Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann — Read

It was hardly more than a wretched pretext of a sun that stood over the huddled city, milky and pale behind layers of clouds. The streets with their gabled houses were damp and windy; and often a kind of soft hail fell, not snow, and not ice.

School was out. Hordes of liberated children were streaming across the paved court out through the iron gate, separating and hurrying off to right and left. Big students held their books pressed with dignity high up against the left shoulder, while with their right arm they steered against the wind towards dinner. The smaller ones dropped into a cheerful trot which made the slush splash about them and set the accoutrements of knowledge to clattering in their sealskin satchels. But occasionally there would be a general pious-eyed doffing of caps before the Odin's-hat and the Jupiter's-beard of a gravely advancing professor.