For each one, even Oscar, had his bed, which he had to keep in order; and it was always a fresh pleasure to me to see the little men with their watering-pots and other implements, which they handled with the skill of practiced gardeners. And yet the pleasure which this sight gave me, was not without a touch of sadness. It always brought to my mind my own youth, and how joyless and fruitless it had been in comparison with this, which unfolded itself before me in such fullness of beauty. Who had ever taught me to employ thus usefully my youthful strength? Who, to bring a significance even into my sports? Alas, large and strong as I was, I might have been nourished by the crumbs that fell from this bounteous table. For I had scarcely known my mother, and the deeply melancholy disposition of my father, who was naturally grave, and had been rendered still more gloomy by the loss of his deeply-loved wife, was to a vivacious high-spirited boy at once mysterious and terrible. Later I well understood what then I had but imperfect glimpses of--how deeply and sincerely he desired my welfare, and strove, according to his conscience and knowledge, to be a good father to me; but like Moses, my excellent father was slow of speech, and there was no obliging Aaron at hand to explain to me the reasons of his stern commands. My brother and sister were considerably older than myself. I was eight years old when my brother Fritz, then sixteen, went to sea, and only ten when my sister, who was twenty, was married. My brother was a lively, gay young fellow, and troubled himself about me as little as he did about anybody or anything else in the world; my sister had my father's sternness, but without his feeling. After she was called to take the place of a mother to me, she treated me always with pedantic strictness, and often with petty cruelty. So I took refuge with the old serving-woman who lived in a state of hostility with her, and who, to reward me for my partisanship, told me stories of robbers and ghosts; and when Sarah married, and with her parting kiss proceeded to give me a farewell lecture, I told her in the presence of my father, her husband, and all the wedding-company, that I wanted neither her teaching nor her kiss, and that I was glad that in future I should see and hear of her no more. This was held up as an instance of the most frightful ingratitude on my part; and Justizrath Heckepfennig, who was also present on this occasion, pronounced for the first time his deliberate conviction, which subsequent experience was only too strongly to confirm, that I "would die in my shoes." No one can blame me, if while I looked through the window at my little friends, the wish arose in my mind that I had also been so fortunate, that I had had a father at once so wise and so kind, so gentle and tender a mother, such merry companions in work and play, and above all such a sister.