The story of Einstein's life begins at Ulm, the town which possesses the highest building in Germany. Gladly would I stand on the belfry of the Ulm Cathedral in order to obtain a general survey of Einstein's youth. But the view discloses nothing beyond the bare fact that he was born there in March 1879. The detail which has already been mentioned above, namely, that it was something physical that first arrested the child's attention, remains to be noted. His father once showed the infant, as he lay in his cot, a compass, simply with the idea of amusing him--and in the five-year-old boy the swinging metal needle awakened for the first time the greatest wonderment about unknown cohesive forces, a wonderment that was an index of the research spirit that was still lying dormant in his consciousness. The remembrance of this psychical event has a significant meaning for the Einstein of to-day. In him all the impressions of early childhood seem to be still vivid, the more so as all other physical occurrences, such as the falling of an unsupported body, left no impression on him. His attention was fixed on the compass, and the compass alone. This instrument addressed him in oracular language, indicating to him an electromagnetic field that was in later years to serve him as a domain for fruitful research. His father, who had a sunny, optimistic temperament, and was inclined towards a somewhat aimless existence, at this time moved the seat of the family from Ulm to Munich. They here lived in a modest house in an idyllic situation and surrounded by a garden. The pure joy of Nature entered into the heart of the boy, a feeling that is usually foreign to the youthful inhabitants of cities of dead stone. Nature whispered song to him, and at the coming of the spring-tide infused his being with joy, to which he resigned himself in happy contemplation. A religious undercurrent of feeling made itself manifest in him, and it was strengthened by the elementary stimulus of the scented air, of buds and bushes, to which was added the educational influence of home and school. This was not because ritualistic habits reigned in the family. But it had so happened that he learned simultaneously the teachings of the Jewish as well as the Catholic Church; and he had extracted from them that which was common and conducive to a strengthening of faith, and not what conflicted.