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Paula, a fresh, pretty, bright, daring child, was often the leader in our games and undertakings. Ludo, who afterward became a soldier and as a Prussian officer did good service in the war, was a gentle boy, somewhat delicate in health the broad-shouldered man shows no trace of it and the best of playfellows. We were always together, and were frequently mistaken for twins.
Nay, though only nineteen, I even considered whether I should not unite her destiny with mine, and formally ask her hand. My father had offered himself to my mother at the same age. In Kottbus I was treated with the respect due to a man, but at home I was still "the boy," and the youngest of us three "little ones." Ludo, as a lieutenant, had a position in society, while I was yet a schoolboy.
The women's parts, of course, were also taken by boys. Ludo made a wonderfully pretty girl. I was sometimes one thing, sometimes another, but almost always stage manager. These merry improvisations were certainly well fitted to strengthen the creative power and activity of our intellects.
After his departure the house was much quieter, but we did not forget him; his letters from Keilhau were read aloud to us, and his descriptions of the merry school days, the pedestrian tours, and sleigh-rides awakened an ardent longing in Ludo and myself to follow him. Yet it was so delightful with my mother, the sun around which our little lives revolved!
As for us five children, first came my oldest sister Martha now, alas! dead the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Baron Curt von Brandenstein, and my brother Martin, who were seven and five years older than I. They were, of course, treated differently from us younger ones. Paula was my senior by three years; Ludwig, or Ludo he was called by his nickname all his life by a year and a half.
But he put his mathematical skill to other and more sinister uses than this; for, having gained practical experience at the gaming-tables, he combined this experience with his knowledge of the properties of numbers, and wrote a tract on games of chance. Afterwards he amplified this into his book, Liber de Ludo Aleæ. With this equipment and discipline Jerome went to Pavia in 1520.
After his departure the house was much quieter, but we did not forget him; his letters from Keilhau were read aloud to us, and his descriptions of the merry school days, the pedestrian tours, and sleigh-rides awakened an ardent longing in Ludo and myself to follow him. Yet it was so delightful with my mother, the sun around which our little lives revolved!
When I inquired about it a few years ago, it could not be found, and Ludo, who had helped in gathering it, lamented its loss with me.
Yet the fairyland of which Ludo and I had dreamed was more beautiful and more real than this palpable magnificence of tin and pasteboard; which is, perhaps, one reason why the overexcited imagination of a city child shrinks back and tries to find in reality what a boy brought up in the quiet of the country can conjure up before his mind himself.
She called poetry "a catching and incurable disease," and Pope's unfortunate Poet "lives and writes agen." And, after all, Bobus, why should we not be tender with all the gentlemen who crowd the catalogues and slumber upon the shelves? It may be all very well for you or me, whose legend should be "Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, coeno, quiesco,"