As far back as my recollections go, Weizchen was always an inmate of my paternal home, having very soon followed my mother there after the latter’s marriage. From the very first my mother was accompanied by Louise von Preen, as lady-in-waiting, and very amusing tales were told afterwards of the home-sickness of the two young things--barely eighteen years of age either of them--in their new surroundings. When my mother in a moment of loneliness rushed to Louise’s room for comfort, she found the poor girl seated among her boxes, which she had not yet had the heart to have unpacked, crying her eyes out. They sobbed together, sighing as they gazed at the distant hills, beyond which lay their old home. And yet that home was not in reality so very far away, and at the present day could easily be reached in a couple of hours, though to their romantic feelings they seemed to be pining for it in distant exile! Very soon, however, the young bride was cheered by a visit from her brothers, and after that gay days began for Neuwied, the castle often resounding with the happy voices and ringing laughter of the merry young people assembled within its walls. But it was from Weizchen that we loved to hear anecdotes of my mother’s childhood. When she was only three years old her life was saddened by the loss of the little brother, just a year older than herself, who had been her constant companion. During his illness it was the poor little boy’s one delight to make his sister dance to the accompaniment of a toy harmonica he played, propped up among the pillows in his bed, and Weizchen said it was the prettiest sight to see the little girl, whose movements had already all the lightness and natural grace which afterwards earned for her the sobriquet of the Rhineland Fairy at the court of Berlin, dancing away indefatigably for the pleasure of the poor sick child, whose eyes wore a most pathetic expression as they watched her. Sad and lonely the little girl was, when the brother had gone. The lives of little princes were indeed lonely enough at the best of times in those days, for once out of the nursery they saw but little of one another, not even having their meals in common, but each child brought up quite apart from the rest with a special tutor or governess, with whom the repasts were taken, _tête-à-tête_, and to whose tender mercies the pupil was somewhat ruthlessly abandoned. In my own early childhood we still experienced the inconveniences of this system of education, but the transition to more rational and humane treatment of the young was already taking place, and children even of the highest rank now-a-days lead happy natural lives, associating with others of their age and constantly seeing their parents, of whom they no longer stand in dread. Quite early we came to table with our parents, but that was very uncommon, and in an older generation still would have been thought impossible. Of course in very many cases the instruction children