y crest and the motto "Labore," a splendid
family Bible of about my own weight and size, a costly edition of
Byron's "Childe Harold" and ditto of Milton's "Paradise Lost and
Regained," and a number of other things doubly delightful and gratifying
to my juvenile mind, because they always came at least three or four
years before I knew how to use them.

My good godfather had ushered me into this world, from which
unfortunately he was himself called away before he had had many
opportunities of performing the duties he had undertaken when he pledged
himself to see to it that I should "renounce the devil and all his
works."

When after many weeks of hard fighting with the scarlet enemy, and after
having passed through various relapses and complications, I emerged from
the sick-room, I was taken to Brighton for a complete change of air.
There I soon found new life and strength. Dear old Brighton! I was to
find new life and strength there once more, thirty years later, when I
met the young lady who said she would--when I asked her to marry me.

My next station was Hamburg. I was sent there to get the benefit of a
thorough change of air, and to improve my German. It was shortly after
the terrible conflagration which had laid low a great part of the city.

The jagged walls, springing in fantastic forms from immense piles of
crumbling masonry and charred timber, had a weird fascination for me. I
was deeply in sympathy with my beloved friend Architecture, and deplored
the fate that had overtaken some of the best buildings, but at the same
time I was lost in admiration of the beauties, now picturesque, now
awe-inspiring, which the caprice of the destructive element had stamped
on crazy walls and tangled masses of wreckage.

I have since been similarly impressed; in Pompeii first, and again in
Paris, after the Commune; only to be sure the former scene of
devastation I saw neatly put in order and made presentable for the
visitor, whereas the latter was yet smoking and all besmirched with the
blood of the sorely visited Parisians.

My father had given a concert for the benefit of the sufferers in
Hamburg, and was able to contribute a sum of L643 to the relief fund
raised.

On my arrival I was received with open arms by my relatives. My
grandfather, Adolf Embden, had been staying with us more than once, and
he was particularly partial to his grandson, because he had a marked
predilection for England and everything that was Engl