happened in the holy of holies, my mother's chamber, has remained,
down to the smallest details, permanently engraved upon my soul.

A mother's heart is like the sun--no matter how much light it diffuses,
its warmth and brilliancy never lessen; and though so lavish a flood of
tenderness was poured forth on me, the other children were no losers. But
I was the youngest, the comforter, the nestling; and never was the fact
of so much benefit to me as at that time.

My parents' bed stood in the green room with the bright carpet. It had
been brought from Holland, and was far larger and wider than bedsteads of
the present day. My mother had kept it. A quilted silk coverlet was
spread over it, which felt exquisitely soft, and beneath which one could
rest delightfully. When the time for rising came, my mother called me. I
climbed joyfully into her warm bed, and she drew her darling into her
arms, played all sorts of pranks with him, and never did I listen to more
beautiful fairy tales than at those hours. They became instinct with life
to me, and have always remained so; for my mother gave them the form of
dramas, in which I was permitted to be an actor.

The best one of all was Little Red Riding Hood. I played the little girl
who goes into the wood, and she was the wolf. When the wicked beast had
disguised itself in the grandmother's cap I not only asked the regulation
questions: "Grandmother, what makes you have such big eyes? Grandmother,
why is your skin so rough?" etc., but invented new ones to defer the
grand final effect, which followed the words, "Grandmother, why do you
have such big, sharp teeth?" and the answer, "So that I can eat you,"
whereupon the wolf sprang on me and devoured me--with kisses.

Another time I was Snow-White and she the wicked step-mother, and also
the hunter, the dwarf, and the handsome prince who married her.

How real this merry sport made the distress of persecuted innocence, the
terrors and charm of the forest, the joys and splendours of the fairy
realm! If the flowers in the garden had raised their voices in song, if
the birds on the boughs had called and spoken to me--nay, if a tree had
changed into a beautiful fairy, or the toad in the damp path of our
shaded avenue into a witch--it would have seemed only natural.

It is a singular thing that actual events which happened in those early
days have largely vanished from my memory; but the fairy tales I heard
and secretly experienced becam