CHAPTER XV

THE ECHO OF THE PROVERB*

Mem Kind, wir waren Kinder . ..

Heine.

IT was rather strange how we felt, my younger
sister and myself, every time we overhead a pro-
verb in the conversations of grown-ups. Some of
them we could understand immediately. When
someone said, " However you throw a cat it always
falls on its feet," then, of course, the meaning was
quite plain. We knew that, for we ourselves had
tried the experiment time and again. But why was
this proverb used when one of the partners in the
conversation would keep on obstinately coming
back to the same point ?
Many proverbs were quite unintelligible to us and
remained so for a considerable time. For instance,
what was the significance of the phrase: " Drag me
by force, I'm willing to come " ? It was an allusion
to a girl who made a great deal of fuss about keeping
a suitor at arm's length. How peculiar and utterly
absurd for us children was the proverb: " Every
mother is a mother.53 Naturally, every mother is a
mother since she has got a child. We could not then
realize that the psychological importance of mother-
hood was driven home by the obviousness of the
remark.
. * Reprinted from Life and Letters Tofay> Vol. 21, Nos. 22 and 23 June and
July 1939. Translated by Gerd Abraham.
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