I was born in a small village called Dessau, at the very time when the portentous comet, with its luminous tail, threatened the affrighted inhabitants of my native country with pestilence, famine, war, and all the attendant train of misery. I mean in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ----. Whoever is the least acquainted with the history of that comet will not be at a loss how to find out the remaining figures to complete the year of my birth. My father, Heaven have mercy upon his soul! was an honest good kind of man, and obliged to maintain himself, his wife, my sisters, and me, with the produce of his earnings; his name was Encke; his profession that of a trumpeter. Our mode of living was such as behoved the family of a man in his humble line, and had not my mother, at intervals, found means to make a few perquisites, we might have fared still worse. But, dear woman! she was an industrious being, and would contrive it so as to enable my honest father to sit down to a joint of meat, at least, twice or thrice a week. This my poor father liked very well, and would pay his dear partner many a well deserved compliment on the occasion. My father had lately been called to Potsdam, to be one of his Royal Highness’s band of music, in consequence of which we fixed our abode at Berlin. In the capital my mother continued her former trade, and had very good custom for herself, whilst at the same time she would never neglect any occasion of clandestinely making some good bargain or other for my eldest sister and me, either with some young wealthy debauchee, or an old married man; these bargains produced watches, clothes, cash, &c. In this way of living, in a kind of style, without much concern, my father was highly pleased; yet, every now and then, he would--and Heaven knows why--fly into a violent fit of passion, and, in those fits, would generally make use of a kind of manual argument to convince my good industrious mother of her duty as a wife. The fourteenth anniversary of my birth happened to fall on the twenty-ninth day of the month of February, Bissextile, when my father entered upon an argument of this impressive nature, and his passion rose so high that it killed him on the spot. My mother was now a widow, and we all prospered beyond our warmest expectation. Our father being gone, we immediately hoisted our colours publicly at Berlin, and why should we not, as our reputation was pretty well established, and known all over the town? Our good mother’s province was to hold out the lure to empty the purses of unwary youth, and to pluck up by the root the very last feather of the conceited fool; all this was performed on a methodical system. Our house was a sort of rendezvous, where the Jew and the Christian could assemble without any interruption.