text:  From the time of your birth and indeed earlier ever since my marriage I have found it a hard task to support a wife and by degrees a family of seven children two relatives by marriage and the mother on a certain income of twenty-five florins a month out of this to pay for maintenance and the expenses of child-bed deaths and sicknesses; which expenses when you reflect upon them will convince you that I not only never devoted a kreutzer to my own private pleasure but that I could never in spite of all my contrivances and care have managed to live free from debt without the especial favour of God; and yet I never was in debt till now