"Save!" "He'll drown!" Maternal anxiety instantly applied them to the
child-angler, and she darted up the cabin stairs. I need not describe
the state of mind in which she reached the deck, and her emotion when she
found her nestling in his place, still holding the line in his hand.
As the luckless son of Albion was rescued unharmed, we could look back
upon the incident gaily, but neither of us forgot this anxiety--the first
I was to cause my mother.
I have forgotten everything else that happened on our way home; but when
I think of this first journey, a long one for so young a child, and the
many little trips--usually to Dresden, where my grandmother Ebers lived--
which I was permitted to take, I wonder whether they inspired the love of
travel which moved me so strongly later, or whether it was an inborn
instinct. If a popular superstition is correct, I was predestined to
journey. No less a personage than Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the
kindergarten system, called my attention to it; for when I met him for
the first time in the Institute at Keilhau, he seized my curly hair, bent
my head back, gazed at me with his kind yet penetrating eyes, and said:
"You will wander far through the world, my boy; your teeth are wide
apart."
CHAPTER V.
LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE.--EARLY IMPRESSIONS.
Lennestrasse is the scene of the period of my life which began with my
return from Holland. If, coming from the Brandenburg Gate, you follow
the Thiergarten and pass the superb statue of Goethe, you will reach a
corner formed by two blocks of houses. The one on the left, opposite to
the city wall, now called Koniggratz, was then known as
Schulgartenstrasse. The other, on the right, whose windows overlooked
the Thiergarten, bore the name in my childhood of Lennestrasse, which it
owed to Lenne, the park superintendent, a man of great talent, but who
lives in my memory only as a particularly jovial old gentleman. He
occupied No. 1, and was one of my mother's friends. Next to Prince
Packler, he may certainly be regarded as one of the most inventive and
tasteful landscape gardeners of his time. He transformed the gardens of
Sans-Souci and the Pfaueninsel at Potsdam, and laid out the magnificent
park on Babelsberg for Emperor William I, when he was only "Prince of
Prussia." The magnificent Zoological Garden in Berlin is also his work;
but he prided himself most on rendering the Thiergarten a "lung" for the
people, and, spite of many obstacles, materially enlarging it. Every
moment of the tireless man's time was claimed, and besides King Frederick
William IV, who himself uttered many a tolerably good joke, found much
pleasure in the society of the gay, clever Rhinelander, whom he often
summoned to dine with him at Potsdam. Lenne undoubtedly appreciated this
honour, yet I remember the doleful tone in which he sometimes greeted my
mother with, "Called to court again!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account