When I was requested by the Committee of the International Arbitration and Peace Association, of which I have the honour to be a Member, to undertake the translation of the novel entitled Die Waffen N...

The rapid sale of the first edition of this translation has encouraged the Association at whose request it was made to endeavour to make it more widely known to the various English-speaking population...

At seventeen I was a thoroughly overwrought creature. This perhaps I should no longer be aware of today, if it were not that my diaries have been preserved. But in them the enthusiasms long since fled...

For a week I had been prepared for the catastrophe, and yet its occurrence gave me a bitter blow. I threw myself sobbing on the sofa, and hid my face in the cushion when Arno brought me the news. He s...

“Now, Martha, it is all over. Solferino was decisive⁠—we are beaten.” My father came hastily one morning on to the terrace, with these words, where I was sitting under the shadow of a clump of lime tr...

The carnival was over. Rosa and Lilly, my sisters, had “amused themselves immensely.” Each had a list of half-a-dozen conquests. Still there was no desirable partie among them, and “the right person” ...

Three weeks had passed. Conrad Althaus had proposed for my sister Lilly, and met with a refusal. But he did not take the matter much to heart, and remained a zealous visitor at our house, and hovered ...

In September of this year our marriage took place. My bridegroom had got two months leave for the wedding-tour. Our first stage was Berlin. I had expressed a wish to lay a wreath on the grave of Frede...

From the theatre of war came good tidings. The allies won battle after battle. Immediately after the first combats the Danes were forced to abandon the entire Danewerk. Schleswig and Jutland up to Lim...

As in the last hours of his departure our pain had expressed itself in tears and kisses more than in words, so it was in this hour of our seeing each other again. That one can become mad with joy, I p...

“Brought nearer⁠—ever nearer! I have found out that this capacity of approximation of loving hearts belongs to the class of things of which divisibility is an example⁠—things which have no limits. One...

So it had come again⁠—this greatest of all misfortunes⁠—and was greeted by the populace with the accustomed rejoicing. The regiments marched out (in what state were they to return?) and wishes for vic...

“Never was such a thing heard of⁠—defeat after defeat. First the village of Podol, barricaded by Clam-Gallas, carried by storm, taken in the night by moonlight, and by the light of the conflagration. ...

The battle of Königgrätz had been fought. Another defeat! And this time as it seemed a decisive one. My father communicated the news to us in such a tone as he would have used in announcing the end of...

This was the second time in my life that my beloved husband had been restored to me from the dangers of war. Oh! the blessedness of having him once more with me. How was it that I, just I, had succeed...

There were Prussians quartered everywhere in the neighbourhood, and now Grumitz had to come into the circle. Though the suspension of hostilities was already in force, and peace was almost certain, ye...

We passed the remainder of the summer in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Dr. Bresser’s powers of persuasion had at last succeeded in moving us to fly from the infected country. I at first strove against ...

The New Year, ’67! We kept the Sylvester Night quite alone, my Frederick and I. When it struck twelve⁠— “Do you recollect,” I asked with a sigh, “the speech my poor father made in proposing a toast la...

Paris society again dispersed in all directions. We, however, remained behind on business. For an extraordinarily advantageous bargain had been offered to us. Through the sudden departure of an Americ...

“Oh monsieur! Oh madame! What happiness! What great news!” With these words Frederick’s valet rushed into our room one day, and the cook after him. It was the day of Wörth. “What is it?” “A telegram h...

When for the first time I came to myself again peace had been concluded and the Commune was over. I had been in bed for a month ill, nursed by my faithful Mrs. Anna, without any consciousness of being...

About the “Damenwahl” Bishop Ch. Wordsworth in his Annals of My Early Life, p. 141, thus speaks, describing a ball at Greifswald: “As I was standing among others looking on at a party of dancers, a fa...