certain evening at Potsdam when the bells of the little church of Sakrow
seemed to bid farewell to the sinking sun and invite him to return.

In the East I have seen the day-star set more brilliantly, but never met
with a more harmonious and lovely splendour of colour than on summer
evenings in the Mark, except in Holland on the shore of the North Sea.

Can I ever forget those festal days when, after saying our little
congratulatory verses to our mother, and admiring her birthday table,
which her friends always loaded with flowers, we awaited the carriages
that were to take us into the country? Besides a great excursion wagon,
there were generally some other coaches which conveyed us and the
families of our nearest friends on our jaunt.

How the young faces beamed, and how happy the old ones looked, and what
big baskets there were full of good things beside the coachman and behind
the carriage!

We were soon out of the city, and the birds by the wayside could not have
twittered and sung in May more gaily than we during these drives.

Once we let the horses rest, and took luncheon at Stimming near the
Wannsee, where Heinrich von Kleist with the beloved of his heart put an
end to his sad life. Before we stopped we met a troop of travelling
journeymen, and our mother, in the gratitude of her heart, threw them a
thaler, and said "Drink to my happiness; to-day is my birthday."

When we had rested and gone on quite a distance we found the journeymen
ranged beside the road, and as they threw into the carriage an immense
bouquet of field flowers which they had gathered, one of them exclaimed: