The Story of My Life from Childhood to Manhood | Page 2

his works and their American and English editions being transacted by
her.
After his first visit to Egypt, Ebers was called to the University of
Leipsic to fill the chair of Egyptology. He went again to Egypt in 1872,
and in the course of his excavations at Thebes unearthed the Ebers
Papyrus already referred to, which established his name among the
leaders of what was then still a new science, whose foundations had
been laid by Champollion in 1821.
Ebers continued to occupy his chair at the Leipsic University, but,
while fulfilling admirably the many duties of a German professorship,
he found time to write several of his novels. Uarda was published in
1876, twelve years after the appearance of An Egyptian Princess, to be
followed in quick succession by Homo Sum, The Sisters, The Emperor,
and all that long line of brilliant pictures of antiquity. He began his
series of tales of the middle ages and the dawn of the modern era in
1881 with The Burgomaster's Wife. In 1889 the precarious state of his
health forced him to resign his chair at the university.
Notwithstanding his sufferings and the obstacles they placed in his path,

he continued his wonderful intellectual activity until the end. His last
novel, Arachne, was issued but a short time before his death, which
took place on August 7, 1898, at the Villa Ebers, in Tutzing, on the
Starenberg Lake, near Munich, where most of his later life was spent.
The monument erected to his memory by his own indefatigable activity
consists of sixteen novels, all of them of perennial value to historical
students, as well as of ever-fresh charm to lovers of fiction, many
treatises on his chosen branch of learning, two great works of reference
on Egypt and Palestine, and short stories, fairy tales, and biographies.
The Story of my Life is characterized by a captivating freshness. Ebers
was born under a lucky star, and the pictures of his early home life, his
restless student days at that romantic old seat of learning, Gottingen,
are bright, vivacious, and full of colour. The biographer, historian, and
educator shows himself in places, especially in the sketches of the
brothers Grimm, and of Froebel, at whose institute, Keilhau, Ebers
received the foundation of his education. His discussion of Froebel's
method and of that of his predecessor, Pestalozzi, is full of interest,
because written with enthusiasm and understanding. He was a good
German, in the largest sense of the word, and this trait, too, is brought
forward in his reminiscences of the turbulent days of 1848 in Berlin.
The story of Dr. Ebers's early life was worth the telling, and he has told
it himself, as no one else could tell it, with all the consummate skill of
his perfected craftsmanship, with all the reverent love of an admiring
son, and with all the happy exuberance of a careless youth remembered
in all its brightness in the years of his maturity. Finally, the book
teaches a beautiful lesson of fortitude in adversity, of suffering
patiently borne and valiantly overcome by a spirit that, greatly gifted by
Nature, exercised its strength until the thin silver lining illuminated the
apparently impenetrable blackness of the cloud that overhung Georg
Moritz Ebers's useful and successful life.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
By Georg Ebers

CONTENTS.
BOOK 1. I. -GLANCING BACKWARD. II. -MY EARLIEST
CHILDHOOD III. -ON FESTAL DAYS IV. -THE JOURNEY TO
HOLLAND TO ATTEND THE GOLDEN WEDDING V.
-LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE--EARLY IMPRESSIONS
BOOK 2. VI. -MY INTRODUCTION TO ART, AND
ACQUAINTANCES VII. -WHAT A BERLIN CHILD ENJOYED ON
THE SPREE AND GRANDMOTHER'S VIII. -THE
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD IX. -THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH
BOOK3. X. -AFTER THE NIGHT OF REVOLUTION XI. -IN
KEILHAU XII -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL'S IDEAL OF EDUCATION
BOOK 4. XIII. -THE FOUNDERS OF THE KEILHAU INSTITUTE
XIV. -IN THE FOREST AND ON THE MOOR. XV. -SUMMER
PLEASURES AND RAMBLES XVI. -AUTUMN, WINTER,
EASTER, AND DEPARTURE
BOOK 5. XVII. -THE GYMNASIUM AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF
UNIVERSITY LIFE XVIII. -THE TIME OF EFFERVESCENCE
AND MY SCHOOLMATES XIX. -A ROMANCE WHICH REALLY
HAPPENED XX. -AT THE QUEDLINBURG GYMNASIUM
BOOK 6. XXI. -AT THE UNIVERSITY XXII. -THE SHIPWRECK
XXIII. -THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE XXIV.
-THE APPRENTICESHIP XXV. -THE SUMMERS OF MY
CONVALESCENCE XXVI. -CONTINUANCE OF
CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL

THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
BOOK 1.
CHAPTER I.

GLANCING BACKWARD.
Though I was born in Berlin, it was also in the country. True, it was
fifty-five years ago; for my birthday was March 1, 1837, and at that
time the house--[No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse]--where I slept and played
during the first years of my childhood possessed, besides a field and a
meadow, an orchard and dense shrubbery, even a hill and a pond. Three
big horses, the property of the owner