Read it through once

My name is Theodor Fischer. I was born in a small village in Austria, called in German "Stiftung," — not to be confounded with other villages of similar names. The earliest thing I remember is a great bell in the little square; and an old woman, my grandmother, who used to sit on the steps and knit and tell long stories. My father was a cooper, and my mother used to help him when the season was busy; but there was always enough for bread, and there was a garden behind the house where we raised cabbages and beans.