er people are doing. We were forbidden to laugh, but
after a few days our mother no longer checked our mirth. Of our stay at
Scheveningen I recollect nothing except that the paths in the little
garden of the house we occupied were strewn with shells. We dug a big
hole in the sand on the downs, but I retained no remembrance of the sea
and its majesty, and when I beheld it in later years it seemed as if I
were greeting for the first time the eternal Thalassa which was to become
so dear and familiar to me.

My grandmother, I learned, passed away scarcely a year after the death of
her faithful companion, at the home of her son, a lawyer in The Hague.

Two incidents of the journey back are vividly impressed on my mind. We
went by steamer up the Rhine, and stopped at Ehrenbreitstein to visit old
Frau Mendelssohn, our guardian's mother, at her estate of Horchheim. The
carriage had been sent for us, and on the drive the spirited horses ran
away and would have dashed into the Rhine had not my brother Martin, at
that time eleven years old, who was sitting on the box by the coachman,
saved us.

The other incident is of a less serious nature. I had seen many a salmon
in the kitchen, and resolved to fish for one from the steamer; so I tied
a bit of candy to a string and dropped it from the deck. The fish were so
wanting in taste as to disdain the sweet bait, but my early awakened love
of sport kept me patiently a long time in the same spot, which was
undoubtedly more agreeable to my mother than the bait was to the salmon.
As, protected by the guards, and probably watched by the governess and my
brothers and sisters, I devoted myself to this amusement, my mother went
down into the cabin to rest. Suddenly there was a loud uproar on the
ship. People shouted and screamed, everybody rushed on deck and looked
into the river. Whether I, too, heard the fall and saw the life-boat
manned I don't remember; but I recollect all the more clearly my mother's
rushing frantically from the cabin and clasping me tenderly to her heart
as her rescued child. So the drama ended happily, but there had been a
terrible scene.

Among the steamer's passengers was a crazy Englishman who was being
taken, under the charge of a keeper, to an insane asylum. While my mother
was asleep the lunatic succeeded in eluding this man's vigilance and
plunged into the river. Of course, there was a tumult on board, and my
mother heard cries of "Fallen into the river!"

"S