On the 13th of March, 1853, we left the paternal roof, to which we should never return. My mother bade us adieu with tears in her eyes; saying, "_Au revoir_ in America!" She was determined to follow us. Dear Mary, here ends my Berlin and European life; and I can assure you that this was the hardest moment I ever knew. Upon my memory is for ever imprinted the street, the house, the window behind which my mother stood waving her handkerchief. Not a tear did I suffer to mount to my eyes, in order to make her believe that the departure was an easy one; but a heart beating convulsively within punished me for the restraint. My father and brothers accompanied us to the _dépôt_, where the cars received us for Hamburg. On our arrival there, we found that the ice had not left the Elbe, and that the ships could not sail until the river was entirely free. We were forced to remain three weeks in Hamburg. We had taken staterooms in the clipper ship "Deutschland." Besides ourselves, there were sixteen passengers in the first cabin; people good enough in their way, but not sufficiently attractive to induce us to make their acquaintance. We observed a dead silence as to who we were, where we were going, or what was the motive of our emigrating to America. The only person that we ever spoke to was a Mr. R. from Hamburg, a youth of nineteen, who, like ourselves, had left a happy home in order to try his strength in a strange land. The voyage was of forty-seven days' duration; excessively stormy, but otherwise very dull, like all voyages of this kind; and, had it not been for the expectations that filled our hearts, we should have died of _ennui_. As it was, the days passed slowly, made worse by the inevitable sea-sickness of our fellow-passengers; and we longed for the hour that should bring us in sight of the shores of the New World. And now commences _my life in America_. "Dear Marie, best Marie! make haste to come upon deck to see America! Oh, how pleasant it is to see the green trees again! How brightly the sun is gilding the land you are seeking,--the land of freedom!" With such childlike exclamations of delight, my sister Anna burst into my cabin to hasten my appearance on deck on the morning of the 22d of May, 1853. The beautiful child of nineteen summers was only conscious of a heart overflowing with pleasure at the sight of the charming landscape that opened before her eyes after a tedious voyage of forty-seven days upon the ocean. We had reached the quarantine at Staten Island. The captain, the old pilot, every one, gazed at her as she danced joyously about the deck, with a mingled feeling of sadness and curiosity; for our reserve while on shipboard had surrounded us with a sort of mystery which none knew how to unravel.