"With all my youthful gaiety I was still very earnest-minded. Our mother, who had been dead only three years, was often spoken of; we had learnt a quantity of funeral hymns, and at six years old I certainly thought more frequently of death and immortality than many youths, or even men. What was to become of animals after death, I had not thought of till I was five years old. Then I happened to see a dead dog in the city moat, and asked our teacher about it. 'There is no immortality for dogs,' he answered, which made me indescribably sorrowful. It was a Sunday evening. I told it to my nurse, and wept bitterly. "At Easter, in 1780, our new teacher came. He had considerable knowledge, and lived very quiet and retired, as he secretly reckoned himself one of the Moravian brothers. We clung to him with deep love, for he devoted himself entirely to us. With no other man did we prefer walking; and all his conversation was instructive, for the most part religious. His endeavours to conceal from us his inclination for that sect which my father hated, gave an air of mystery to his words. We gained much in serious feeling through him. He accustomed us not to speak lightly of God or Jesus; and on his departure, at the end of two years, we were so well grounded in this that months passed without our once falling into this error, and when it did happen we sorrowed secretly with deep repentance; we left our most amusing game and prayed right heartily; we were, indeed, ourselves at last inclined to Pietism, for all worldly pleasures were condemned, or looked upon as injurious dissipations. So-called books of amusement, bordering upon novels, were considered good for nothing; even Gellert's dramas were reckoned among his youthful sins; places of amusement--balls, worldly concerts--were workshops of the devil! Only oratorios were bearable. Comedies were undoubted sins against the Holy Ghost. On my brother, who was naturally inclined for melancholy, these opinions took far deeper hold; he wept often in secret over his sins, as he called them. I envied him for this, considering myself as a reprobate and him as a child of God; but with all my endeavours I could not succeed in being so correct! I continually rejoiced at the sorrowful emotions which often overcame my soft heart. "Still, still do I consecrate to thee my thanks, thou good and righteous teacher! Thou wast the most faithful shepherd of thy little flock! He lives still, near eighty years of age. For thirty years I have only once seen him, but last year, when my brother died, he wrote me a letter, full of faith and piety. In a dream--he attached much importance to dreams--he had visited our house on the day of the death of my brother, his Ernst. It is touching to read his assurances that his convictions were the same as they had been forty years before.