After it had been decided that my sister Clara, owing to her exceedingly beautiful voice, should also go on the stage, my mother took the greatest care to prevent me from developing any taste whatever for the theatre.  She never ceased to reproach herself for having consented to the theatrical career of my eldest brother, and as my second brother showed no greater talents than those which were useful to him as a goldsmith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress made towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-father, ’who hoped to make something of me.’  On the completion of my eighth year I was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, where it was hoped I would study!  There I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class, and started my education under the most unassuming auspices.

My mother noted with much interest the slightest signs I might show of a growing love and ability for my work.  She herself, though not highly educated, always created a lasting impression on all who really learnt to know her, and displayed a peculiar combination of practical domestic efficiency and keen intellectual animation.  She never gave one of her children any definite information concerning her antecedents.  She came from Weissenfels, and admitted that her parents had been bakers [footnote:  According to more recent information—­mill owners] there.  Even in regard to her maiden name she always spoke with some embarrassment, and intimated that it was ‘Perthes,’ though, as we afterwards ascertained, it was in reality ‘Bertz.’  Strange to say, she had been placed in a high-class boarding-school in Leipzig, where she had enjoyed the advantage of the care and interest of one of ‘her father’s influential friends,’ to whom she afterwards referred as being a Weimar prince who had been very kind to her family in Weissenfels.  Her education in that establishment seems to have been interrupted on account of the sudden death of this ‘friend.’  She became acquainted with my father at a very early age, and married him in the first bloom of her youth, he also being very young, though he already held an appointment.  Her chief characteristics seem to have been a keen sense of humour and an amiable temper, so we need not suppose that it was merely a sense of duty towards the family of a departed comrade that afterwards induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer to enter into matrimony with her when she was no longer youthful, but rather that he was impelled to that step by a sincere and warm regard for the widow of his friend.  A portrait of her, painted by Geyer during the lifetime of my father, gives one a very favourable impression of what she must have been.  Even from the time when my recollection of her is quite distinct, she always had to wear a cap owing to some slight affection of the head, so that I have no recollection of her as a young and pretty mother.  Her trying position at the head of a numerous family (of which I was the