and obliging to every body in the house. My mother
took us once more to my father's grave in the Dreifaltigkeits cemetery,
where I made many good resolutions. Only the best reports should reach
home from Keilhau, and I had already obtained excellent ones in Berlin.

On the evening of our departure there were numerous kisses and farewell
glances at all that was left behind; but when we were seated in the
car with my mother, rushing through the landscape adorned with the most
luxuriant spring foliage, my heart suddenly expanded, and the pleasure
of travel and delight in the many new scenes before me destroyed every
other feeling.

The first vineyard I saw at Naumburg--I had long forgotten those on the
Rhine--interested me deeply; the Rudelsburg at Kosen, the ruins of a
real ancient castle, pleased me no less because I had never heard Franz
Kugler's song:

"Beside the Saale's verdant strand
Once stood full many a castle grand,
But roofless ruins are they all;
The wind sweeps through from hall to hall;
Slow drift the clouds above,"

which refers to this charming part of the Thuringian hill country. We
were soon to learn to sing it at Keilhau. Weimar was the first goal
of this journey. We had heard much of our classic poets; nay, I knew
Schiller's Bell and some of Goethe's poems by heart, and we had heard
them mentioned with deep reverence. Now we were to see their home, and a
strange emotion took possession of me when we entered it.

Every detail of this first journey has remained stamped on my memory.
I even know what we ordered for supper at the hotel where we spent the
night. But my mother had a severe headache, so we saw none of the sights
of Weimar except the Goethe house in the city and the other one in the
park. I cannot tell what my feelings were, they are too strongly blended
with later impressions. I only know that the latter especially seemed to
me very small. I had imagined the "Goethe House" like the palace of
the Prince of Prussia or Prince Radziwill in Wilhelmstrasse. The Grand
Duke's palace, on the contrary, appeared aristocratic and stately. We
looked at it very closely, because it was the birthplace of the Princess
of Prussia, of whom Fraulein Lamperi had told us so much.

The next morning my mother was well again. The railroad connecting
Weimar and Rudolstadt, near which Keilhau is located, was built long
after, so we continued our journey in an open carriage