rst beholds the light of day
After his father's eyes are closed for aye,
Fortune will guard from every threatening ill,
For God himself a father's place will fill.

People often told me that as the youngest, the nestling, I was my
mother's "spoiled child"; but if anything spoiled me it certainly was not
that. No child ever yet received too many tokens of love from a sensible
mother; and, thank Heaven, the word applied to mine. Fate had summoned
her to be both father and mother to me and my four brothers and
sisters-one little brother, her second child, had died in infancy--and
she proved equal to the task. Everything good which was and is ours we
owe to her, and her influence over us all, and especially over me, who
was afterward permitted to live longest in close relations with her, was
so great and so decisive, that strangers would only half understand these
stories of my childhood unless I gave a fuller description of her.

These details are intended particularly for my children, my brothers and
sisters, and the dear ones connected with our family by ties of blood and
friendship, but I see no reason for not making them also accessible to
wider circles. There has been no lack of requests from friends that I
should write them, and many of those who listen willingly when I tell
romances will doubtless also be glad to learn something concerning the
life of the fabulist, who, however, in these records intends to silence
imagination and adhere rigidly to the motto of his later life, "To be
truthful in love."

My mother's likeness as a young woman accompanies these pages, and must
spare me the task of describing her appearance. It was copied from the
life-size portrait completed for the young husband by Schadow just prior
to his appointment as head of the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, and now in
the possession of my brother, Dr. Martin Ebers of Berlin. Unfortunately,
our copy lacks the colouring; and the dress of the original, which shows
the whole figure, confirms the experience of the error committed in
faithfully reproducing the fashion of the day in portraits intended for
future generations. It never fully satisfied me; for it very inadequately
reproduces what was especially precious to us in our mother and lent her
so great a charm--her feminine grace, and the tenderness of heart so
winningly expressed in her soft blue eyes.

No one could help pronouncing her beautiful; but to me she was at once