What fire, what animation the old man had retained! We never called him anything but "Oheim." The word "Onkel" he detested as foreign, because it was derived from "avunculus" and "oncle." With the high appreciation he had of "Tante"-- whom he termed, next to the mother, the most important factor of education in the family--our "Oheim" was probably specially agreeable to him.
He was thoroughly a self-made man.

The son of a pastor in Oberweissbach, in Thuringia, he had had a dreary childhood; for his mother died young, and he soon had a step-mother, who treated him with the utmost tenderness until her own children were born.

Then an indescribably sad time began for the neglected boy, whose dreamy temperament vexed even his own father.

Yet in this solitude his love for Nature awoke.

He studied plants, animals, minerals; and while his young heart vainly longed for love, he would have gladly displayed affection himself, if his timidity would have permitted him to do so.