XXIII. -THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
XXIV. -THE APPRENTICESHIP
XXV. -THE SUMMERS OF MY CONVALESCENCE
XXVI. -CONTINUANCE OF CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL




THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I.

GLANCING BACKWARD.

Though I was born in Berlin, it was also in the country. True, it was
fifty-five years ago; for my birthday was March 1, 1837, and at that time
the house--[No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse]--where I slept and played during
the first years of my childhood possessed, besides a field and a meadow,
an orchard and dense shrubbery, even a hill and a pond. Three big
horses, the property of the owner of our residence, stood in the stable,
and the lowing of a cow, usually an unfamiliar sound to Berlin children,
blended with my earliest recollections.

The Thiergartenstrasse--along which in those days on sunny mornings, a
throng of people on foot, on horseback, and in carriages constantly moved
to and fro--ran past the front of these spacious grounds, whose rear was
bounded by a piece of water then called the "Schafgraben," and which,
spite of the duckweed that covered it with a dark-green network of