“Well, children, the way I see it is this: the fact that our parents neglect us is sad, for sure. But we would put up with that anyhow if it were not a proof that grownups in general are getting stupid. They are regressing, if I may put it that way. We cannot put a stop to their decline, since we have no influence on them the whole day; and when we come home late from school, no one could ask us at that point to sit down with them and try to get them interested in something reasonable. And what a pain it is to sit for hours under the study lamp and have a mother who still doesn’t even understand the Pythagorean theorem! Well, that’s the way it is. And so the grownups will keep getting dumber. . . . But what harm does it do, what do we lose by it? Breeding? They take their hats off to each other, but if a bald head is revealed in the process, they laugh. On the whole, they laugh constantly. If we did not have the good sense to cry now and then, there would be no balance in these things either. But at the same time they are so arrogant, they even assert that the kaiser is a grownup. I’ve read in the papers that the king of Spain is a child, and the same is true of all kings and kaisers, don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise! But along with all the things that don’t matter, the grownups do have something we can’t afford to be indifferent to—God, the dear Lord. It’s true that I have yet to see Him at any of their houses, and that by itself is suspicious. It has even occurred to me that maybe, in the midst of their distraction, constant activity, and rushing about, they might have lost Him somewhere. But He is definitely something we can’t do without. There are various things that can’t happen without Him. The sun can’t rise, children can’t be born, and also there’d be an end to bread. Even though it comes out at the baker’s, it’s the dear Lord who turns the big millstones. Many reasons can easily be found why the dear Lord is something indispensable. But this much is sure: the grownups don’t look after Him, so we children have to do it. Listen to the plan I’ve worked out. There are exactly seven of us children. Each one of us must carry God with us for one day; then He will be with us the whole week, and we’ll always know where He is at a given moment.”