and all of us, including the servants, had cakes at breakfast, and the
older ones wine at dinner.

On the birthdays these cakes were surrounded by as many candles as we
numbered years, and provision was always made for a dainty arrangement of
gifts. While we were young, my mother distinguished the "birthday child"
--probably in accordance with some custom of her native country--by a
silk scarf. She liked to celebrate her own birthday, too, and ever since
I can remember--it was on the 25th of July--we had a picnic at that time.

We knew that it was a pleasure to her to see us at her table on that day,
and, up to the last years of her life, all whose vocations permitted met
at her house on the anniversary.

She went to church on Sunday, and on Good Friday she insisted that my
sisters as well as her self should wear black, not only during the
service, but throughout the rest of the day.

Few children enjoyed a more beautiful Christmas than ours, for under the
tree adorned with special love each found the desire of his or her heart
gratified, while behind the family gift-table there always stood another,
on which several poorer people whom I might call "clients" of the
household, discovered presents which suited their needs. Among them, up
to the time I went as a boy of eleven to Keilhau, I never failed to see
my oldest sister's nurse with her worthy husband, the shoemaker Grossman,
and their well-behaved children. She gladly permitted us to share in the
distribution of the alms liberally bestowed on the needy. The seeming
paradox, "No one ever grew poor by giving," I first heard from her lips,
and she more than once found an opportunity to repeat it.