Next thing, there was a thud and a wail, Santa had fallen down the steps.  My father in front and we behind lifted the poor, fainting saint up, whereupon he was discovered to be a baker's apprentice from the neighbourhood.  My mother said it was the punishment for eating most of the nuts and apples himself that she had given to him for us.

At the side of the hall was the kitchen, which still had an almighty black chimney-flue above the hearth.  Beside this was another arrangement, by which, by Franconian custom, it was possible to cook on the living room stove from the kitchen, in the winter when this stove was lit.  The kitchen window looked out on the so-called Feuergasse,19 a kind of mews road, allowing a back entrance to the houses along the street to the upper bridge.  This road was not open to the public transport and therefore our neighbours used it for certain secret jobs they did not want to be seen doing in public.  The master bookbinder, a very grand man, used to saw his firewood himself, for his household.  The brushmaker, in trousers and shirtsleeves, arranged his timber for the brushes, consuming an incredible amount of beer all the while.  The fur dealer beat with sticks all the furs left with him for careful storage through the summer, and combed them with metal combs; the air was full of flying hair.  The lady owners own hair would have stood on end, had they witnessed this sort of treatment.  Apart from this he used to catch cats there and skin them.  Their fur was shorn and used, dyed different colours.  God knows under what fancy