THE STORY OF MY LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD TO MANHOOD

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF GEORG EBERS, Complete



Volume 1.



Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford



TO MY SONS.

When I began the incidents of yore,
Still in my soul's depths treasured, to record,
A voice within said: Soon, life's journey o'er,
Thy portrait sole remembrance will afford.

And, ere the last hour also strikes for thee,
Search thou the harvest of the vanished years.
Not futile was thy toil, if thou canst see
That for thy sons fruit from one seed appears.

Upon the course of thine own life look back,
Follow thy struggles upwards to the light;
Methinks thy errors will not seem so black,
If they thy loved ones serve to guide aright.

And should they see the star which 'mid the dark
Illumed thy pathway to thy distant goal,
Thither they'll turn the prow of their life bark;
Its radiance their course also will control.

Ay, when the ivy on my grave doth grow,
When my dead hand the helm no more obeys,
This book to them the twofold light will show,
To which I ne'er forget to turn my gaze.

One heavenward draws, with rays so mild and clear,
Eyes dim with tears, when the world darkness veils,
Showing 'mid desert wastes the spring anear,
If, spent with wandering, your courage fails.

Since first your lips could syllable a prayer,
Its mercy you have proved a thousandfold;
I too received it, though unto my share
Fell what I pray life ne'er for you may hold.

The other light, whose power full well you know,
E'en though in words I nor describe nor name,
Alike for me and you its rays aye glow--
Maternal love, by day and night the same.

This light within your youthful hearts has beamed,
Ripening the germs of all things good and fair;
I also fostered them, and joyous dreamed
Of future progress to repay our care.

Thus guarded, unto manhood you have grown;
Still upward, step by step, you steadfast rise
The oldest, healing's noble art has won;
The second, to his country's call replies;

The third, his mind to form is toiling still;
And as this book to you I dedicate,
I see the highest wish life could fulfil
In you, my trinity, now incarnate.

To pay it homage meet, my sons I'll guide
As I revere it, 'mid the world's turmoil,
Love for mankind, which putteth self aside,
In love for native land and blessed toil.

GEORG EBERS.

TOTZING ON THE STARNBERGER SEE,
October 1, 1892.




INTRODUCTION.

In this volume, which has all the literary charm and deftness of
character drawing that distinguish his novels, Dr. Ebers has told the
story of his growth from childhood to maturity, when the loss of his
health forced the turbulent student to lead a quieter life, and
inclination led him to begin his Egyptian studies, which resulted, first
of all, in the writing of An Egyptian Princess, then in his travels in
the land of the Pharaohs and the discovery of the Ebers Papyrus (the
treatise on medicine dating from the second century B.C.), and finally in
the series of brilliant historical novels that has borne his name to the
corners of the earth and promises to keep it green forever.

This autobiography carries the reader from 1837, the year of Dr. Ebers's
birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished. The
subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the
existence of a great scientist and busy romancer, whose fecund fancy was
based upon a groundwork of minute historical research.

Dr. Ebers attracted the attention of the learned world by his treatise on
Egypt and the Book of Moses, which brought him a professorship at his
university, Gottingen, in 1864, the year following the close of this
autobiography. His marriage to the daughter of a burgomaster of Riga took
place soon afterward. During the long years of their union Mrs. Ebers was
his active helpmate, many of the business details relating to his works
and their American and English editions being transacted by her.

After his first visit to Egypt, Ebers was called to the University of
Leipsic to fill the chair of Egyptology. He went again to Egypt in 1872,
and in the course of his excavations at Thebes unearthed the Ebers
Papyrus already referred to, which established his name among the leaders
of what was then still a new science, whose foundations had been laid by
Champollion in 1821.

Ebers continued to occupy his chair at the Leipsic University, but, while
fulfilling admirably the many duties of a German professorship, he found
time to write several of his novels. Uarda was published in 1876, twelve
years after the appearance of An Egyptian Princess, to be followed in
quick succession by Homo Sum, The Sisters, The Emperor, and all that long
line of brilliant pictures of antiquity. He began his series of tales of
the middle ages and the dawn of the modern era in 1881 with The
Burgomaster's Wife. In 1889 the precarious state of his health forced him
to resign his chair at the university.

Notwithstanding his sufferings and the obstacles they placed in his path,
he continued his wonderful intellectual activity until the end. His last
novel, Arachne, was issued but a short time before his death, which took
place on August 7, 1898, at the Villa Ebers, in Tutzing, on the
Starenberg Lake, near Munich, where most of his later life was spent. The
monument erected to his memory by his own indefatigable activity consists
of sixteen novels, all of them of perennial value to historical students,
as well as of ever-fresh charm to lovers of fiction, many treatises on
his chosen branch of learning, two great works of reference on Egypt and
Palestine, and short stories, fairy tales, and biographies.

The Story of my Life is characterized by a captivating freshness. Ebers
was born under a lucky star, and the pictures of his early home life, his
restless student days at that romantic old seat of learning, Gottingen,
are bright, vivacious, and full of colour. The biographer, historian, and
educator shows himself in places, especially in the sketches of the
brothers Grimm, and of Froebel, at whose institute, Keilhau, Ebers
received the foundation of his education. His discussion of Froebel's
method and of that of his predecessor, Pestalozzi, is full of interest,
because written with enthusiasm and understanding. He was a good German,
in the largest sense of the word, and this trait, too, is brought forward
in his reminiscences of the turbulent days of 1848 in Berlin.

The story of Dr. Ebers's early life was worth the telling, and he has
told it himself, as no one else could tell it, with all the consummate
skill of his perfected craftsmanship, with all the reverent love of an
admiring son, and with all the happy exuberance of a careless youth
remembered in all its brightness in the years of his maturity. Finally,
the book teaches a beautiful lesson of fortitude in adversity, of
suffering patiently borne and valiantly overcome by a spirit that,
greatly gifted by Nature, exercised its strength until the thin silver
lining illuminated the apparently impenetrable blackness of the cloud
that overhung Georg Moritz Ebers's useful and successful life.




THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

By Georg Ebers


CONTENTS.

BOOK 1.
I.    -GLANCING BACKWARD.
II.   -MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD
III.  -ON FESTAL DAYS
IV.   -THE JOURNEY TO HOLLAND TO ATTEND THE GOLDEN WEDDING
V.    -LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE--EARLY IMPRESSIONS

BOOK 2.
VI.   -MY INTRODUCTION TO ART, AND ACQUAINTANCES
VII.  -WHAT A BERLIN CHILD ENJOYED ON THE SPREE AND GRANDMOTHER'S
VIII. -THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
IX.   -THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH

BOOK3.
X.    -AFTER THE NIGHT OF REVOLUTION
XI.   -IN KEILHAU
XII   -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL'S IDEAL OF EDUCATION

BOOK 4.
XIII. -THE FOUNDERS OF THE KEILHAU INSTITUTE
XIV.  -IN THE FOREST AND ON THE MOOR.
XV.   -SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES
XVI.  -AUTUMN, WINTER, EASTER, AND DEPARTURE

BOOK 5.
XVII.  -THE GYMNASIUM AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF UNIVERSITY LIFE
XVIII. -THE TIME OF EFFERVESCENCE AND MY SCHOOLMATES
XIX.   -A ROMANCE WHICH REALLY HAPPENED
XX.    -AT THE QUEDLINBURG GYMNASIUM

BOOK 6.
XXI.   -AT THE UNIVERSITY
XXII.  -THE SHIPWRECK
XXIII. -THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
XXIV.  -THE APPRENTICESHIP
XXV.   -THE SUMMERS OF MY CONVALESCENCE
XXVI.  -CONTINUANCE OF CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL




THE STORY OF MY LIFE.


BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I.

GLANCING BACKWARD.

Though I was born in Berlin, it was also in the country. True, it was
fifty-five years ago; for my birthday was March 1, 1837, and at that time
the house--[No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse]--where I slept and played during
the first years of my childhood possessed, besides a field and a meadow,
an orchard and dense shrubbery, even a hill and a pond. Three big horses,
the property of the owner of our residence, stood in the stable, and the
lowing of a cow, usually an unfamiliar sound to Berlin children, blended
with my earliest recollections.

The Thiergartenstrasse--along which in those days on sunny mornings, a
throng of people on foot, on horseback, and in carriages constantly moved
to and fro--ran past the front of these spacious grounds, whose rear was
bounded by a piece of water then called the "Schafgraben," and which,
spite of the duckweed that covered it with a dark-green network of
leafage, was used for boating in light skiffs.

Now a strongly built wall of masonry lines the banks of this ditch, which
has been transformed into a deep canal bordered by the handsome houses of
the Konigin Augustastrasse, and along which pass countless heavily laden
barges called by the Berliners "Zillen."

The land where I played in my childhood has long been occupied by the
Matthaikirche, the pretty street which bears the same name, and a portion
of Konigin Augustastrasse, but the house which we occupied and its larger
neighbour are still surrounded by a fine garden.

This was an Eden for city children, and my mother had chosen it because
she beheld it in imagination flowing with the true Garden of Paradise
rivers of health and freedom for her little ones.

My father died on the 14th of February, 1837, and on the 1st of March of
the same year I was born, a fortnight after the death of the man in whom
my mother was bereft of both husband and lover. So I am what is termed a
"posthumous" child. This is certainly a sorrowful fate; but though there
were many hours, especially in the later years of my life, in which I
longed for a father, it often seemed to me a noble destiny and one worthy
of the deepest gratitude to have been appointed, from the first moment of
my existence, to one of the happiest tasks, that of consolation and
cheer.

It was to soothe a mother's heartbreak that I came in the saddest hours
of her life, and, though my locks are now grey, I have not forgotten the
joyful moments in which that dear mother hugged her fatherless little
one, and among other pet names called him her "comfort child."

She told me also that posthumous children were always Fortune's
favorites, and in her wise, loving way strove to make me early familiar
with the thought that God always held in his special keeping those
children whose fathers he had taken before their birth. This confidence
accompanied me through all my after life.

As I have said, it was long before I became aware that I lacked anything,
especially any blessing so great as a father's faithful love and care;
and when life showed to me also a stern face and imposed heavy burdens,
my courage was strengthened by my happy confidence that I was one of
Fortune's favorites, as others are buoyed up by their firm faith in their
"star."

When the time at last came that I longed to express the emotions of my
soul in verse, I embodied my mother's prediction in the lines:

The child who first beholds the light of day
After his father's eyes are closed for aye,
Fortune will guard from every threatening ill,
For God himself a father's place will fill.

People often told me that as the youngest, the nestling, I was my
mother's "spoiled child"; but if anything spoiled me it certainly was not
that. No child ever yet received too many tokens of love from a sensible
mother; and, thank Heaven, the word applied to mine. Fate had summoned
her to be both father and mother to me and my four brothers and
sisters-one little brother, her second child, had died in infancy--and
she proved equal to the task. Everything good which was and is ours we
owe to her, and her influence over us all, and especially over me, who
was afterward permitted to live longest in close relations with her, was
so great and so decisive, that strangers would only half understand these
stories of my childhood unless I gave a fuller description of her.

These details are intended particularly for my children, my brothers and
sisters, and the dear ones connected with our family by ties of blood and
friendship, but I see no reason for not making them also accessible to
wider circles. There has been no lack of requests from friends that I
should write them, and many of those who listen willingly when I tell
romances will doubtless also be glad to learn something concerning the
life of the fabulist, who, however, in these records intends to silence
imagination and adhere rigidly to the motto of his later life, "To be
truthful in love."

My mother's likeness as a young woman accompanies these pages, and must
spare me the task of describing her appearance. It was copied from the
life-size portrait completed for the young husband by Schadow just prior
to his appointment as head of the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, and now in
the possession of my brother, Dr. Martin Ebers of Berlin. Unfortunately,
our copy lacks the colouring; and the dress of the original, which shows
the whole figure, confirms the experience of the error committed in
faithfully reproducing the fashion of the day in portraits intended for
future generations. It never fully satisfied me; for it very inadequately
reproduces what was especially precious to us in our mother and lent her
so great a charm--her feminine grace, and the tenderness of heart so
winningly expressed in her soft blue eyes.

No one could help pronouncing her beautiful; but to me she was at once
the fairest and the best of women, and if I make the suffering Stephanus
in Homo Sum say, "For every child his own mother is the best mother,"
mine certainly was to me. My heart rejoiced when I perceived that every
one shared this appreciation. At the time of my birth she was
thirty-five, and, as I have heard from many old acquaintances, in the
full glow of her beauty.

My father had been one of the Berlin gentlemen to whose spirit of
self-sacrifice and taste for art the Konigstadt Theater owed its
prosperity, and was thus brought into intimate relations with Carl von
Holtei, who worked for its stage both as dramatist and actor. When, as a
young professor, I told the grey-haired author in my mother's name
something which could not fail to afford him pleasure, I received the
most eager assent to my query whether he still remembered her. "How I
thank your admirable mother for inducing you to write!" ran the letter.
"Only I must enter a protest against your first lines, suggesting that I
might have forgotten her. I forget the beautiful, gentle, clever,
steadfast woman who (to quote Shakespeare's words) 'came adorned hither
like sweet May,' and, stricken by the hardest blows so soon after her
entrance into her new life, gloriously endured every trial of fate to
become the fairest bride, the noblest wife, most admirable widow, and
most faithful mother! No, my young unknown friend, I have far too much
with which to reproach myself, have brought from the conflicts of a
changeful life a lacerated heart, but I have never reached the point
where that heart ceased to cherish Fanny Ebers among the most sacred
memories of my chequered career. How often her loved image appears before
me when, in lonely twilight hours, I recall the past!"

Yes, Fate early afforded my mother an opportunity to test her character.
The city where shortly before my birth she became a widow was not her
native place. My father had met her in Holland, when he was scarcely more
than a beardless youth. The letter informing his relatives that he had
determined not to give up the girl his heart had chosen was not regarded
seriously in Berlin; but when the lover, with rare pertinacity, clung to
his resolve, they began to feel anxious. The eldest son of one of the
richest families in the city, a youth of nineteen, wished to bind himself
for life--and to a foreigner--a total stranger.

My mother often told us that her father, too, refused to listen to the
young suitor, and how, during that time of conflict, while she was with
her family at Scheveningen, a travelling carriage drawn by four horses
stopped one day before her parents' unpretending house. From this coach
descended the future mother-in-law. She had come to see the paragon of
whom her son had written so enthusiastically, and to learn whether it
would be possible to yield to the youth's urgent desire to establish a
household of his own. And she did find it possible; for the girl's rare
beauty and grace speedily won the heart of the anxious woman who had
really come to separate the lovers. True, they were required to wait a
few years to test the sincerity of their affection. But it withstood the
proof, and the young man, who had been sent to Bordeaux to acquire in a
commercial house the ability to manage his father's banking business, did
not hesitate an instant when his beautiful fiancee caught the smallpox
and wrote that her smooth face would probably be disfigured by the
malignant disease, but answered that what he loved was not only her
beauty but the purity and goodness of her tender heart.

This had been a severe test, and it was to be rewarded: not the smallest
scar remained to recall the illness. When my father at last made my
mother his wife, the burgomaster of her native city told him that he gave
to his keeping the pearl of Rotterdam. Post-horses took the young couple
in the most magnificent weather to the distant Prussian capital. It must
have been a delightful journey, but when the horses were changed in
Potsdam the bride and groom received news that the latter's father was
dead.

So my parents entered a house of mourning. My mother at that time had
only the slight mastery of German acquired during hours of industrious
study for her future husband's sake. She did not possess in all Berlin a
single friend or relative of her own family, yet she soon felt at home in
the capital. She loved my father. Heaven gave her children, and her rare
beauty, her winning charm, and the receptivity of her mind quickly opened
all hearts to her in circles even wider than her husband's large family
connection. The latter included many households whose guests numbered
every one whose achievements in science or art, or possession of large
wealth, had rendered them prominent in Berlin, and the "beautiful
Hollander," as my mother was then called, became one of the most courted
women in society.

Holtei had made her acquaintance at this time, and it was a delight to
hear her speak of those gay, brilliant days. How often Baron von
Humboldt, Rauch, or Schleiermacher had escorted her to dinner! Hegel had
kept a blackened coin won from her at whist. Whenever he sat down to play
cards with her he liked to draw it out, and, showing it to his partner,
say, "My thaler, fair lady."

My mother, admired and petted, had thoroughly enjoyed the happy period of
my father's lifetime, entertaining as a hospitable hostess or visiting
friends, and she gladly recalled it. But this brilliant life, filled to
overflowing with all sorts of amusements, had been interrupted just
before my birth.

The beloved husband had died, and the great wealth of our family, though
enough remained for comfortable maintenance, had been much diminished.

Such changes of outward circumstances are termed reverses of fortune, and
the phrase is fitting, for by them life gains a new form. Yet real
happiness is more frequently increased than lessened, if only they do not
entail anxiety concerning daily bread. My mother's position was far
removed from this point; but she possessed qualities which would have
undoubtedly enabled her, even in far more modest circumstances, to retain
her cheerfulness and fight her way bravely with her children through
life.

The widow resolved that her sons should make their way by their own
industry, like her brothers, who had almost all become able officials in
the Dutch colonial service. Besides, the change in her circumstances
brought her into closer relations with persons with whom by inclination
and choice she became even more intimately associated than with the
members of my father's family--I mean the clique of scholars and
government officials amid whose circle her children grew up, and whom I
shall mention later.

Our relatives, however, even after my father's death, showed the same
regard for my mother--who on her side was sincerely attached to many of
them--and urged her to accept the hospitality of their homes. I, too,
when a child, still more in later years, owe to the Beer family many a
happy hour. My father's cousin, Moritz von Oppenfeld, whose wife was an
Ebers, was also warmly attached to us. He lived in a house which he owned
on the Pariser Platz, now occupied by the French embassy, and in whose
spacious apartments and elsewhere his kind heart and tender love prepared
countless pleasures for our young lives.




CHAPTER II.

MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD

My father died in Leipzigerstrasse, where, two weeks after, I was born.
It is reported that I was an unusually sturdy, merry little fellow. One
of my father's relatives, Frau Mosson, said that I actually laughed on
the third day of my life, and several other proofs of my precocious
cheerfulness were related by this lady.

So I must believe that--less wise than Lessing's son, who looked at life
and thought it would be more prudent to turn his back upon it--I greeted
with a laugh the existence which, amid beautiful days of sunshine, was to
bring me so many hours of suffering.

Spring was close at hand; the house in noisy Leipzigerstrasse was
distasteful to my mother, her soul longed for rest, and at that time she
formed the resolutions according to which she afterward strove to train
her boys to be able men. Her first object was to obtain pure air for the
little children, and room for the larger ones to exercise. So she looked
for a residence outside the gate, and succeeded in renting for a term of
years No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse, which I have already mentioned.

The owner, Frau Kommissionsrath Reichert, had also lost her husband a
short time before, and had determined to let the house, which stood near
her own, stand empty rather than rent it to a large family of children.

Alone herself, she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls. But
she had a warm, kind heart, and--she told me this herself--the sight of
the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget
her prejudice. "If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five," she
remarked, "I would not have refused the house to that angel face."

We all cherish a kindly memory of the vigorous, alert woman, with her
round, bright countenance and laughing eyes. She soon became very
intimate with my mother, and my second sister, Paula, was her special
favorite, on whom she lavished every indulgence. Her horses were the
first ones on which I was lifted, and she often took us with her in the
carriage or sent us to ride in it.

I still remember distinctly some parts of our garden, especially the
shady avenue leading from our balcony on the ground floor to the
Schafgraben, the pond, the beautiful flower-beds in front of Frau
Reichert's stately house, and the field of potatoes where I--the gardener
was the huntsman--saw my first partridge shot. This was probably on the
very spot where for many years the notes of the organ have pealed through
the Matthaikirche, and the Word of God has been expounded to a
congregation whose residences stand on the playground of my childhood.

The house which sheltered us was only two stories high, but pretty and
spacious. We needed abundant room, for, besides my mother, the five
children, and the female servants, accommodation was required for the
governess, and a man who held a position midway between porter and butler
and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name was
Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty years
old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the order he
had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had been taken
into the house by our mother for our protection, for in winter our home,
surrounded by its spacious grounds, was very lonely.

As for us five children, first came my oldest sister Martha--now, alas!
dead--the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Baron Curt von Brandenstein, and my
brother Martin, who were seven and five years older than I.

They were, of course, treated differently from us younger ones.

Paula was my senior by three years; Ludwig, or Ludo--he was called by his
nickname all his life--by a year and a half.

Paula, a fresh, pretty, bright, daring child, was often the leader in our
games and undertakings. Ludo, who afterward became a soldier and as a
Prussian officer did good service in the war, was a gentle boy, somewhat
delicate in health--the broad-shouldered man shows no trace of it--and
the best of playfellows. We were always together, and were frequently
mistaken for twins. We shared everything, and on my birthday, gifts were
bestowed on him too; on his, upon me.

Each had forgotten the first person singular of the personal pronoun, and
not until comparatively late in life did I learn to use "I" and "me" in
the place of "we" and "us."

The sequence of events in this quiet country home has, of course,
vanished from my mind, and perhaps many which I mention here occurred in
Lennestrasse, where we moved later, but the memories of the time we spent
in the Thiergarten overlooked by our second home--are among the brightest
of my life. How often the lofty trees and dense shrubbery of our own
grounds and the beautiful Berlin Thiergarten rise before my mental
vision, when my thoughts turn backward and I see merry children playing
among them, and hear their joyous laughter!

FAIRY TALES AND FACT.

What happened in the holy of holies, my mother's chamber, has remained,
down to the smallest details, permanently engraved upon my soul.

A mother's heart is like the sun--no matter how much light it diffuses,
its warmth and brilliancy never lessen; and though so lavish a flood of
tenderness was poured forth on me, the other children were no losers. But
I was the youngest, the comforter, the nestling; and never was the fact
of so much benefit to me as at that time.

My parents' bed stood in the green room with the bright carpet. It had
been brought from Holland, and was far larger and wider than bedsteads of
the present day. My mother had kept it. A quilted silk coverlet was
spread over it, which felt exquisitely soft, and beneath which one could
rest delightfully. When the time for rising came, my mother called me. I
climbed joyfully into her warm bed, and she drew her darling into her
arms, played all sorts of pranks with him, and never did I listen to more
beautiful fairy tales than at those hours. They became instinct with life
to me, and have always remained so; for my mother gave them the form of
dramas, in which I was permitted to be an actor.

The best one of all was Little Red Riding Hood. I played the little girl
who goes into the wood, and she was the wolf. When the wicked beast had
disguised itself in the grandmother's cap I not only asked the regulation
questions: "Grandmother, what makes you have such big eyes? Grandmother,
why is your skin so rough?" etc., but invented new ones to defer the
grand final effect, which followed the words, "Grandmother, why do you
have such big, sharp teeth?" and the answer, "So that I can eat you,"
whereupon the wolf sprang on me and devoured me--with kisses.

Another time I was Snow-White and she the wicked step-mother, and also
the hunter, the dwarf, and the handsome prince who married her.

How real this merry sport made the distress of persecuted innocence, the
terrors and charm of the forest, the joys and splendours of the fairy
realm! If the flowers in the garden had raised their voices in song, if
the birds on the boughs had called and spoken to me--nay, if a tree had
changed into a beautiful fairy, or the toad in the damp path of our
shaded avenue into a witch--it would have seemed only natural.

It is a singular thing that actual events which happened in those early
days have largely vanished from my memory; but the fairy tales I heard
and secretly experienced became firmly impressed on my mind. Education
and life provided for my familiarity with reality in all its harshness
and angles, its strains and hurts; but who in later years could have
flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful and
good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil to
punishment? Even poesy in our times turns from the Castalian fount whose
crystal-clear water becomes an unclean pool and, though reluctantly,
obeys the impulse to make its abode in the dust of reality. Therefore I
plead with voice and pen in behalf of fairy tales; therefore I tell them
to my children and grandchildren, and have even written a volume of them
myself.

How perverse and unjust it is to banish the fairy tale from the life of
the child, because devotion to its charm might prove detrimental to the
grown person! Has not the former the same claim to consideration as the
latter?

Every child is entitled to expect a different treatment and judgment, and
to receive what is his due undiminished. Therefore it is unjust to injure
and rob the child for the benefit of the man. Are we even sure that the
boy is destined to attain the second and third stages--youth and manhood?

True, there are some apostles of caution who deny themselves every joy of
existence while in their prime, in order, when their locks are grey, to
possess wealth which frequently benefits only their heirs.

All sensible mothers will doubtless, like ours, take care that their
children do not believe the stories which they tell them to be true. I do
not remember any time when, if my mind had been called upon to decide, I
should have thought that anything I invented myself had really happened;
but I know that we were often unable to distinguish whether the plausible
tale related by some one else belonged to the realm of fact or fiction.
On such occasions we appealed to my mother, and her answer instantly set
all doubts at rest; for we thought she could never be mistaken, and knew
that she always told the truth.

As to the stories invented by myself, I fared like other imaginative
children. I could imagine the most marvellous things about every member
of the household, and while telling them--but only during that time--I
often fancied that they were true; yet the moment I was asked whether
these things had actually occurred, it seemed as if I woke from a dream.
I at once separated what I had imagined from what I had actually
experienced, and it would never have occurred to me to persist against my
better knowledge. So the vividly awakened power of imagination led
neither me, my brothers and sisters, nor my children and grandchildren
into falsehood.

In after years I abhorred it, not only because my mother would rather
have permitted any other offence to pass unpunished, but because I had an
opportunity of perceiving its ugliness very early in life. When only
seven or eight years old I heard a boy--I still remember his name--tell
his mother a shameless lie about some prank in which I had shared. I did
not interrupt him to vindicate the truth, but I shrank in horror with the
feeling of having witnessed a crime.

If Ludo and I, even in the most critical situations, adhered to the truth
more rigidly than other boys, we "little ones" owe it especially to our
sister Paula, who was always a fanatic in its cause, and even now endures
many an annoyance because she scorns the trivial "necessary fibs" deemed
allowable by society.

True, the interesting question of how far necessary fibs are justifiable
among children, is yet to be considered; but what did we know of such
necessity in our sports in the Thiergarten? From what could a lie have
saved us except a blow from a beloved mother's little hand, which, it is
true, when any special misdeed was punished by a box on the ear, could
inflict a tolerable amount of pain by means of the rings which adorned
it.

There is a tradition that once when she had slapped Paula's pretty face,
the odd child rubbed her cheek and said, with the droll calmness that
rarely deserted her, "When you want to strike me again, mother, please
take off your rings first."

THE GOVERNESS--THE CEMETERY.

During the time we lived in the Thiergarten my mother's hand scarcely
ever touched my face except in a caress. Every memory of her is bright
and beautiful. I distinctly remember how merrily she jested and played
with us, and from my earliest recollections her beloved face always
greets me cheerily. Yet she had moved to the Thiergarten with a heart
oppressed by the deepest sorrow.

I know from the woman who accompanied her there as the governess of the
two eldest children, and became a faithful friend, how deeply she needed
consolation, how completely her feelings harmonized with the widow's
weeds she wore, and in which she is said to have been so beautiful.

The name of this rare woman was Bernhardine Kron. A native of