Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods.

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.

But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.

He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.