[a] We venerate Arabia, the wise and noble ancient world, and the famous Brotherhood (confrérie), passed on to posterity.
The term "songs of the Freemasons" had a particular attraction. What a delight to be able to delve into the secrets of freemasonry! Luckily, the principal also gave private lessons in French. He permitted me to enter into this "circle", and so it happened that I had to deal with Latin, English, and French now all at the same time.
The principal was less reluctant in respect to borrowing me some of his books than the cantor. His favourite subject was geography. He possessed hundreds of geographic and ethnographic volumes, which he all made available to my father for me. I grasped this treasure with true enthusiasm, and the kind gentleman was glad about it, without having even the most obvious objections against it. Though he contemplated seeking employment as a minister, he was nonetheless in his heart more a philosopher than a theologian, and tended towards a freer way of thinking. But this was less obvious from his words than from the books he owned. At the same time, the minister also allowed me access to his library. He was no philosopher at all, but only and exclusively a theologian, nothing else. I am not referring to our old, kind minister, I mentioned before, but his successor, who first gave me all of his little tracts to read and then added to them all kinds of scriptures by Redenbacher and other good people, to awaken the faith, uplift the spirit, and educate the youth. So it happened that I had received from the principal, for instance, an enthusiastic description of Islamic charity and from the minister a missionary report, which bitterly complained about the obvious decline in Christian compassion, now lying before me side by side. In the first one's library, I got familiar with Humboldt, Bonpland, and all those other "great" men, who trusted more in science than in religion, and in the second one's library there were all those other "great" men, who esteemed religious revelation infinitely higher than all scientific results. And during all this, I was by no means an adult, but a stupid, a very stupid boy; but even much more foolish than I, were those who allowed me to fall and sink into those conflicts, without knowing what they did. Everything that was written in those so diverse books, could have been good, yes even excellent; but for me it had to turn into poison.
But even worse things followed. The private lessons in those foreign languages, which I received now, had to be payed, and I was the one who had to earn this money in one way or another. We looked around. A bar in Hohenstein was looking for a nimble, persevering boy to set up the pins in the bowling alley. I applied, though I had no experience, and got the job. Yes, I did earn money there, very much money, but how! By what pains! And what else did I sacrifice for this! The bowling alley was used often, being located in a closed room with a stove, so that it could be used in summer as well as in winter and in all kinds of weather. They bowled every day. From now on, I could not even find a quarter of an hour of spare time, and in particular not on a Sunday afternoon. Then, it started right after church and lasted until late at night. But the most busy day was Monday, because this was the day of the weekly market, when the inhabitants of the countryside came into town, to bring their products, to do their shopping, and -- last but not least -- to have a game of bowling. But this one game turned into five, ten, twenty, and it could happen on these Mondays that I had to toil from twelve o'clock at noon until after midnight, without even being able to take just five minutes of rest. To strengthen myself, I got in the afternoon and in the evening a buttered slice of bread and and a glass of stale beer, poured together from the left-overs. It also happened that a sympathetic bowler, seeing that I could hardly go on, brought me a glass of hard liquor, to invigorate me. I never complained about this excessive strain at home, because I saw how indispensably what I earned was needed. The amount I got together there on a weekly basis really made a big difference. I received a fixed income for every hour and furthermore a certain amount for every honneur [a] that was bowled. If the game was not played in the normal way, but free betting, or even gambling was practised, this amount was doubled or tripled. There have been Mondays, when I brought home more than twenty groschen, but was so tired, I more stumbled than climbed up the stairs to our lodgings.
[a] Honneur: French for "honour", but here it means striking the middle row of the pins.
But what did my soul gain from this? Nothing at all, it just lost something. The beer they drank was just of a simple and cheap kind, but hard liquor was consumed in particularly large quantities. I will show elsewhere that these were not the kind of people, who would be familiar with what one might describe as consideration or even sensitivity. Everything which might have come into someone's mind was blurted out without restraint. You can imagine the kinds of things I got to hear there! The long enclosure of the bowling alley worked like an ear-trumpet. Every word which was spoken in the front among the players reached me clearly. Everything which grandmother and mother, the cantor and the principal as well, has built up within me, was outraged at what I got to hear here. There was much filth and also much poison in it. There was none of that powerful, utterly healthy gaiety which, for instance, can be found at an upper Bavarian bowling alley, but those were people, who came directly from the mind-numbing atmosphere of their looms into the bar, to have for a few hours the illusion of pleasure, but which was anything less than a pleasure, at least for me it was torture, physically as well as spiritually.