his career which already exist, and to give, in the shape of notes, the few additional facts and data that were obtainable, as well as some trivial details of purely family interest.
Such a compilation will at least serve the purpose of preserving for my nieces, Gertrud, Hildegard, and Thekla, some picture of their Austrian grandfather, whom they had not the happiness to know, but of whom in years to come they will be the sole representatives. I have this all the more at heart seeing that circumstances have removed his children from the country which he loved and served with such devotion, and that the new surroundings in which his grandchildren have thus grown up, must in time tend to dim in their minds the memory of the Austrian traditions of their family.
Though the thought of doing something of this kind had been for years before me, I am really indebted to my wife’s niece, Mary Froude, for its realization: as it was the revising of a verbatim translation, kindly made by her for my mother, of Dr Wiesner’s speech, which induced me last year to defer no longer the collection of material for these Memoirs. Nor would they have even now appeared, had it not been for the unfailing sympathy and ever ready help which I have received from my wife throughout the course of their compilation.
I hope later to amplify these Memoirs with notices of various members of my father's family, and to give other particulars of his own life, including a sketch of his early years, written by himself for his children, and reprints of the letters from him to my mother concerning the flight
