country--by
a silk scarf. She liked to celebrate her own birthday, too, and ever
since I can remember--it was on the 25th of July--we had a picnic at that
time.

We knew that it was a pleasure to her to see us at her table on that day,
and, up to the last years of her life, all whose vocations permitted met
at her house on the anniversary.

She went to church on Sunday, and on Good Friday she insisted that my
sisters as well as her self should wear black, not only during the
service, but throughout the rest of the day.

Few children enjoyed a more beautiful Christmas than ours, for under the
tree adorned with special love each found the desire of his or her heart
gratified, while behind the family gift-table there always stood another,
on which several poorer people whom I might call "clients" of the
household, discovered presents which suited their needs. Among them, up
to the time I went as a boy of eleven to Keilhau, I never failed to see
my oldest sister's nurse with her worthy husband, the shoemaker Grossman,
and their well-behaved children. She gladly permitted us to share in the
distribution of the alms liberally bestowed on the needy. The seeming
paradox, "No one ever grew poor by giving," I first heard from her lips,
and she more than once found an opportunity to repeat it.

We, however, never valued her gifts of money so highly as the trouble and
inconveniences she cheerfully encountered to aid or add to the happiness
of others by means of the numerous relations formed in her social life
and the influence gained mainly by her own gracious nature. Many who are
now occupying influential positions owe their first start or have had the
path smoothed for them by her kindness.

As in many Berlin families, the Christmas Man came to us--an old man
disguised by a big beard and provided with a bag filled with nuts and
bonbons and sometimes trifling gifts. He addressed us in a feigned voice,
saying that the Christ Child had sent him, but the dainties he had were
intended only for the good children who could recite some thing for him.
Of course, provision for doing this had been made. Everybody pressed
forward, but the Christmas Man kept order, and only when each had
repeated a little verse did he open the bag and distribute its contents
among us.

Usually the Christmas Man brought a companion, who followed him in the
guise of Knecht Ruprecht with his own bag of presents, and mingled with
his jests threats against