In the East I have seen the day-star set more brilliantly, but never met with a more harmonious and lovely splendour of colour than on summer evenings in the Mark, except in Holland on the shore of the North Sea.

Can I ever forget those festal days when, after saying our little congratulatory verses to our mother, and admiring her birthday table, which her friends always loaded with flowers, we awaited the carriages that were to take us into the country?  Besides a great excursion wagon, there were generally some other coaches which conveyed us and the families of our nearest friends on our jaunt.

How the young faces beamed, and how happy the old ones looked, and what big baskets there were full of good things beside the coachman and behind the carriage!

We were soon out of the city, and the birds by the wayside could not have twittered and sung in May more gaily than we during these drives.

Once we let the horses rest, and took luncheon at Stimming near the Wannsee, where Heinrich von Kleist with the beloved of his heart put an end to his sad life.  Before we stopped we met a troop of travelling journeymen, and our mother, in the gratitude of her heart, threw them a thaler, and said “Drink to my happiness; to-day is my birthday.”

When we had rested and gone on quite a distance we found the journeymen ranged beside the road, and as they threw into the carriage an immense bouquet of field flowers which they had gathered, one of them exclaimed:  “Long live the birthday-child!  And health and happiness to the beautiful, kind lady!” The others, and we, too, joined with all our might in a “Hurrah!”

We felt like pagan Romans, who on starting out had perceived the happiest omens in earth and sky.

And at the Pfaueninsel!

Frau Friedrich, the wife of the man in charge of the fountains, kept a neat inn, in which, however, she by no means dished up to all persons what they would like.  But our mother knew her through Lenne, by whom her husband was employed, and she took good care of us.  How attractive to us children was the choice yet large collection she possessed!  Most of the members of the royal house had often been her guests, and had increased it to a little museum which contained countless milk and cream jugs of every sort and metal, even the most precious, and of porcelain and glass of every age.  Many would have been rare and welcome ornaments to any trades-museum.  Our mother had contributed a remarkably handsome Japanese jug which her brother had sent her.

After the banquet we young ones ran races, while the older people rested till coffee and punch were served.  Whether dancing was allowed at the Pfaueninsel I no longer remember, but at the Pichelsbergen it certainly was, and there were even three musicians to play.

And how delightful it was in the wood; how pleasant the rowing on the water, during which, when the joy of existence was at its height, the saddest songs were sung!  Oh, I could relate a hundred things of those birthdays in the country, but I have completely forgotten how we got home.  I only know that we waked the next morning full of happy recollections.