Directly it was possible, his lessons had begun again, for that was indeed the best, the only means of abstracting his thoughts, diverting them entirely from his own condition. The letters that I have from him, during a few weeks’ absence from home about this time, point to the extraordinary self-command he had attained, whilst they also display most remarkable and varied intellectual interests. In some he tells me of his botanical studies and the experiments in horticulture that already so deeply interested him, in others, he spoke of the lectures on Art and Literature, which it had been arranged for different professors to give for his benefit. But Nature and her works he loved best of all, and I treasure the tiny little album he gave me about this time, in which specimens of various mosses were most beautifully arranged, together with a charming little essay, “My Love for the Leaves,” a complete dissertation on all his favourite plants and trees, carefully enumerated, and their foliage described in every detail. But his sufferings grew worse, the attacks of pain succeeding one another more frequently, and on Ascension Day of that same year every faint hope of his ultimate recovery was taken from us. The surgeon, by whom the last operation had been performed, discovered, on examining him again, in addition to the original organic trouble, the existence of a very large internal tumour, and pronounced that in his opinion Otto could not possibly last another year. At the same time, my father’s lungs were subjected to thorough examination, with the alarming result that in his case also the doctor declared no hope of recovery to exist, and that he could hardly be expected to live more than two years longer. Oh! that terrible Ascension Day! what a blight was cast over all our hearts! And the fearful attacks of pain went on, increasing in duration and in intensity, and giving the poor child an opportunity of displaying almost superhuman courage and endurance, above all in his constant and heroic efforts to hide some part of his sufferings from his beloved mother, whose anguish was indeed almost unendurable. But between the paroxysms, ever the same sweet serenity, even cheerfulness, and an immediate resumption of the study or occupation interrupted just before. His activity and energy were unbounded; he was always at work, either carving, pasting or cutting out; his hands were never at rest.