ere is pleasure in admiration, pleasure even in
being stunned by the first sight of the life in the streets of Paris
or London. I certainly have been a great admirer all my life, and I
ascribe this disposition to the small surroundings of my early years
at Dessau.

And so it was with everything else. Having admired our
Cavalier-Strasse, I could admire all the more the Boulevards in Paris,
and Regent Street in London. Having enjoyed our small theatre, I stood
aghast at the Grand Opera, and at Drury Lane. This power of admiration
and enjoyment extended even to dinners and other domestic amusements.
Having been brought up on very simple fare, I fully enjoyed the
dinners which the Old East India Company gave, when we sat down about
400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid for each guest. I
mention this because I feel that not only has the Spartan diet of my
early years given me a relish all through life for convivial
entertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a head, but that the
general self-denial which I had to exercise in my youth has made me
feel a constant gratitude and sincere appreciation for the small
comforts of my later years.

I remember the time when I woke with my breath frozen on my bedclothes
into a thin sheet of ice. We were expected to wash and dress in an
attic where the windows were so thickly frozen as to admit hardly any
light in the morning, and where, when we tried to break the ice in the
jug, there were only a few drops of water left at the bottom with
which to wash. No wonder that the ablutions were expeditious. After
they were performed we had our speedy breakfast, consisting of a cup
of coffee and a _semmel_ or roll, and then we rushed to school, often
through the snow that had not yet been swept away from the pavement.
We sat in school from eight to eleven or twelve, rushed home again,
had our very simple dinner, and then back to school, from two to four.
How we lived through it I sometimes wonder, for we were thinly clad
and often wet with rain or snow; and yet we enjoyed our life as boys
only can enjoy it, and had no time to be ill. One blessing this early
roughing has left me for life--a power of enjoying many things which
to most of my friends are matters of course or of no consequence. The
background of my life at Dessau and at Leipzig may seem dark, but it
has only served to make the later years of my life all the brighter
and warmer.

The more I think about that dist