old oak tree, started from an invisible stem, or an invisible
seed, or from an invisible thought, and that divine thought was man,
as the other divine thought had been rose.

Perhaps I did not see it so fully then as I see it now, and I
certainly did not reason about it. I simply felt that in the death of
my little friend, something of myself had gone, though she was no
relation, but only a stray human friend. We see many things as
children which we cannot see as grown-up men and women, for, as
Longfellow said, "the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts." Nay,
I feel convinced that He who spoke the parable of the vine had seen
the same vision when He said: "I am the vine, ye are the branches.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me."
And it is on this vision, or this parable of the vine, that
immediately afterwards follows the lesson, "Love one another, as I
have loved you." In loving one another we are in truth loving the
others as ourselves, as one with ourselves; and while we are loving
Him who is the vine, we are loving the branches, ourselves--aye, even
our own little selves.

Such vague visions or intuitions often remain with us for life, but
while they seem to be the same, they vary as we vary ourselves. We
imagine we saw their deepest meaning from the first, but, like a
parable, they gain in meaning every time they come back to us.

CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AT DESSAU

In a small town such as Dessau was when I lived there as a child and
as a boy, one lived as in an enchanted island. The horizon was very
narrow, and nothing happened to disturb the peace of the little oasis.
The Duchy was indeed a little oasis in the large desert of Central
Germany. The landscape was beautiful: there were rivers small and
large--the Mulde and the Elbe; there were magnificent oak forests;
there were regiments of firs standing in regular columns like so many
grenadiers; there were parks such as one sees in England only. The
town, the capital of the Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, had been cared for by
successive rulers--men mostly far in advance of their time--who had
read and travelled, and brought home the best they could find abroad.
Their old castle, centuries old, over-awed the town; it was by far the
largest building, though there were several other smaller places in
the town for members of the ducal family. All the public bui