The Story of My Life from Childhood to Manhood | Page 3

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."