the
Ministry of War, we read the words, "National Property." Elsewhere, and
particularly at the palace of the Prince of Prussia, was "Property of
the Citizens" or "Property of the entire Nation."

An excited throng had gathered in front of the plain and simple palace
to whose high ground-floor windows troops of loyal and grateful Germans
have often looked up with love and admiration to see the beloved
countenance of the grey-haired imperial hero. That day we stood among
the crowd and listened to the speech of a student, who addressed us
from the great balcony amid a storm of applause. Whether it was the same
honest fellow who besought the people to desist from their design of
burning the prince's palace because the library would be imperilled,
I do not know, but the answer, "Leave the poor boys their books," is
authentic.

And it is also true, unhappily, that it was difficult to save from
destruction the house of the man whose Hohenzollern blood asserted
itself justly against the weakness of his royal brother. Through those
days of terror he was what he always had been and would remain, an
upright man and soldier, in the highest and noblest meaning of the
words.

What we saw and heard in the palace and its courts, swarming with
citizens and students, was so low and revolting that I dislike to think
of it.

Some of the lifeless heroes were just being borne past on litters,
greeted by the wine-flushed faces of armed students and citizens. The
teachers who had overtaken us on the way recognized among them college
friends who praised the delicious vintage supplied by the palace guards.

My brother and I were also fated to see Frederick William IV. ride down
the Behrenstrasse and the Unter den Linden with a large black, red, and
yellow band around his arm.

The burial of those who had fallen during the night of the revolution
was one of the most imposing ceremonies ever witnessed in Berlin. We
boys were permitted to look at it only for a short time, yet the whole
impression of the procession, which we really ought not to have been
allowed to see, has lingered in my memory.

It was wonderful weather, as warm as summer, and the vast escort which
accompanied the two hundred coffins of the champions of freedom to
their last resting-place seemed endless. We were forbidden to go on the
platform in front of the Neuenkirche where they were placed, but the
spectacle must have produced a strange yet deeply pathetic impression