things regarding his teacher.
Meanwhile, contact with the lower classes had aroused in the boy a decided dislike to the higher ones. In the Jacob School a democratic spirit prevailed, at any rate among those of the same age. None of them avoided each other's society except from feelings of personal dislike. In the Clara School, on the other hand, there were marked distinctions of class and birth. Though in the Jacob School the possession of money might have formed an aristocratic class, as a matter of fact none of them were rich. Those who were obviously poor were treated by their companions sympathetically without condescension, although the beribboned school inspector and the academically educated teacher showed their aversion to them.
John felt himself identified and friendly with his school-fellows; he sympathised with them, but was reserved towards those of the higher class. He avoided the main thoroughfares, and always went through the empty Hollandergata or the poverty stricken Badstugata. But his school-fellows' influence made him despise the peasants who lived here. That was the aristocratism of town-people, with which even the meanest and poorest city children are imbued.
These angular figures in grey coats which swayed about on milk-carts or hay-waggons were regarded as fair butts for jests, as inferior beings whom to snowball was no injustice. To mount behind on their sledges was regarded as the boys' inherent privilege. A standing joke was to shout to them that their waggon-wheels were going round, and to make them get down to contemplate the wonder.
But how should children, who see only the motley confusion of society, where the heaviest sinks and the lightest lies on the top, avoid regarding that which sinks as the worse of the two? Some say we are all aristocrats by instinct. That is partly true, but it is none the less an evil tendency, and we should avoid giving way to it. The lower classes are really more democratic than the higher ones, for they do not want to mount up to them, but only to attain to a certain level; whence the assertion is commonly made that they wish to elevate themselves.
Since there was now no longer physical work to do at home, John lived exclusively an inner, unpractical life of imagination. He read everything which fell into his hands.
On Wednesday or Saturday afternoon the eleven-year-old boy could be seen in a dressing-gown and cap which his father had given him, with a long tobacco-pipe in his mouth, his fingers stuck in his ears, and buried in a book, preferably one about Indians. He had already read five different versions of Robinson Crusoe, and derived an incredible amount of delight from them. But in reading Campe's edition he had, like all children, skipped the moralisings. Why do all children hate moral applications? Are they immoral by nature? "Yes," answer modern moralists, "for they are still animals, and do not recognise social conventions." That is true, but the social law as taught to children informs them only of their duties, not of their rights; it is therefore unjust towards the child, and children hate injustice. Besides this, he had arranged an herbarium, and made collections of insects and minerals. He had also read Liljenblad's Flora, which he had found in his father's bookcase. He liked this book better than the school botany, because it contained a quantity of information regarding the use of various plants, while the other spoke only of stamens and pistils.
When his brothers deliberately disturbed him in reading, he would run at them and threaten to strike them. They said his nerves were overstrained. He dissolved the ties which bound him to the realities of life, he lived a dream-life in foreign lands and in his own thoughts, and was discontented with the grey monotony of everyday life and of his surroundings, which ever became more uncongenial to him. His father, however, would not leave him entirely to his own fancies, but gave him little commissions to perform, such as fetching the paper and carrying letters. These he looked upon as encroachments on his private life, and always performed them unwillingly.
In the present day much is said about truth and truth-speaking as though it were a difficult matter, which deserved praise. But, apart from the question of praise, it is undoubtedly difficult to find out the real facts about anything.
A person is not always what rumour reports him or her to be; a whole mass of public opinion may be false; behind each thought there lurks a passion; each judgment is coloured by prejudice. But the art of separating fact from fancy is extremely difficult, e.g., six newspaper reporters will describe a king's coronation robe as being of six different colours. New ideas do not find ready entrance into brains which work in a groove; elderly people believe only themselves, and the uneducated believe that they can trust their own eyes. This, however, owing to the frequency of optical illusions, is not the case.
In John's home truth was revered. His father was in the habit of saying, "Tell the truth, happen what may," and used at the same time to tell a story about himself. He had once promised a customer to send home a certain piece of goods by a given day. He forgot it, but must have had means of exculpating himself, for when the furious customer came into the office and overwhelmed him with reproaches, John's father humbly acknowledged his forgetfulness, asked for forgiveness, and declared himself ready to make good the loss. The result was that the customer was astonished, reached him his hand, and expressed his regard for him. People engaged in trade, he said, must not expect too much of each other.
Well! his father had a sound intelligence, and as an elderly man felt sure of his conclusions.
John, who could never be without some occupation, had discovered that one could profitably spend some time in loitering on the high-road which led to and from school. He had once upon the Hollandergata, which had no pavement, found an iron screw-nut. That pleased him, for it made an excellent sling-stone when tied to a string. After that he always walked in the middle of the street and picked up all the pieces of iron which he saw. Since the streets were ill-paved and rapid driving was forbidden, the vehicles which passed through them had a great deal of rough usage. Accordingly an observant passer-by could be sure of finding every day a couple of horse-shoe nails, a waggon-pin, or at any rate a screw-nut, and sometimes a horse-shoe. John's favourite find was screw-nuts which he had made his specialty. In the course of two months he had collected a considerable quantity of them.
One evening he was playing with them when his father entered the room.
"What have you there?" he asked in astonishment.
"Screw-nuts," John answered confidently.
"Where did you get them from?"
"I found them."
"Found them? Where?"
"On the street."
"In one place?"
"No, in several—by walking down the middle of the street and looking about."
"Look here! I don't believe that. You are lying. Come in here. I have something to say to you." The something was a caning.
"Will you confess now?"
"I have found them on the street."
The cane was again plied in order to make him "confess." What should he confess? Pain, and fear that the scene would continue indefinitely, forced the following lie from him:
"I have stolen them."
"Where?"
Now he did not know to which part of a carriage the screw-nuts belonged, but he guessed it was the under part.
"Under the carriages."
"Where?"
His fancy suggested a place, where many carriages used to stand together. "By the timber-yard opposite the lane by the smith's."
This specification of the place lent an air of probability to his story. His father was now certain that he had elicited the truth from him. He continued:
"And how could you get them off merely with your fingers?"
He had not expected this question, but his eye fell on his father's tool-box.
"With a screw-driver."
Now one cannot take hold of nuts with a screw-driver, but his father was excited, and let himself be deceived.
"But that is abominable! You are really a thief. Suppose a policeman had come by."
John thought for a moment of quieting him by telling him that the whole affair was made up, but the prospect of getting another caning and no supper held him mute. When he had gone to bed in the evening, and his mother had come and told him to say his evening prayer, he said in a pathetic tone and raising his hand:
"May the deuce take me, if I have stolen the screw-nuts."
His mother looked long at him, and then she said, "You should not swear so."
The corporal punishment had sickened and humbled him; he was angry with God, his parents, and especially his brothers, who had not spoken up for him, though they knew the real state of the case. That evening he did not say his prayers, but he wished that the house would take fire without his having to light it. And then to be called a thief!
From that time he was suspected, or rather his bad reputation was confirmed, and he felt long the sting of the memory of a charge of theft which he had not committed. Another time he caught himself in a lie, but through an inadvertency which for a long time he could not explain. This incident is related for the consideration of parents. A school-fellow with his sister came one Sunday morning in the early part of the year to him and asked him whether he would accompany them to the Haga Park. He said, "Yes," but he must first ask his mother's permission. His father had gone out.
"Well, hurry up!" said his friend.
He wanted to show his herbarium, but the other said, "Let us go now."
"Very well, but I must first ask mother."
His little brother then came in and wanted to play with his herbarium. He stopped the interruption and showed his friend his minerals. In the meantime he changed his blouse. Then he took a piece of bread out of the cupboard. His mother came and greeted his friends, and talked of this and that domestic matter. John was in a hurry, begged his mother's permission, and took his friends into the garden to see the frog-pond.
At last they went to the Haga Park. He felt quite sure that he had asked his mother's leave to do so.
When his father came home, he asked John on his return, "Where have you been?"
"With friends to the Haga Park."
"Did you have leave from mother?"
"Yes."
His mother denied it. John was dumb with astonishment.
"Ah, you are beginning to lie again."
He was speechless. He was quite sure he had asked his mother's leave, especially as there was no reason to fear a refusal. He had fully meant to do it, but other matters had intervened; he had forgotten, but was willing to die, if he had told a lie. Children as a rule are afraid to lie, but their memory is short, their impressions change quickly, and they confuse wishes and resolves with completed acts. Meanwhile the boy long continued to believe that his mother had told a falsehood. But later, after frequent reflections on the incident, he came to think she had forgotten or not heard his request. Later on still he began to suspect that his memory might have played him a trick. But he had been so often praised for his good memory, and there was only an interval of two or three hours between his going to the Haga Park and his return.
His suspicions regarding his mother's truthfulness (and why should she not tell an untruth, since women so easily confuse fancies and facts?) were shortly afterwards confirmed. The family had bought a set of furniture—a great event. The boys just then happened to be going to their aunt's. Their mother still wished to keep the novelty a secret and to surprise her sister on her next visit. Therefore she asked the children not to speak of the matter. On their arrival at their aunt's, the latter asked at once:
"Has your mother bought the yellow furniture?"
His brothers were silent, but John answered cheerfully, "No."
On their return, as they sat at table, their mother asked, "Well, did aunt ask about the furniture?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said 'No,'" answered John.
"So, then, you dared to lie," interrupted his father.
"Yes, mother said so," the boy answered.
His mother turned pale, and his father was silent. This in itself was harmless enough, but, taken in connection with other things, not without significance. Slight suspicions regarding the truthfulness of "others" woke in the boy's mind and made him begin to carry on a silent siege of adverse criticism. His coldness towards his father increased, he began to have a keen eye for instances of oppression, and to make small attempts at revolt.
The children were marched to church every Sunday; and the family had a key to their pew. The absurdly long services and incomprehensible sermons soon ceased to make any impression. Before a system of heating was introduced, it was a perfect torture to sit in the pew in winter for two hours at a stretch with one's feet freezing; but still they were obliged to go, whether for their souls' good, or for the sake of discipline, or in order to have quiet in the house—who knows? His father personally was a theist, and preferred to read Wallin's sermons to going to church. His mother began to incline towards pietism.
One Sunday the idea occurred to John, possibly in consequence of an imprudent Bible exposition at school, which had touched upon freedom of the spirit, or something of the sort, not to go to church. He simply remained at home. At dinner, before his father came home, he declared to his brothers and sisters and aunts that no one could compel the conscience of another, and that therefore he did not go to church. This seemed original, and therefore for this once he escaped a caning, but was sent to church as before.
The social intercourse of the family, except with relatives, could not be large, because of the defective form of his father's marriage. But companions in misfortune draw together, and so intercourse was kept up with an old friend of their father's who also had contracted a mésalliance, and had therefore been repudiated by his family. He was a legal official. With him they met another family in the same circumstances owing to an irregular marriage. The children naturally knew nothing of the tragedy below the surface. There were children in both the other families, but John did not feel attracted to them. After the sufferings he had undergone at home and school, his shyness and unsociability had increased, and his residence on the outside of the town and in the country had given him a distaste for domestic life. He did not wish to learn dancing, and thought the boys silly who showed off before the girls. When his mother on one occasion told him to be polite to the latter, he asked, "Why?" He had become critical, and asked this question about everything. During a country excursion he tried to rouse to rebellion the boys who carried the girls' shawls and parasols. "Why should we be these girls' servants?" he said; but they did not listen to him. Finally, he took such a dislike to going out that he pretended to be ill, or dirtied his clothes in order to be obliged to stay at home as a punishment. He was no longer a child, and therefore did not feel comfortable among the other children, but his elders still saw in him only a child. He remained solitary.
When he was twelve years old, he was sent in the summer to another school kept by a parish clerk at Mariefred. Here there were many boarders, all of so-called illegitimate birth. Since the parish clerk himself did not know much, he was not able to hear John his lessons. At the first examination in geometry, he found that John was sufficiently advanced to study best by himself. Now he felt himself a grandee, and did his lessons alone. The parish clerk's garden adjoined the park of the lord of the manor, and here he took his walks free from imposed tasks and free from oversight. His wings grew, and he began to feel himself a man.
In the course of the summer he fell in love with the twenty-year-old daughter of the inspector who often came to the parish clerk's. He never spoke to her, but used to spy out her walks, and often went near her house. The whole affair was only a silent worship of her beauty from a distance, without desire, and without hope. His feeling resembled a kind of secret trouble, and might as well have been directed towards anyone else, if girls had been numerous there. It was a Madonna-worship which demanded nothing except to bring the object of his worship some great sacrifice, such as drowning himself in the water under her eyes. It was an obscure consciousness of his own inadequacy as a half man, who did not wish to live without being completed by his "better half."
He continued to attend church-services, but they made no impression on him; he found them merely tedious.
This summer formed an important stage in his development, for it broke the links with his home. None of his brothers were with him. He had accordingly no intermediary bond of flesh and blood with his mother. This made him more complete in himself, and hardened his nerves; but not all at once, for sometimes he had severe attacks of homesickness. His mother's image rose up in his mind in its usual ideal shape of protectiveness and mildness, as the source of warmth and the preserver.
In summer, at the beginning of August, his eldest brother Gustav was going to a school in Paris, in order to complete his business studies and to learn the language. But previous to that, he was to spend a month in the country and say good-bye to his brother. The thought of the approaching parting, the reflected glory of the great town to which his brother was going, the memory of his brother's many heroic feats, the longing for home and the joy to see again someone of his own flesh and blood,—all combined to set John's emotion and imagination at work. During the week in which he expected his brother, he described him to a friend as a sort of superman to whom he looked up. And Gustav certainly was, as a man, superior to him. He was a plucky, lively youth, two years older than John, with strong, dark features; he did not brood, and had an active temperament; he was sagacious, could keep silence when necessary, and strike when occasion demanded it. He understood economy, and was sparing of his money. "He was very wise," thought the dreaming John. He learned his lessons imperfectly, for he despised them, but he understood the art of life.
John needed a hero to worship, and wished to form an ideal out of some other material than his own weak clay, round which his own aspirations might gather, and now he exercised his art for eight days. He prepared for his brother's arrival by painting him in glowing colours before his friends, praised him to the teacher, sought out playing-places with little surprises, contrived a spring-board at the bathing-place, and so on.
On the day before his brother's arrival he went into the wood and plucked cloud-berries and blue-berries for him. He covered a table with white paper, on which he spread out the berries, yellow and blue alternately, and in the centre he arranged them in the shape of a large G, and surrounded the whole with flowers.
His brother arrived, cast a hasty look at the design and ate the berries, but either did not notice the dexterously-contrived initial, or thought it a piece of childishness. As a matter of fact, in their family every ebullition of feeling was regarded as childish.
Then they went to bathe. The minute after Gustav had taken off his shirt, he was in the water, and swam immediately out to the buoy. John admired him and would have gladly followed him, but this time it gave him more pleasure to think that his brother obtained the reputation of being a good swimmer, and that he was only second-best. At dinner Gustav left a fat piece of bacon on his plate—a thing which no one before had ever dared to do. But he dared everything. In the evening, when the time came to ring the bells for church, John gave up his turn of ringing to Gustav, who rang violently. John was frightened, as though the parish had been exposed to danger thereby, and half in alarm and half laughing, begged him to stop.
"What the deuce does it matter?" said Gustav.
Then he introduced him to his friend the big son of the carpenter, who was about fifteen. An intimacy at once sprang up between the two of equal age, and John's friend abandoned him as being too small. But John felt no bitterness, although the two elder ones jested at him, and went out alone together with their guns in their hands. He only wished to give, and he would have given his betrothed away, had he possessed one. He did actually inform his brother about the inspector's daughter, and the latter was pleased with her. But, instead of sighing behind the trees like John, Gustav went straight up to her and spoke to her in an innocent boyish way. This was the most daring thing which John had ever seen done in his life, and he felt as if it had added a foot to his own stature. He became visibly greater, his weak soul caught a contagion of strength from his brother's strong nerves, and he identified himself with him. He felt as happy as if he had spoken with the girl himself. He made suggestions for excursions and boating expeditions and his brother carried them out. He discovered birds' nests and his brother climbed the trees and plundered them.
But this lasted only for a week. On the last day before they were to leave, John said to Gustav: "Let us buy a fine bouquet for mother."
"Very well," replied his brother.
They went to the nursery-man, and Gustav gave the order that the bouquet should be a fine one. While it was being made up, he went into the garden and plucked fruit quite openly. John did not venture to touch anything.
"Eat," said his brother. No, he could not. When the bouquet was ready, John paid twenty-four shillings for it. Not a sign came from Gustav. Then they parted.
When John came home, he gave his mother the bouquet as from Gustav, and she was touched. At supper-time the flowers attracted his father's attention. "Gustav sent me those," said his mother. "He is always a kind boy," and John received a sad look because he was so cold-hearted. His father's eyes gleamed behind his glasses.
John felt no bitterness. His youthful, enthusiastic love of sacrifice had found vent, the struggle against injustice had made him a self-tormentor, and he kept silent. He also said nothing when his father sent Gustav a present of money, and with unusual warmth of expression said how deeply he had been touched by this graceful expression of affection.
In fact, he kept silence regarding this incident during his whole life, even when he had occasion to feel bitterness. Not till he had been over-powered and fallen in the dirty sand of life's arena, with a brutal foot placed upon his chest and not a hand raised to plead in his behalf, did he say anything about it. Even then, it was not mentioned from a feeling of revenge, but as the self-defence of a dying man.
[1] Gata = street.