Memories | Page 8

silent sea of eternity, even then it seems
as if we heard from afar their rush and roar. We feel that the life-force
which yet remains and impels us onward still has its source and supply
from those cataracts.
School time was ended, the first fleeting years of university life were
over, and many beautiful life-dreams were over also. But one of them
still remained: Faith in God and man. Otherwise life would have been
circumscribed within one's narrow brain. Instead of that, a nobler
consecration had preserved all, and even the painful and
incomprehensible events of life became a proof to me of the
omnipresence of the divine in the earthly. "The least important thing
does not happen except as God wills it." This was the brief life-wisdom
I had accumulated.
During the summer holidays I returned to my little native city. What
joy in these meetings again! No one has explained it, but in this seeing
and finding again, and in these self-memories, lie the real secrets of all
joy and pleasure. What we see, hear or taste for the first time may be

beautiful, grand and agreeable, but it is too new. It overpowers, but
gives no repose, and the fatigue of enjoying is greater than the
enjoyment itself. To hear again, years afterward, an old melody, every
note of which we supposed we had forgotten, and yet to recognize it as
an old acquaintance; or, after the lapse of many years, to stand once
more before the Sistine Madonna at Dresden, and experience afresh all
the emotions which the infinite look of the child aroused in us for years;
or to smell a flower or taste a dish again which we have not thought of
since childhood--all these produce such an intense charm that we do not
know which we enjoy most, the actual pleasure or the old memory. So
when we return again, after long absence, to our birth-place, the soul
floats unconsciously in a sea of memories, and the dancing waves
dreamily toss themselves upon the shores of times long passed. The
belfry clock strikes and we fear we shall be late to school, and
recovering from this fear feel relieved that our anxiety is over. The
same dog runs along the street on whose account we used to go far out
of our way. Here sits the old huckster whose apples often led us into
temptation, and even now, we fancy they must taste better than all other
apples in the world, notwithstanding the dust on them. There one has
torn down a house and built a new one. Here the old music-teacher
lived. He is dead--and yet how beautiful it seemed as we stood and
listened on summer evenings under the window while the True Soul,
when the hours of the day were over, indulged in his own enjoyment
and played fantasies, like the roaring and hissing engine letting off the
steam which has accumulated during the day. Here in this little leafy
lane, which seemed at that time so much larger, as I was coming home
late one evening, I met our neighbor's beautiful daughter. At that time I
had never ventured to look at or address her, but we school-children
often spoke of her and called her "the Beautiful Maiden," and whenever
I saw her passing along the street at a distance I was so happy that I
could only think of the time when I should meet her nearer. Here in this
leafy walk which leads to the church-yard, I met her one evening and
she took me by the arm, although we had never spoken together before,
and asked me to go home with her. I believe neither of us spoke a word
the whole way; but I was so happy that even now, after all these years, I
wish it were that evening, and that I could go home again, silently and
blissfully, with "the Beautiful Maiden."

Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over
our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we
have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts. Then all
at once, the whole dream-world vanishes, like uprisen ghosts at the
crowing of the cock.
As I passed by the old castle and the lindens, and saw the sentinels
upon their horses, how many memories awakened in my soul, and how
everything had changed! Many years had flown since I was at the castle.
The Princess was dead. The Prince had given up his rule and gone back
to Italy, and the oldest prince, with whom I had grown up, was regent.
His companions were young noblemen and officers, whose intercourse
was congenial to him, and whose company in our early days had often