old us that our dear grandfather was dead.

Children cannot understand the terrible solemnity of death. This is
a gift bestowed by their guardian angels, that no gloomy shadows may
darken the sunny brightness of their souls.

I saw only that cheerful faces were changed to sad ones, that the
figures about us moved silently in sable robes and scarcely noticed
us. On the tables in the nursery, where our holiday garments were made,
black clothes were being cut for us also, and I remember having my
mourning dress fitted. I was pleased because it was a new one. I tried
to manufacture a suit for my Berlin Jack-in-the-box from the scraps that
fell from the dressmaker's table. Nothing amuses a child so much as to
imitate what older people are doing. We were forbidden to laugh, but
after a few days our mother no longer checked our mirth. Of our stay
at Scheveningen I recollect nothing except that the paths in the little
garden of the house we occupied were strewn with shells. We dug a big
hole in the sand on the downs, but I retained no remembrance of the sea
and its majesty, and when I beheld it in later years it seemed as if
I were greeting for the first time the eternal Thalassa which was to
become so dear and familiar to me.

My grandmother, I learned, passed away scarcely a year after the death
of her faithful companion, at the home of her son, a lawyer in The
Hague.

Two incidents of the journey back are vividly impressed on my mind. We
went by steamer up the Rhine, and stopped at Ehrenbreitstein to visit
old Frau Mendelssohn, our guardian's mother, at her estate of Horchheim.
The carriage had been sent for us, and on the drive the spirited horses
ran away and would have dashed into the Rhine had not my brother
Martin, at that time eleven years old, who was sitting on the box by the
coachman, saved us.

The other incident is of a less serious nature. I had seen many a salmon
in the kitchen, and resolved to fish for one from the steamer; so I tied
a bit of candy to a string and dropped it from the deck. The fish were
so wanting in taste as to disdain the sweet bait, but my early awakened
love of sport kept me patiently a long time in the same spot, which was
undoubtedly more agreeable to my mother than the bait was to the salmon.
As, protected by the guards, and probably watched by the governess and
my brothers and sisters, I devoted myself to this amusement, my mother
went down into the cabin to rest. Suddenly there wa