Sunshine of spring mornings, mist of autumn evenings; but far more morning sun than evening mist! Yes, when I think well upon it, I must admit that altogether morning sun was the rule, and evening mist only the exception. For how any portion of our life--or, indeed, how the background upon which this portion is defined--shall appear in our memory, really depends upon the fact of its having been bright or gloomy in our souls at that time. And in my soul at this time it was growing gradually brighter and brighter, like the increasing light of dawn; one knows not how it is, but what was lying before us confused and indistinguishable, now stands in the fairest order. The wish of my fatherly friend has long been accomplished: in the workhouse I have learned to work. Work has become a necessity for me; I count that day as lost on the evening of which I cannot look back upon a vigorously prosecuted or a completed work. And I have acquired the workman's faculty in every craft; the quick comprehension of what is to be done, the accurate eye, the light forming hand. In the establishment nearly all handicrafts are exercised; and I have tried them nearly all, one by one, and for the most part soon surpassed the old gray-bearded adepts. The superintendent likes to repeat that I am the best workman in the establishment, which makes me at once both proud and humble: proud, for praise from his lips is to me the highest honor I can attain upon earth; humble, for I know that I owe it all to him. He has guided into fixed paths the rude strength that knew neither aim nor limit, and wished to spend its fury in the mastery of rough masses of stone; he has, above all, taught me to regard the share of sound understanding which nature has bestowed upon me, and which they did not know how to deal with at the school, as a precious possession which may even take the place of a bit of genius; or, as he often expressed it with a smile, is perhaps a bit of genius itself. He has never tormented me with things which he soon found out would not suit my brain; he soon discovered that I could never express myself with clearness and fluency in any other than my native German speech, and spared me the learning of foreign languages, except so far as was absolutely necessary. He knows that a sublime passage in the Psalms produces in me the deepest emotion; that I can never satiate myself with reading Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing; but ne never urges me to go beyond this, and discuss the literature of the day with him and Paula. But in recompense he allows me to drink full draughts from the inexhaustible well of his mathematical and physical knowledge; and his favorite recreation is to have me model a machine, or portion of a machine, which his inventive genius has devised, under his eye and guidance, in the little workshop which he fitted up for himself many years ago.