hoped I would study! There I was placed at the bottom of the
lowest class, and started my education under the most unassuming
auspices.

My mother noted with much interest the slightest signs I might
show of a growing love and ability for my work. She herself,
though not highly educated, always created a lasting impression
on all who really learnt to know her, and displayed a peculiar
combination of practical domestic efficiency and keen
intellectual animation. She never gave one of her children any
definite information concerning her antecedents. She came from
Weissenfels, and admitted that her parents had been bakers
[FOOTNOTE: According to more recent information--mill owners]
there. Even in regard to her maiden name she always spoke with
some embarrassment, and intimated that it was 'Perthes,' though,
as we afterwards ascertained, it was in reality 'Bertz.' Strange
to say, she had been placed in a high-class boarding-school in
Leipzig, where she had enjoyed the advantage of the care and
interest of one of 'her father's influential friends,' to whom
she afterwards referred as being a Weimar prince who had been
very kind to her family in Weissenfels. Her education in that
establishment seems to have been interrupted on account of the
sudden death of this 'friend.' She became acquainted with my
father at a very early age, and married him in the first bloom of
her youth, he also being very young, though he already held an
appointment. Her chief characteristics seem to have been a keen
sense of humour and an amiable temper, so we need not suppose
that it was merely a sense of duty towards the family of a
departed comrade that afterwards induced the admirable Ludwig
Geyer to enter into matrimony with her when she was no longer