Indeed, I do not remember much about them. I must have seen many
strange and beautiful sights, but they meant little to me. When the
soul is young it does not take root in surroundings too vast and does
not absorb the beautiful. I have a clearer recollection of certain
picture books, of little cosy corners in the rooms we inhabited, of a
small pewter can which I had found on the road and from which I would
never be parted - not even when I went to bed than of the countries or
cities we traversed.

True, I must have absorbed some of the wonderful things about me, for
they undoubtedly furnished me with the material of which my dreams,
about which I shall tell you further on, were woven. But as a boy I
took no pleasure whatever in travelling. I longed for my mother, and
for our country house, where I could play with my little sister under
the airy open galleries in the rose garden or build dams in the brook.
Only the journeying by rail, a novelty at that time, interested me the
first few times, and above all the trip across the ocean to America,
when Philadelphia and Chicago were only small places, and crossing the
ocean by steamboat was still considered a perilous and risky
undertaking.

Only of certain moments with lasting significance have I retained a
sharper recollection. Thus I remember a miserable day somewhere in Asia
Minor. We had both been ill from tainted food, my father and I, and had
lain helpless in a most wretched tavern. Meanwhile thieves had stolen
all our belongings, and when we wanted to journey on we could get no
horses, for the inhabitants feared the thieves and their vengeance
should we accuse them. Amidst a troop of dirty, eagerly debating
Syrians in a scorching hot street I stood at my father's side peering
into his wan face, sallow and drawn from the illness, with glistening