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The Story of My Life — Volume 01 by Georg Ebers
page 39 of 55 (70%)
I repeated my little verse. I can still see myself in a short pink
skirt, with a wreath of roses on my fair curls, wings on my shoulders, a
quiver on my back, and a bow in my hand, standing before the mirror very
much pleased with my appearance. Our governess had composed little
Cupid's speech, my mother had drilled me thoroughly in it, so I do not
remember a moment of anxiety and embarrassment, but merely that it
afforded me the purest, deepest pleasure to be permitted to do something.

I must have behaved with the utmost ease before the spectators, many of
whom I knew, for I can still hear the loud applause which greeted me, and
see myself passed from one to another till I fled from the kisses and pet
names of grandparents, aunts, and cousins to my mother's lap. Of the
bride and groom of this golden wedding I remember only that my
grandfather wore short trousers called 'escarpins' and stockings reaching
to the knee. My grandmother, spite of her sixty-six years--she married
before she was seventeen--was said to look remarkably pretty. Later I
often saw the heavy white silk dress strewn with tiny bouquets which she
wore as a bride and again remodelled at her silver wedding; for after her
death it was left to my mother. Modern wedding gowns are not treasured
so long. I have often wondered why I recollect my grandfather so
distinctly and my grandmother so dimly. I have a clear idea of her
personal appearance, but this I believe I owe much more to her portrait
which hung in my mother's room beside her husband's, and is now one of my
own most cherished possessions. Bradley, one of the best English
portrait painters, executed it, and all connoisseurs pronounce it a
masterpiece.

This festival lives in my memory like the fresh spring morning of a day
whose noon is darkened by clouds, and which ends in a heavy thunderstorm.

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