hat' ich Dir gewunden
In Bluethenduft den Kranz zu diesem neuen Jahr,
Der schoener noch als der am Hochzeittage war._

_Ich zuerne, traun, dass itzt der kalte Nord regieret,
Und jedes Bluemchens Keim in kalter Erde frieret!
Doch eines frieret nicht, es ist mein liebend Herz;_
Dein _ist es, theilt mit Dir die Freuden und den Schmerz.'_]

'The Seven-Years War threw the young Wife into manifold anxiety and
agitation; especially since she had become a Mother, and in fear for
the life of her tenderly-loved Husband, had to tremble for the Father
of her children too. To this circumstance Christophine ascribes,
certainly with some ground, the world-important fact that her Brother
had a much weaker constitution than herself. He had in fact been
almost born in a camp. In late Autumn 1759, the Infantry Regiment of
Major-General Romann, in which Caspar Schiller was then a Lieutenant,
had, for sake of the Autumn Manoeuvres of the Wuertemberg Soldiery,
taken Camp in its native region. The Mother had thereupon set out from
Marbach to visit her long-absent Husband in the Camp; and it was in
his tent that she felt the first symptoms of her travail. She rapidly
hastened back to Marbach; and by good luck still reached her Father's
house in the Market-Place there, near by the great Fountain; where
she, on the 11th November, was delivered of a Boy. For almost four
years the little Friedrich with Christophine and Mother continued in
the house of the well-contented Grandparents (who had not yet fallen
poor), under her exclusive care. With self-sacrificing love and
careful fidelity, she nursed her little Boy; whose tender body had to
suffer not only from the common ailments of children, but was heavily
visited with fits of cramp. In a beautiful region, on the bosom of a
tender Mother, and in these first years far from the oversight of a
rigorous Father, the Child grew up, and unfolded himself under
cheerful and harmonious impressions.

'On the return of his Father from the War, little Fritz, now four
years old, was quite the image of his Mother; long-necked, freckled
and reddish-haired like her. It was the pious Mother's work, too,
that a feeling of religion, early and vivid, displayed itself in him.
The easily-receptive Boy was indeed keenly attentive to all that his
Father, in their Family-circle, read to them, and inexhaustible in
questions till he had rightly caught the meaning of it: but he
listened with most e