It concerns the departure of my little brother’s wet-nurse, which took place when I could not have been more than two years and a half old. She was so unhappy at leaving, and wept so bitterly while being shown the big pile of house-linen which my mother gave her as a present, I thought I would find something better to console her, and rushing off to the nursery, I returned with one of my dearest possessions, a little doll’s tea-kettle, which I tried to thrust into her hand. I can see distinctly her look of amazement, as she smiled through her tears, and hear the tone of my mother’s voice, saying,--“But what good can that be to her?” I felt as if I had had a bucket of cold water thrown over me, and I turned away with my treasure, disappointed and mortified at the fruitlessness of my good intentions. So I kept my poor little tea-kettle, and in course of time my own child played with it, as with many of my dolls and other playthings, with such affection had they been preserved. I may surely claim to have ever shown fidelity to the past, and as for my memory, I might liken it to lava, on which every impression from without, stamping itself at white-heat, is indelibly engraven for all time. How well I remember the melancholy Christmas we spent that year in Bonn without my father, his absence taking all the joy out of the festival, in spite of my mother’s efforts to prevent the happiness of others being dimmed by her own sadness. It was the very moment when the American mail was due, and on Christmas Eve we waited and waited, everyone hoping that at least the amount of gladness a letter could give might still be hers. And the last post did bring the expected missives, the well-known thin, pale blue envelopes, which Fräulein von Preen quickly tied on with red ribbons to the Christmas-tree. But at the sight of the handwriting my mother fairly broke down, and it was some time before she had recovered her composure sufficiently to collect, as was her habit, the whole household, children, friends, and the old servants round her, to listen with rapt attention to the interesting description of scenes in the New World which those pages contained.