Childhood Home
to my aptitude for painting, and was merely pleased at the expansion of my artistic interest.
That it was all to turn out differently I never dreamed.
Yet the question of my calling was to be decided sooner than I could have expected.
When I was thirteen I lost my father suddenly. An apopletic stroke felled the vigorous old gentleman, painlessly terminating his earthly career, and plunging us all in deepest grief. That for which he longed most, to give his child a livelihood and spare him his own bitter struggle, must have seemed unfulfilled. But he had sown the seeds, if quite unconsciously, for a future which neither he nor I would then have understood.
For the moment there was no outward change. My mother felt obliged to continue my education according to my father’s wishes, to have me study for a civil position. I myself was more determined than ever not to become an official under any circumstances. In just the degree, then, that the intermediate school departed from my standard in subject and treatment, I grew more indifferent. Suddenly an illness came to my assistance, deciding within a few weeks my future and the constant subject of dispute at home. I had serious lung trouble, and the doctor urgently advised my mother against putting me into an office for any reason whatever. My attendance at the realschule, likewise, must be interrupted for at least a year. What I had secretly pined for so long, what I had always fought for had now through this event, become reality almost of its own accord.
Under pressure of my illness, my mother at last agreed to take me out of the realschule, and to let me go to the Academy. The happy days seemed to me almost like a beautiful dream; and a dream they were to remain. Two years later my mother’s death put a sudden end to all my fine plans.
Her death was the termination of a long, painful illness, which from the first had left little room for hope. Yet the blow, especially to me, was fearful. I had honored my father, but I had loved my mother.
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