rt. Fish was equally cheap,
and such, at the beginning of the century, was the abundance of salmon
caught in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that it was
stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should not have salmon more
than twice or thrice in the week. The lowest price for salmon was
then twopence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remember seeing the
salmon in large numbers leap over a weir in the very town of Dessau,
and though they had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was
very good, though not so good as Severn salmon. Game also was very
cheap, and sold for not much more than mutton, nay, at certain times
it was given away; it could not be exported. Corn was sold at three
shillings per _Scheffel_, and by corn was chiefly meant rye. No one
took wheaten bread, and the bread was therefore called brown bread and
black bread. White bread was only taken with coffee, and peasants in
the villages would not have touched it, because it was not supposed to
make such strong bones as rye-bread. With such prices we can
understand that a salary of L300 was considered sufficient for the
highest officers of state.

My mother's relations, who were all high in the public service, my
grandfather, as I said, being the Duke's chief minister, made life
more easy and pleasant for us; but for many years my mother never went
into society, and our society consisted of members of our own family
only. All I remember of my mother at that time was that she took her
two children day after day to the beautiful _Gottesacker_ (God's
Acre), where she stood for hours at our father's grave, and sobbed and
cried. It was a beautiful and restful place, covered with old acacia
trees. The inscription over the gateway was one of my earliest
puzzles. _Tod ist nicht Tod, ist nur Veredlung menschlicher Natur_
(Death is not death, 'tis but the ennobling of man's nature). On each
side there stood a figure, representing the genius of sleep and the
genius of death. All this was the work of the old Duke, Leopold
Friedrich Franz, who tried to educate his people as he had educated
himself, partly by travel, partly by intercourse with the best men he
could attract to Dessau.

[Illustration: MY MOTHER]

At home the atmosphere was certainly depressing to a boy. I heard and
thought more about death than about life, though I knew little of
course of what life or death meant. I had but few pleasures, and my
chief happiness was to be with my moth