"God created the world." "What does that mean--to create?" Another voice: "To create means to produce something out of nothing." "Must all people die?" "All people must die." These last words always occupied my thoughts, and constantly worried me. Sometimes I woke at nights from my slumber, and imagined that I heard the question, "Must all people die?" whereupon a voice answered: "All people must die." After that I felt inexpressibly sad. I sat up in my bed, listened to the gentle breathing of my sisters, and wondered which of us would be the first to die. A maddening fear rushed to my heart when I thought that my father and my mother had also to die some day. I could not go to sleep again, but thought about what might happen if such were the case, and suffered so intensely that I screamed aloud. Then one of my parents came to my bed and tried to comfort me, thinking that I had a nightmare. The summer always brought to us a most beautiful event. As soon as the long school holidays began, my mother took us to relations of hers, who lived at a distant village. The journey lasted six hours, and we travelled in the post-coach. In reality one could not even call the place a village, because there was only one house, the home of our relations. It was a mill, and all around it stretched the glorious woods of the lower parts of Austria, sometimes interrupted by lovely meadows, where the grass used to grow to such a height that it towered above our heads. Close by the mill flowed a clear, narrow brook, so narrow in some places that we could quite easily jump over it, in others so wide that we had to wade through it whenever we wanted to cross. In front of the house there was a large kitchen-garden that adjoined a still larger orchard, a spot full of ever new delights. At one time an apple-tree, as if to tease us, would let a beautiful apple fall to our feet; at another time the berries of a shrub would at last begin to show their colouring, and then, again, a wild flower that had opened overnight. At the very end of the garden there was also a beehive. Although afraid of the bees we dared to approach them cautiously, and even advanced to the back of the hive, where little glass windows enabled us to observe the dear, diligent creatures quite closely. Later on, when the children were many and my fathers business slack, these visits had to cease owing to the fact that my parents could no longer afford the price of the post-coach. But the memory of that lovely, quiet spot, connected so closely with a sweet and careless childhood, still arouses sudden sadness and makes me yearn for it.