An overflowing vitality, a lively and never-failing interest in all the details of daily life, and a temperament responsive to every call, kept her perennially young, and fitted her to be the companion of her children rather than the sober helpmate of such a husband as Herr Goethe.[7] How, by her faculty of story-telling, she ministered to the side of her son's nature which he had inherited from herself Goethe has related with grateful appreciation.

But he owed her a larger debt.

It was her spirit pervading the household that brought such happiness into his early home life as fell to his lot.

A commonplace mother and a prosaic father would have created an atmosphere which, in the case of a child with Goethe's impressionable nature, would permanently have affected his outlook on life.

For the future poet, the mother was the admirable nurse; she fed his fancy with her own; she taught him the art of making the most of life--a lesson which he never forgot; and she gave him her own sane and cheerful view of the uncontrollable element in human destiny.