BOOK 1. I. -GLANCING BACKWARD. II. -MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD III. -ON FESTAL DAYS IV. -THE JOURNEY TO HOLLAND TO ATTEND THE GOLDEN WEDDING V. -LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE--EARLY IMPRESSIONS BOOK 2. VI. -MY INTRODUCTION TO ART, AND ACQUAINTANCES VII. -WHAT A BERLIN CHILD ENJOYED ON THE SPREE AND GRANDMOTHER'S VIII. -THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD IX. -THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH BOOK3. X. -AFTER THE NIGHT OF REVOLUTION XI. -IN KEILHAU XII -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL'S IDEAL OF EDUCATION BOOK 4. XIII. -THE FOUNDERS OF THE KEILHAU INSTITUTE XIV. -IN THE FOREST AND ON THE MOOR. XV. -SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES XVI. -AUTUMN, WINTER, EASTER, AND DEPARTURE BOOK 5. XVII. -THE GYMNASIUM AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF UNIVERSITY LIFE XVIII. -THE TIME OF EFFERVESCENCE AND MY SCHOOLMATES XIX. -A ROMANCE WHICH REALLY HAPPENED XX. -AT THE QUEDLINBURG GYMNASIUM BOOK 6. XXI. -AT THE UNIVERSITY XXII. -THE SHIPWRECK XXIII. -THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE XXIV. -THE APPRENTICESHIP XXV. -THE SUMMERS OF MY CONVALESCENCE XXVI. -CONTINUANCE OF CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL THE STORY OF MY LIFE. BOOK 1. CHAPTER I. GLANCING BACKWARD. Though I was born in Berlin, it was also in the country. True, it was fifty-five years ago; for my birthday was March 1, 1837, and at that time the house--[No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse]--where I slept and played during the first years of my childhood possessed, besides a field and a meadow, an orchard and dense shrubbery, even a hill and a pond. Three big horses, the property of the owner of our residence, stood in the stable, and the lowing of a cow, usually an unfamiliar sound to Berlin children, blended with my earliest recollections. The Thiergartenstrasse--along which in those days on sunny mornings, a throng of people on foot, on horseback, and in carriages constantly moved to and fro--ran past the front of these spacious grounds, whose rear was bounded by a piece of water then called the "Schafgraben," and which, spite of the duckweed that covered it with a dark-green network of leafage, was used for boating in light skiffs. Now a strongly built wall of masonry lines the banks of this ditch, which has been transformed into a deep canal bordered by the handsome houses of the Konigin Augustastrasse, and along which pass countless heavily laden barges called by the Berliners "Zillen." The land where I played in my childhood has long been occupied by the Matthaikirche, the pretty street which bears the same name, and a portion of Konigin Augustastrasse, but the house which we occupied and its larger neighbour are still surrounded by a fine garden. This was an Eden for city children, and my mother had chosen it because she beheld it in imagination flowing with the true Garden of Paradise rivers of health and freedom for her little ones.