permitted to live longest in close relations with her, was so great and
so decisive, that strangers would only half understand these stories of
my childhood unless I gave a fuller description of her.

These details are intended particularly for my children, my brothers and
sisters, and the dear ones connected with our family by ties of blood and
friendship, but I see no reason for not making them also accessible to
wider circles. There has been no lack of requests from friends that I
should write them, and many of those who listen willingly when I tell
romances will doubtless also be glad to learn something concerning the
life of the fabulist, who, however, in these records intends to silence
imagination and adhere rigidly to the motto of his later life, "To be
truthful in love."

My mother's likeness as a young woman accompanies these pages, and must
spare me the task of describing her appearance. It was copied from the
life-size portrait completed for the young husband by Schadow just prior
to his appointment as head of the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, and now in
the possession of my brother, Dr. Martin Ebers of Berlin. Unfortunately,
our copy lacks the colouring; and the dress of the original, which shows
the whole figure, confirms the experience of the error committed in
faithfully reproducing the fashion of the day in portraits intended for
future generations. It never fully satisfied me; for it very
inadequately reproduces what was especially precious to us in our mother
and lent her so great a charm--her feminine grace, and the tenderness of
heart so winningly expressed in her soft blue eyes.

No one could help pronouncing her beautiful; but to me she was at once
the fairest and the best of women, and if I make the suffering Stephanus
in Homo Sum say, "For every child his own mother is the best mother,"