We were soon to learn by experience the number of days required to reach
my mother's home from Berlin, for there was then no railroad to Holland.

The remarkable changes wrought during my lifetime in the political
affairs of Germany I can merely indicate here. I was born in despotic
Prussia, which was united to Austria and the German states and small
countries by a loosely formed league. As guardians of this wretched
unity the various courts sent diplomats to Frankfort, who interrupted
their careless mode of life only to sharpen distrust of other courts or
suppress some democratic movement.

The Prussian nation first obtained in 1848 the liberties which had been
secured at an earlier date by the other German states, and nothing gives
me more cause for gratitude than the boon of being permitted to see the
realization and fulfilment of the dream of so many former generations,
and my dismembered native land united into one grand, beautiful whole. I
deem it a great happiness to have been a contemporary of Emperor William
I, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, witnessed their great deeds as a man of
mature years, and shared the enthusiasm they evoked and which enabled
these men to make our German Fatherland the powerful, united empire it
is to-day.

The journey to Holland closes the first part of my childhood. I look
back upon it as a beautiful, unshadowed dream out of doors or in a
pleasant house where everybody loved me. But I could not single out the
years, months, or days of this retrospect. It is only a smooth stream
which bears us easily along. There is no series of events, only
disconnected images--a faithful dog, a picture on the wall, above all the
love and caresses of the mother lavished specially on me as the youngest,