CHAPTER III. ON FESTAL DAYS

The celebration of a memorial day by outward forms was one of my
mother's customs; for, spite of her sincerity of feeling, she favoured
external ceremonies, and tried when we were very young to awaken a sense
of their meaning in our minds.

On all festal occasions we children were freshly dressed from top to
toe, and all of us, including the servants, had cakes at breakfast, and
the older ones wine at dinner.

On the birthdays these cakes were surrounded by as many candles as we
numbered years, and provision was always made for a dainty arrangement
of gifts. While we were young, my mother distinguished the "birthday
child"--probably in accordance with some custom of her native
country--by a silk scarf. She liked to celebrate her own birthday, too,
and ever since I can remember--it was on the 25th of July--we had a
picnic at that time.

We knew that it was a pleasure to her to see us at her table on
that day, and, up to the last years of her life, all whose vocations
permitted met at her house on the anniversary.

She went to church on Sunday, and on Good Friday she insisted that
my sisters as well as her self should wear black, not only during the
service, but throughout the rest of the day.

Few children enjoyed a more beautiful Christmas than ours, for under the
tree adorned with special love each found the desire of his or her
heart gratified, while behind the family gift-table there always stood
another, on which several poorer people whom I might call "clients" of
the household, discovered presents which suited their needs. Among them,
up to the time I went as a boy of eleven to Keilhau, I never failed
to see my oldest sister's nurse with her worthy husband, the shoemaker
Grossman, and their well-behaved children. She gladly permitted us to
share in the distribution of the alms liberally bestowed on the needy.
The seeming paradox, "No one ever grew poor by giving," I first heard
from her lips, and she more than once found an opportunity to repeat it.

We, however, never valued her gifts of money so highly as the trouble
and inconveniences she cheerfully encountered to aid or add to the
happiness of others by means of the numerous relations formed in her
social life and the influence gained mainly by her own gracious nature.
Many who are now occupying influential positions owe their first start
or have had the path smoothed for them by her kindness.

As in many Berlin