in light skiffs.

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."

She told me also that posthumous children were always Fortune's
favorites, and in her wise, loving way strove to make me early familiar
with the thought that God always held in his special keeping those
children whose fathers he had taken before their birth. This confidence
accompanied me through all my after life.

As I have said, it was long before I became aware that I lacked anything,
especially any blessing so great as a father's faithful love and care;
and when life showed to me also a stern face and imposed heavy burdens,
my courage was strengthened by my happy confidence that I was one of
Fortune's favorites, as others are buoyed up by their firm faith in their
"star."

When the time at last came that I longed to express the emotions of my
soul in verse, I embodied my mother's prediction in the lines:

The child who fi