ys in the country, but I have completely forgotten how we got
home. I only know that we waked the next morning full of happy
recollections.

In the summer holidays we often took journeys--generally to Dresden,
where our father's mother with her daughter, our aunt Sophie, had gone to
live, the latter having married Baron Adolf von Brandenstein, an officer
in the Saxon Guard, who, after laying aside the bearskin cap and red
coat, the becoming uniform of that time, was at the head of the Dresden
post office.

I remember these visits with pleasure, and the days when our grandmother
and aunt came to Berlin. I was fond of both of them, especially my lively
aunt, who was always ready for a joke, and my affection was returned. But
these, our nearest relatives, in early childhood only passed through our
lives like brilliant meteors; the visits we exchanged lasted only a few
days; and when they came to Berlin, in spite of my mother's pressing
invitations, they never stayed at our house, but in a hotel. I cannot
imagine, either, that our grandmother would ever have consented to visit
any one. There was a peculiar exclusiveness about her, I might almost say
a cool reserve, which, although proofs of her cordial love were not
wanting, prevented her from caressing us or playing with us as
grandmothers do. She belonged to another age, and our mother taught us,
when greeting her, to kiss her little white hand, which was always
covered up to the fingers with waving lace, and to treat her with the
utmost deference. There was an air of aristocratic quiet in her
surroundings which caused a feeling of constraint. I can still see the
suite of spacious rooms she occupied, where silence reigned except when
Coco, the parrot, raised his shrill voice. Her companion, Fraulein
Raffius, always lowered her voice in her presence, though when out of it
she could play with us very merrily. The elderly servant, who, singularly
enough, was of noble family--his real name was Von Wurmkessel--did his
duty as noiselessly as a shadow. Then there was a faint perfume of
mignonette in most of the rooms, which makes me think of them whenever I
see the pretty flower, for, as is well known, smell is the most powerful
of all the senses in awakening memory.

I never sat in my grandmother's lap. When we wished to talk with her we
had to sit beside her; and if we kept still she would question us
searchingly about everything--our play, our friends, our school.

This s