Page:The birth of tragedy, or Hellenism and pessimism (Nietzsche).djvu/14

Vlll INTRODUCTION. and august patron s birthday, and at the christening ceremony he spoke as follows : " Thou blessed month of October ! for many years the most decisive events in my life have occurred within thy thirty-one days, and now I celebrate the greatest and most glorious of them all by baptising my little boy ! O blissful moment ! O exquisite festival ! O unspeakably holy duty ! In the Lord s name I bless thee ! With all my heart I utter these words : Bring me this, my beloved child, that I may consecrate it unto the Lord. My son, Frederick William, thus shalt thou be named on earth, as a memento of my royal benefactor on whose birthday thou wast born ! " Our father was thirty-one years of age, and our mother not quite nineteen, when my brother was born. Our mother, who was the daughter of a clergyman, was good-looking and healthy, and was one of a very large family of sons and daughters. Our paternal grandparents, the Rev. Oehler and his wife, in Pobles, were typically healthy people. Strength, robustness, lively dispositions, and a cheerful outlook on life, were among the qualities which every one was pleased to observe in them. Our grandfather Oehler was a bright, clever man, and quite the old style of comfortable country parson, who thought it no sin to go hunting. He scarcely had a day s illness in his life, and would certainly not have met with his end as early as he did that is to say, before his seventieth year if his careless disregard of all caution, where his health was concerned, had not led to his catching a severe and fatal cold. In regard to our grand-