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Show CHILD-LIFE OF GOETHE. Our next view of the boy is from a little account his mother has written of her method of teaching and amusing her children by inventing stories for them. She writes: "Air, fire, earth, water, I represented under the forms of princesses, and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning. As we thought of the paths which led from star to star, and that we should, perhaps one day inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet there, I was as eager for the hours of story telling as the children themselves. I was quite curious about the future course of my own improvisation, and any invitation which interrupted those evenings were disagreeable. <br><br> There I sat, and there Wolfgang held me with his large black eyes; and when the fate of one of his favorites was not according to his fancy, I saw the angry veins swell on his temples. I saw him repress his tears. He often burst in with, ‘But, mother, the princess won't marry the horrid tailor, even if he does kill the giant.' And which I made a pause for the night, promising to continue it on the morrow, I was certain that he would, in the interval, think it out for himself. When I turned the story according to his plan, and told him he had found out the ending, then he was all fire and flame, and one could see his little heart beating underneath his dress. His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidant of all his ideas as to how the story would turn out; and, as she repeated these to me, and I turned the story according to these hints, I had the pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my hearers, and Wolfgang saw with glowing eyes the fulfillment of his own conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic applause." <br><br>This was when he was three and four years old. He soon learned to read and write, and at six years of age, not only wrote quite well in German, but also in Latin. When he was eight years old, he wrote original compositions-and very good ones-in German, French, Italian, Latin and Greek! He was not taught Italian, but picked it up from hearing it taught to his sister. <br><br> He was truly a wonderful child. And he did not love study because he was weak and sickly, and could not do anything else; for he was generally healthy, and a very bright, active boy at play, and as I said before, always ready for a frolic. He was born with an eager desire for knowledge, and the capacity to acquire it, as well as with the genius to invent stories and poems. <br><br> There was an old man who kept a book-stall in a street near by the Goethe house, and here Wolfgang often used to stop, when out walking with his sister, to pore over the old and curious books, which other boys of his age would never think of reading. <br><br>I have said that the house was thrillingly suggestive of ghost stories; and I am sorry to say that, as they grew older, Wolfgang and Cornelia read a great many such stories, and the consequence was they they became very nervous, and full of silly fears. Their father was resolved that they should overcome such fears, and made them go to bed in the dark, and sleep in a room by themselves. There they would be shaking with terror poor little souls! and every sound heard in the stillness of night would seem to them a terrible noise, and cause them to start and shudder, and hide under the feather-bed covering until they could bear it no longer, and they would creep out of bed to seek refuge with some kind old servant who pitied them. But their father's watchful ears were sure to hear the little culprits, and they would be at once sent back into the dreadful darkness and loneliness again. <br><br> Mamma Goethe saw how wretched and unhappy the children were under this treatment; and yet she knew that their father was right in trying to make them get rid of their fears; and so she managed to make them all happy and contented, first, by showing the children gently and kindly that there was no occasion for their fright and misery, and then by promising that every morning after they had lain quietly a whole night without allowing themselves to become frightened, they should have as many plums as they could eat. The reward was so enticing that the children tried very hard not to get frightened, and when people try very hard to do a thing they usually succeed. And in this way, the young Goethes overcame their fear of ghosts. I ought to add that they were very little children when this happened, for, if they had been older, they would have been wiser. So you see, a boy may be able to read in five different languages, and yet be so foolish as to believe in ghosts!-St. Nicholas. |