Now a strongly built wall of masonry lines the banks of this ditch, which
has been transformed into a deep canal bordered by the handsome houses of
the Konigin Augustastrasse, and along which pass countless heavily laden
barges called by the Berliners "Zillen."

The land where I played in my childhood has long been occupied by the
Matthaikirche, the pretty street which bears the same name, and a portion
of Konigin Augustastrasse, but the house which we occupied and its larger
neighbour are still surrounded by a fine garden.

This was an Eden for city children, and my mother had chosen it because
she beheld it in imagination flowing with the true Garden of Paradise
rivers of health and freedom for her little ones.

My father died on the 14th of February, 1837, and on the 1st of March of
the same year I was born, a fortnight after the death of the man in whom
my mother was bereft of both husband and lover. So I am what is termed a
"posthumous" child. This is certainly a sorrowful fate; but though there
were many hours, especially in the later years of my life, in which I
longed for a father, it often seemed to me a noble destiny and one worthy
of the deepest gratitude to have been appointed, from the first moment of
my existence, to one of the happiest tasks, that of consolation and
cheer.

It was to soothe a mother's heartbreak that I came in the saddest hours
of her life, and, though my locks are now grey, I have not forgotten the
joyful moments in which that dear mother hugged her fatherless little
one, and among other pet names called him her "comfort child."