JEAN PAUL RICHTER,
ONE OF THE GREAT AUTHORS OF GERMANY.
It was in the year 1763 that I came into the world, in the same month that the golden and gray wagtail, the robin-redbreast, the crane, and the red-hammer came also; and, in case anybody wished to strew flowers on the cradle of the new-born, the spoonwort and the aspen hung out their tender blossoms,—on the 20th of March, in the early morning. I was born in Wunsiedel, in the highlands of the Fitchtelbirge. Ah! I am glad to have been born in thee, little city of the mountains, whose tops look down upon us like the heads of eagles, and where we can glance over villages and mountain meadows, and drink health at all thy fountains!
To my great joy I can call up from my twelfth or, at farthest, my fourteenth month of age one pale little remembrance, like an early and frail snow-drop, from the fresh soil of my childhood. I recollect that a scholar loved me much, and carried me about in his arms, and took me to a great dark room and gave me milk to drink.
In 1765 my father was appointed minister to Joditz, where I was carried in a girl's cap and petticoat. The little Saale River, born like myself in the Fitchtelbirge, ran with me to Joditz, as it afterwards ran after me to Hof when I removed there. A small brook traverses the little town, that is crossed on a plank as I remember. The old castle and the pastor's house were the two principal buildings. There was a school-house right opposite the parsonage, into which I was admitted, when big enough to wear breeches and a green taffety cap. The schoolmaster was sickly and lean, but I loved him, and watched anxiously with him as he lay hid behind his birdcage placed in the open window to catch goldfinches, or when he spread a net in the snow and caught a yellow-hammer.