The school has been closed for a few weeks. The children are assisting
at the harvest; this has ripened late and must now be garnered before
the frosts. The rocky heights are already covered with snow.
I should like once more to climb the Graue Zahn that I might look out
over the world. I am living a very retired and solitary life. The old
people have died; the younger ones I have educated, but not to be my
companions. I am their instructor, but now they desert me, and when,
old and grey, I shall sit upon my lonely bench, they will consider my
solitude the natural lot of a schoolmaster.
The new priest is a young man, who is better suited to the people; he
enters into the sports in the tavern and the bowling-alley. When
ordering the new prayer-book from the capital, a short time ago, he also
sent for some playing-cards.
Lazarus and his wife Juliana have become owners of the Grassteiger inn;
they carry on the business, and sell tobacco and all kinds of trifles.
They also keep cloths of foreign manufacture, for there are those in the
parish who, no longer content with fustian and ticking jackets, wish to
have something especially fine to wear; just for the novelty of it, they
say. But I notice this desire soon receives another name.
As in former times, bailiffs occasionally roam about in our woods
looking for smugglers and deserters.