Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

The town of Düsseldorf is very beautiful, and if you think of it when
far away, and happen at the same time to have been born there, strange
feelings come over your soul. I was born there, and feel as if I must go
straight home. And when I say _home_ I mean the _Bolkerstrasse_ and the
house in which I was born. This house will some day be a great
curiosity, and I have sent word to the old lady who owns it that she
must not for her life sell it. For the whole house she would now hardly
get as much as the tips which the distinguished green-veiled English
ladies will one day give the servant girl when she shows them the room
where I was born, and the hen-house wherein my father generally
imprisoned me for stealing grapes, and also the brown door on which my
mother taught me to write with chalk--O Lord! Madame, should I ever
become a famous author, it has cost my poor mother trouble enough.

(1823-1826)

But my fame as yet slumbers in the marble quarries of Carrara; the
waste-paper laurel with which they have bedecked my brow has not yet
spread its perfume through the wide world, and the green-veiled English
ladies, when they come to Düsseldorf as yet leave the celebrated house
unvisited, and go directly to the market-place and there gaze on the
colossal black equestrian statue which stands in its midst. This is
supposed to represent the Prince Elector, Jan Wilhelm. He wears black
armor and a long wig hanging down his back. When a boy, I heard the
legend that the artist who made this statue became aware, to his
horror, while it was being cast, that he had not metal enough to fill
the mold, and then all the citizens of the town came running with all