The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12

by Unknown

EXTRACTS FROM "MY CHILDHOOD YEARS" (1894)

By THEODOR FONTANE

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University

On one of the last days of March, in the year 1819, a chaise drove up before the apothecary's shop at the sign of the Lion, in Neu-Ruppin, and a young couple, who a short time before had jointly purchased the shop, alighted from the carriage and were received by the servants of the house. The husband was only twenty-three years of age—for people married very young in those days, just after the war. The wife was twenty-one. They Were my parents….

I was born there on the 30th of December that same year. With my mother it was a matter of life and death, for which reason, whenever she was twitted with favoring me, she was accustomed simply to reply: "That is because I suffered most for him." In this favored position I remained a long time, some eighteen years, till the birth of a late child, my youngest sister, for whom I stood sponsor and whom I even held during the christening. This was a great honor for me, but with it went hand in hand my dethronement by this very sister. It goes without saying that as the youngest child she straightway became the darling of the family.

At Easter, 1819, my father took possession of the apothecary's shop in Neu-Ruppin, which he had acquired at a most favorable price, for a song, so to speak; at Easter, 1826, after three of my four brothers and sisters had been born there, he disposed of the property. Whenever this early sale of the business became a topic of conversation, it was always characterized as disastrous for my father and the whole family. But unjustly. The disastrous feature, which revealed itself many years later—and fortunately even then in a bearable form, for my papa was truly a lucky man—lay not in the particular act of the sale, but in the character of my father, who always spent more than his income, and would not have given up the habit, even if he had remained in Neu-Ruppin. That he confessed to me with his peculiar frankness many, many times, when he had grown old and I was no longer young. "I was still half a boy when I married," he was wont to say, "and my too early independence explains everything." Whether or not he was right, this is not the place to say. Generally speaking, his habits were anything but businesslike; he took his dreams of good fortune for realities and applied himself to the cultivation of "noble passions," without ever stopping to think that at best he had but modest means at his disposal. His first extravagance was a horse and carriage; then he soon acquired a passion for gaming, and, during the seven years from 1819 to 1826, he gambled away a small fortune. The chief winner was the lord of a neighboring manor. When, thirty years later, the son of this lord loaned me a small sum of money, my father said to me: "Don't hesitate to take the money; his father took ten thousand thalers from me at dummy whist, a little at a time." Perhaps this figure was too high, but however that may be, the sum was at all events large enough to throw his credit and debit out of balance and to make him, among other things, a very tardy payer of interest. Now in ordinary circumstances, if, for example, he could have had recourse to mortgages and the like, this would not have been, for a time at least, a wholly unbearable situation; but unfortunately it so happened that my father's chief creditor was his own father, who now took occasion to give expression to his only too justified displeasure, both in letters and in personal interviews. To make the situation even more oppressive, these reproaches were approved, and hence made doubly severe, by my mother, who stood wholly on her father-in-law's side. In short, the further matters went, the more my father was placed between two fires, and for no other reason than to extricate himself from a position which continually injured his pride he resolved to sell the property and business, the exceptional productiveness of which was as well known to him as to anybody else, in spite of the fact that he was the very opposite of a business man. After all, his whole plan proved to be, at least in the beginning and from his point of view, thoroughly proper and advantageous. He received for the apothecary's shop double the original purchase price, and saw himself thereby all at once put in a position to satisfy his creditors, who were at the same time his accusers. And he did it, too. He paid back the sum his father had advanced him, asked his wife, half jokingly, half scoffingly, whether perchance she wished to invest her money "more safely and more advantageously," and thereby achieved what for seven years he had been longing for, namely, freedom and independence. Relieved from all irksome tutelage, he found himself suddenly at the point where it was "no longer necessary to take orders from anybody." And with him that was a specially vital matter his whole life long. From youth to old age he thirsted for that state; but as he did not know well how to attain it, he never enjoyed his longed-for liberty and independence for more than a few days or weeks at a time. To use one of his favorite expressions, he was always in the "lurch," was always financially embarrassed, and for that reason recalled to the end of his life with special pleasure the short period, now reached, between Easter, 1826, and Midsummer day, 1827. With him this was the only time when the "lurch" was lacking….

During this time we lived near the Rheinsberg Gate, in a capacious rented apartment, which included all the rooms on the main floor. So far as home comforts are concerned, my parents were both very well satisfied with the change; so were the other children, who found here ample room for their games; but I could not become reconciled to it, and have even to this day unpleasant memories of the rented residence. There was a butcher's shop in the building, and that did not suit my fancy. Through the long dark court ran a gutter, with blood always standing in it, while at the end of one of the side wings a beef, killed the night before, hung on a broad ladder leaning against the house. Fortunately I never had to witness the preceding scenes, except when pigs were slaughtered. Then it was sometimes unavoidable. One day is still fresh in my memory. I was standing in the hall and gazing out through the open back door into the court, where it just happened that several persons were down on the ground struggling with a pig that was squealing its last. I was paralyzed with horror. As soon as I recovered control of myself I took to my heels, running down the street, through the town gate, and out to the "Vineyard," a favorite resort of the Ruppiners. But before I had finally reached that place I sat down on the top of a hummock to rest and catch my breath. I stayed away the whole forenoon. At dinner I was called upon to give an account of myself. "For heaven's sake, boy, where have you been so long?" I made a clean breast of the matter, saying that I had been put to flight by the spectacle down in the court and that half way to the "Vineyard" I had rested on a hummock and leaned my back against a crumbling pillar. "Why, there you sat in perfect composure on Gallows Hill," said my father, laughing. Feeling as though the noose were being laid about my neck, I begged permission to leave the table.

It was also at this time that I entered the primary school, which was nothing unusual, inasmuch as I was going on seven years of age. I was quick to learn and made progress, but my mother considered it her duty to help me on, now and then, especially in reading, and so every afternoon I stood by her little sewing table and read to her all sorts of little stories out of the Brandenburg Children's Friend, a good book, but illustrated, alas, with frightful pictures. My performance was probably quite tolerable, for the ability to read and write well—by the way, a very important thing in life—is a sort of inheritance in the family. But my mother was not easy to satisfy; furthermore she acted on the assumption that recognition and praise spoil character, a point of view which even now I do not consider right. At the slightest mistake she brought into play the "quick hand" always at her service. But she displayed no temper in doing it; she was always merely proceeding in accordance with her principle, "anything but coddling." One blow too many could never do any harm and, if it turned out that I had really not deserved any particular one, it was reckoned as offsetting some of my naughty pranks that had happened to escape discovery. "Anything but coddling." That is indeed a very good principle, and I do not care to criticise it, in spite of the fact that its application did not help me, not even as a hardening process; but whatever one may think of it, my mother now and then carried her harsh treatment too far.

I had long blond hair, less to my own delight than to my mother's; for to keep it in its would-be state of beauty I was subjected to the most interminable and occasionally the most painful combing ordeals, especially those with the fine comb. If I had been called upon at the time to name the medieval instruments of torture, the "fine comb" would have stood among those at the head of my list. Until the blood came there was no thought of stopping. The following day the scarcely healed spot was again scrutinized with suspicious eye, and thus one torture was followed by another. To be sure, if, as may be possible, I owe it to this procedure that I still have a fairly good head of hair, I did not suffer in vain, and I humbly apologize.

This careful treatment of my scalp was accompanied by an equally painstaking treatment of my complexion, and this painful care also showed a tendency to apply too drastic remedies. If my skin was chapped by the east wind or the severe heat of the sun, my mother was immediately at hand with a slice of lemon as an unfailing remedy. And it always helped. Cold cream and such things would have been more to my fancy and would doubtless have accomplished the same end. But my mother showed the same relentlessness toward herself, and one who valiantly leads the way into the battle may properly command others to follow.

During the time that we occupied the rented apartment I became seven years of age, just old enough to retain all sorts of things; and yet I remember exceedingly little from that period, in fact but two events. These I probably recall because a vivid color impression helped me to retain them. One of the events was a great fire, in which the barns outside the Eheinsberg Gate burned down. However, I must state in advance that it was not the burning of the barns that impressed itself upon my memory, but a scene that took place immediately before my eyes, one only incidentally occasioned by the fire, which I did not see at all. On that day my parents were at a small dinner party, clear at the other end of the city. When the company was suddenly apprised of the news that all the barns were on fire, my mother, who was a very nervous person, immediately felt certain that her children could not escape death in the flames, or were at least in grave danger of losing their lives. Being completely carried away by this idea she rushed from the table, down the long Frederick William street, and without hat or cloak, and with her hair half tumbled down in her mad chase, burst into our large front room and found us, snatched out of bed and wrapped in blankets, sitting around on cushions and footstools. On catching sight of us she screamed aloud for joy and then fell in a swoon. When, the next moment, various people, the landlord's family among others, came in with candles in their hands, the whole picture which the room presented received a dazzling light, especially the dark red brocade dress of my mother and the black hair that fell down over it, and this red and black with the flickering candles round about—all this I have retained to the present hour.

The other picture, or let me say, rather, the second little occurrence that still lives in my memory, was entirely devoid of dramatic elements, but color again came to my assistance. This time it was yellow, instead of red. During the interim year my father made frequent journeys to Berlin. Once, say, in the month of November, the sunset colors were already gleaming through the trees on the city ramparts, as I stood down in our doorway watching my father as he put on his driving gloves with a certain aplomb and then suddenly sprang upon the front seat of his small calash. My mother was there also. "Really the boy might go along," said my father. I pricked up my ears, rejoiced in my little soul, which even then longed eagerly for anything a little out of the ordinary and likely to give me the shivers. My mother consented immediately, a thing which can be explained only on the assumption that she expected her darling child with the beautiful blond locks to make a good impression upon my grandfather, whose home was the goal of the journey. "Very well," she said, "take the boy along. But first I will put a warm coat on him." "Not necessary; I'll put him in the footbag." And, surely enough, I was hauled up into the carriage and put just as I was into the footbag lying on the front of the carriage, which was entirely open, with not even a leather apron stretched across it. If a stone got in our way or we received a jolt there was nothing to keep me from being thrown out. But this notion did not for a single moment disturb my pleasure. At a quick trot we rolled along through Alt-Ruppin toward Cremmen, and long before we reached this place, which was about half way along the journey, the stars came out and grew brighter and brighter and more and more sparkling. I gazed enraptured at this splendor and no sleep came to my eyes. Never since have I traveled with such delight; it seemed as though we were journeying to heaven. Toward eight o 'clock in the morning our carriage drove up before my grandfather's house. Let me here insert the remark that my grandfather, with the help of his three wives, whom he had married a number of years apart, had risen first from a drawing teacher to a private secretary, and then, what was still more significant, had recently advanced to the dignity of a well-to-do property owner in Berlin. To be sure, only in the Little Hamburg street. The art of living implied in this achievement was not transmitted to any of his sons or grandsons.

We climbed the stairs and entered the door. Here we were greeted by a homely idyl. Pierre Barthélemy and his third wife—an excellent woman, whom I later learned to esteem very highly—were just sitting at breakfast. Everything looked very cozy. On the table was a service of Dresden china, and among the cups and pitchers I noticed a neat blue and white figured open-work bread basket with Berlin milk rolls in it. The rolls then were different from now, much larger and circular in shape, baked a light brown and yet crisp. Over the sofa hung a large oil portrait of my grandfather, just recently painted, by Professor Wachs. It was very good and full of life, but I should have forgotten the expressive face and perhaps the whole scene of the visit, if it had not been for the black and sulphur-yellow striped vest, which Pierre Barthélemy, as I was later informed, regularly wore, and which, in consequence, occupied a considerable portion of the picture hanging above his head.

It goes without saying that we shared in the breakfast, and the grandparents, well-bred people that they were, did not show so very plainly that, on the whole, the visit, with its to-be-expected business negotiations, was for them in reality a disturbance. True, there was all day long not a sign of tenderness toward me, so that I was heartily glad when we started back home in the evening. Not until a great deal later was I able to see that the coolness with which I was received was not meant for poor little me, but, as already indicated, for my father. I merely had to suffer with him. To such an extremely solid character as my grandfather the self-assured, man-of-the-world tone of his son, who by a clever business stroke had acquired a feeling of independence and comfortable circumstances, was so disagreeable and oppressive, that my blond locks, on whose impression my mother had counted with such certainty, failed utterly to exert their charm.

I have already remarked that such excursions to Berlin occurred frequently in those days, but still more frequent were journeys into the provinces, because it was incumbent upon my father to look about for a new apothecary's shop to buy. If he had had his way about it he doubtless would never have changed this state of affairs and would have declared the interim permanent. For, whereas his passion for gaming was in reality forced upon him by his need to kill time, he had by nature a genuine passion for his horse and carriage, and to drive around in the world the whole of life in search of an apothecary's shop, without being able to find one, would have been, I presume, just the ideal occupation for him. But he saw that it was out of the question; a few years of travel would have consumed his means. So he only took great care to guard against too hasty purchases, and that answered the same purpose. The more critically he proceeded the longer he could continue his journeys and provide new quarters every evening for his beloved white horse, which, by the way, was a charming animal. I say "his white horse," for he was more concerned about good quarters for the horse than for himself. And so, for three-fourths of a year, till Christmas, 1826, he was on the road a great deal, not to say most, of the time, covering, to be sure, quite an extensive territory, which, beside the Province of Brandenburg, included Saxony, Thuringia, and finally Pomerania.

In later life this period of travel was a favorite topic of conversation with my father, and likewise with my mother, who ordinarily assumed a rather indifferent attitude toward the favorite themes of my father. That she made an exception in this case was due in part to the fact that during his journeyings my father had written to his young wife many "love letters," which as letters it was my mother's chief delight to ridicule, so long as she lived. "For I would have you know, children," she was wont to say, "I still have your father's love letters; one always keeps such charming things. One of these I even know by heart, at least the beginning. The letter came from Eisleben, and in it your father wrote to me: 'I arrived here this afternoon and have found very good quarters. Also for the horse, whose neck and shoulders are somewhat galled. However, I will not write you today about that, but about the fact that this is the place where Martin Luther was born on the 10th of November, 1483, nine years before the discovery of America.' There you have your father as a lover. You see, he would have been qualified to publish a Letter Writer."

All this was said by my mother not only with considerable seriousness, but also, unfortunately, with bitterness. It always grieved her that my father, much as he loved her, had never shown the slightest familiarity with the ways of tenderness.

The travels, which were kept up for nine months, were finally directed eastward toward the mouth of the Oder. Shortly before Christmas my father set out by stage coach, to save his horse from the hardships of winter travel, and when he arrived in Swinemünde the thermometer stood at 15° below zero, Fahrenheit. The cognac in his bottle was frozen to a lump of ice. He was so much the more warmly received by the widow Geisler, who, inasmuch as her husband had died the previous year, desired to sell her apothecary's shop as quickly as possible. And the sale was made. In the letter announcing the conclusion of the transaction was this passage: "We now have a new home in the province of Pomerania, Pomerania, of which false notions are frequently held; for it is really a splendid province and much richer than the Mark. And where the people are rich is the best place to live. Swinemünde itself is, to be sure, unpaved, but sand is better than bad pavement, where the horses are always having something the matter with their insteps. Unfortunately the transfer is not to be made for six months, which I regret. But I must be doing something again, must have an occupation once more."

Three days after the arrival of this letter he was home again himself. We were dragged out of bed, heavy with sleep, and called upon to rejoice that we were to go to Swinemünde.

To me the word represented but a strange sound….

When we arrived in Swinemünde, in the summer of 1827, it seemed an ugly hole, and yet, on the other hand, a place of very rare charm, for, in spite of the dullness of the majority of its streets, it had that peculiar liveliness that commerce and navigation produce. It depended altogether upon what part of the city one chose as a point of observation, whether one's judgment was one thing or its opposite, favorable or unfavorable. If one chose the Church Square, surrounded by houses, among which was our apothecary's shop, one could find little of good to say, although the chief street ran past there. But if one forsook the inner city and went down to the "River," as the Swine was regularly called, his hitherto unfavorable opinion was converted into its opposite. Here ran along the river, for nearly a mile, the "Bulwark," as poetic a riverside street as one could imagine. The very fact that here everything was kept to medium proportions, and there was nowhere anything to recall the grandeur of the really great commercial centres, these very medium dimensions gave everything an exceedingly attractive appearance, to which only a hypochondriac, or a person wholly unappreciative of the charms of form and color, could fail to respond. To be sure, this "Bulwark" street was not everywhere the same, indeed some parts of it left much to be desired, especially those up the river; but from the cross street which began at the corner of our house and led off at right angles one could find refreshment of spirit in the pictures that presented themselves, step by step, as one followed the course of the river. Here ran out from the sloping bank into the river a number of board rafts, some smaller, some larger, floating benches upon which, from early morning on, one saw maids at work washing clothes, always in cheerful conversation with one another, or with the sailors who leaned lazily over the street wall watching them. These rafts, which with the figures upon them produced a most picturesque effect, were called "clappers," and were used, especially by strangers and summer guests, for orientation and description of location. E.g. "He lives down by Klempin's clapper," or "opposite Jahnke's clapper." Between the rafts or wash benches were regular spaces devoted to piers, and here the majority of the ships were moored, in the winter often three or four rows. The crews were on shore at this time, and the only evidence that the vessels were not wholly unguarded was a column of smoke rising from the kitchen stovepipes, or, more often, a spitz-dog sitting on a mound of sailcloth, if not on the top of his kennel, and barking at the passersby. Then in the spring, when the Swine was again free from ice, everything began at once, as though by magic, to show signs of life, and the activity along the river indicated that the time for sailing was again near. Then the ships' hulls were laid on their sides, the better to examine them for possible injuries, and if any were found, one could see the following day, at corresponding places along the wharf, little fires made of chips of wood and raveled-out bits of old hawsers, and over them tar was simmering in three-legged iron pots. Beside these lay whole piles of oakum. And now the process of calking began. Then, as noon approached, another pot, filled with potatoes and bacon, was shoved into the fire, and many, many a time, as I passed by here on my way, at this hour, I eagerly inhaled the appetizing vapors, not in the least disturbed by the admixture of pitch. Even in my old age I am still fond of regaling myself, or at least my nerves, with the bitumen smoke that floats through our Berlin streets, when they are being newly asphalted.

In the spring and summer time activity was also resumed by the English steam dredger, which lay in the middle of the river, and upon which it was incumbent to clear the channel. The quantities of earth and slime drawn up from the bottom were emptied at a shallow place in the river and piled up so as to cause a little artificial island to come into existence. A few years later this island was covered with a rank growth of reeds and sedges, and in all probability it now supports houses and establishments of the marine station, as evidence to all those who saw the first third of the century, that times have changed and we have been growing as a world power.

For half an hour at a time, when possible, I watched the work of the English dredger, whose engineer, an old Scotchman by the name of Macdonald, was a special friend of mine. Who could have told then that, a generation later, I should make a tour of his Scottish clan and, under the guidance of a Maedonald, should visit the spot on the island of Icolmkill, where, according to an old fiction, King Macbeth lies buried.

I watched also, with as much interest as the dredging, the mooring of ships, when they came home from long voyages, some of them, such as the Queen Luise, a marine trading vessel, from their voyages around the world, which signified something in those days. My main vessel, however, was the Mentor, which was said to have won the victory in a fight with Chinese pirates. The pirates carried a long-barreled bronze cannon which shot better than the rough cast-iron cannons of which the Mentor had a few on board. Besides, the pirate boat was much swifter, so that our Swinemünde trader soon found itself in a bad position. But the captain was equal to the emergency. He had all his heavy cannons moved to one side of the ship, then purposely moderated his speed, in order to make it easier for his pursuers to catch up with him. And now their boat was really alongside, and the pirates were already preparing to climb over the side of the ship, when the captain of the Mentor gave the preconcerted signal and the cannons rolled with all force and swiftness from the one side of the ship to the other and the weight of the heavy guns, carrying the thin wall before them, crushed to pieces the boat lying below, already certain of victory, so that every soul on board was lost.

Such stories were always in the air and were associated, not only with the ships lying along the "Bulwark," but occasionally also with the houses on the opposite side. Further down the river both the houses and the stories lost their charm, until, at the very end of the city, one came to a large building standing back from the street, which again aroused interest. This was the recently erected "Society House," the meeting place not only for the summer bathers, but also, during the season, for the leading people of the city, of whom no one, perhaps, was more often seen there than my father. To be sure, his frequent visits were really not made on account of the "Society House" itself, least of all on account of the concerts and theatrical performances given in it, to say nothing of the occasional balls,—no, what attracted him and took him out there now and then even £or his morning glass, was a pavilion standing close by the "Society House," in which a major with a historical name and most affable manners, dressed in a faultless blue frock coat with gold buttons, kept the bank. This was only too often the resort of my father, who, when he had lost a considerable sum and had correspondingly enriched the pot of the bank keeper, instead of being out of sorts over it, simply drew the inference that the keeping of the bank was a business that produced sure gain, and the old major with the high white neckcloth and the diamond pin was an extremely enviable man and, above all, one very worthy of emulation. In such a career one got something out of life. My father expressed such opinions, too, when he came home and sat down late to dinner. This he did once in the presence of a recently married sister of my mother, who was visiting in our home during the bathing season.

"But you are not going to-do that," she replied to his remarks.

"Why not?"

"Because there is no honor in it."

"Hm, honor," he ejaculated, and began to drum upon the table with his fingers; but, not having the courage to argue the question, he merely turned his face away and left the table.

* * * * *

The city was very ugly and very handsome, and an equal contrast was, to be observed in its inhabitants, at least with respect to their moral qualities. Here, as in all seaports, there was a broad stratum of human beings day in and day out under the influence of rum and arrack, and they composed the main body of the population; but there was also, as is quite general in seaports, a society of a materially higher type spiritually, which overshadowed by far what one usually met with in those days in the small cities of the inland provinces, especially the Mark of Brandenburg, where the narrowest philistinism held sway. That these inhabitants were so thoroughly free from narrow-mindedness was without doubt due to a variety of causes, but chiefly, perhaps, to the fact that the whole population was of a pronounced international character. In the villages of the environs there still lived presumably a certain number of the descendants of the Wendic Pomeranian: aborigines of the days of Julin and Vineta. In Swinemünde itself, especially in the upper stratum of society, there was such a confusion of races that one came in contact with representatives from all the nations of Northern Europe, Swedes, Danes, Dutchmen, and Scotchmen, who had settled here at one time or another, most of them, no doubt, at the beginning of the century, the period when the hitherto unimportant city first began to grow and prosper.

The number of inhabitants, at the time of our arrival, was about four thousand, of whom hardly a tenth were citizens of the city, and a still very much smaller fraction entered into consideration socially. What could be called, with more or less justice, the society of the city was composed of not more than twenty families. These twenty families, together with a few of the nobility, who came in from the country to spend the winter, formed a private club, with headquarters in the Olthoff Hall, and the club's membership was further enlarged, as was the society of the city in general, by the dependents, or retinue, of a few of the richest and most respected houses. These protégés, half of them poor relatives, half bankrupt merchants, were not always invited, but were, on all important convivial occasions, designed to produce a deep impression, and their function then was to submit to what the Englishmen call practical jokes, during the second half of the banquet, the first half being, as a usual thing, conspicuous for the remarkably proper conduct of the company. When the time arrived for this part of the program all bonds of pious awe were loosed and they proceeded with most daring experiments, which my pen hesitates to record. On one occasion one of these unfortunates—unfortunate because poor and dependent—had to suffer a jaw tooth to be pulled out with the first pair of tongs that could be found; but it must not be inferred that those who undertook the operation were necessarily rough men. It was only a case where the socially arrogant, who made themselves so generally conspicuous in those days, especially under the stimulation of wine, did not hesitate to take such liberties. In rich aristocratic houses in the country they occasionally went to even greater extremes….

How did we live at our house? On the whole, well, far beyond our station and our means. So far as the culinary department was concerned, there were, to be sure, occasional strange periods; for example, in the summer time, when, on account of the superabundant yield of milk, the star of milk soup reigned supreme. Then everybody struck, feigning lack of appetite.

But these were only exceptional conditions, of short duration. Ordinarily we were well and very sensibly fed, a thing which we owed less to our mother than to our housekeeper, a Miss Schröder. Before going any further I must tell about her. When we reached Swinemünde my mother was still in Berlin taking treatment for her nerves, so that my father was immediately confronted with the question, who should manage the household in the interim. There were no local newspapers, so he had to inquire around orally. After a few days a letter was brought by messenger from the head forester's lodge at Pudagla, inquiring whether the head forester's sister might offer us her services. She had learned housekeeping in her brother's home. My father answered immediately in the affirmative and for two days rejoiced in the thought of being able to take into his home as housekeeper a sister of a head forester, and from Pudagla, to boot. That afforded relief; he felt honored. On the third day the Schröder girl drove up to our house and was received by my father. He declared later that he had kept his countenance, but I am not quite sure of it, in spite of the possibility that his good heart and his politeness may have made the victory over himself easier. The good Schröder girl, be it said, was a pendant to the "princess with the death's head," who came to notice in Berlin at about this time. What had caused the misfortune of the latter (who was restored to her original appearance by Dieffenbach, by a plastic surgical treatment, since become famous), I do not know. In the case of the Schröder girl, however, it was the smallpox. Now what is smallpox? Everybody has seen persons who have been afflicted with smallpox, and has considered the expression, "the devil has threshed peas on his or her face," more or less apt. At least the expression has become proverbial. In this case, however, the proverbial phrase, if applied, would have been mere glossing over, for the Schröder girl had, not pits the size of peas, but scars half as broad as your hand, a spectacle, the like of which I have never again encountered. Yet, as already said, a contract was entered into, and a happier one was never closed. The Schröder girl was a treasure, and when my mother came home six weeks later she said: "You did well to take her, Louis; disfigured as she is, her eyes have been spared, and they tell one that she is faithful and reliable. And she is safe from love affairs, and we with her. With her we shall have only pleasant experiences."

And so it proved. So long as we remained in Swinemünde the Schröder girl remained in our house, loved and respected by old and young, not least of all by my father, who gave her particular credit for her sense of justice and her candor, in spite of the fact that he occasionally had to suffer severely because of these two qualities. She was always waging war against him. In the first place, out of love for my mother, for whom she came to be an eloquent advocate, in spite of the fact that my mother was thoroughly able to defend herself, in accordance with her maxim, "The best defense is a blow." In the second place, she was the mistress of the pantry, which was intrusted to her with most plenary powers, and my father was always undertaking pillaging expeditions against it, not only to satisfy his own personal wants, which she might have tolerated, even though he was capable of consuming half a veal roast for his breakfast, without thinking anything about it; but she objected strenuously to his raids for the benefit of his pet chickens, dogs, and cats. We had two cats, Peter and Petrine. Peter, also called Peter the Great, who might have been mistaken for a young jaguar, was his special pet, and when this beautiful animal followed him, purring, into the pantry, and he always followed, there was no end to the dainty morsels given him. The best was none too good. This wanton waste made the Schröder girl, faithful soul that she was, fly into a rage, for she often saw her plans for dinner completely upset.

In the house she was indeed a treasure, but for us children, especially me, she was even more than that, she was a real blessing. The training we received from our parents advanced by fits and starts; sometimes there was training and again there was none, and never any thought of continuity. But the Schröder girl supplied the continuity. She had no favorites, never allowed herself to be outwitted, and knew just how to handle each one of us. As for me, she knew that I was good-natured, but sensitive, proud, and under the control of a certain degree of megalomania. These bad inclinations she wished to hold in check, and so said to me times without number: "Yes, you think you are a marvelous fellow, but you are only a childish boy, just like the rest of them, only at times a bit worse. You always want to play the young gentleman, but young gentlemen don't lick honey from their plates, or at least don't deny it if they have done so, in fact they never tell lies. Not long ago I heard you prating about honor, but I want to tell you, that doesn't look to me like honor." She insisted upon truthfulness, treated boasting with fine ridicule, and was chary of compliments. But when she did praise it was effective. She did me many a good turn, and not until late in life, when I was past fifty, did I meet another woman, this time an elderly lady, who exerted such an educational influence upon me. Even now I am still taking lessons and learn from people who are young enough to be my grandchildren.

Thus much about the good Schröder girl, and after this digression in memory of her I ask once more: "Well, how did we live?" I propose to show how we lived, by means of a series of pictures, and in order to introduce order and clarity into the description it will be well to divide our life as we lived it into two halves, a summer life and a winter life.

First, then, there was the summer life. About the middle of June we regularly had the house full of visitors; for my mother, in accordance with the old custom, still kept in touch with her relatives, a trait which we children only very imperfectly inherited from her. But let it be understood, she kept in touch with her relatives, not to derive advantages from them, but to bestow advantages. She was incredibly generous, and there were times when we, after we had grown up, asked ourselves the question, which passion really threatened us most, the gaming passion of our father, or the giving and presenting passion of our mother. But we finally discovered the answer to the question. What our father did was simply money thrown away, whereas the excessive amounts given away by our mother were always unselfishly given and carried with them a quiet blessing. No doubt a certain desire to be, so far as possible, a grande dame, if only in a very small degree, had something to do with it, but then all our doings show some elements of human weakness. Later in life, when we talked with her about these things, she said: "Certainly, I might have refrained from doing many things. We spent far more than our income. But I said to myself: 'What there is will be spent anyhow, and so it is better for it to go my way than the other.'"

These summer months, from the middle of June on, were often made especially charming by the numbers of visitors in our home, mostly young women relatives from Berlin, who were both cheerful and talkative. The household was then completely changed, for weeks at a time, and, the hatchet being temporarily buried, merriment and playing of sly tricks, with occasional boisterous pranks, became the order of the day. The most brilliant performer in the fun-making competitions that frequently arose was always my father himself. He was, as handsome men often are, the absolute opposite of Don Juan, and proud of his virtue. But by as much as he was unlike Don Juan, he was charming as a Gascon, when it came to a spirited discussion of pert and often most daring themes, with young ladies, of whom he made but one requirement, that they be handsome, otherwise it was not worth his while. I inherited from him this inclination to enter into subtle discussions with ladies, in a jesting tone; indeed I have ever carried this inclination over into my style of writing, and when I read corresponding scenes in my novels and short stories it once in awhile seems to me as though I heard my father speaking. Except with this difference, that I fall far short of his felicitousness, as people who had known him in his prime often told me, when he was over severity and I was correspondingly along in years. I have frequently been addressed in some such way as this: "Now see here, you do very well, when you have your good days, but you can't compete with your father." And that was certainly true. His small talk, born of bonhomie and at the same time enlivened with fantastic lawyerly artifice, was simply irresistible, even when dealing with business matters, in which as a rule heartiness has no place. And yet his remarks on money matters had a lasting effect, so that none of us children ever cherished the slightest feeling of bitterness on account of his most remarkable financial operations. My mother, however, was of too different a nature to be easily converted or carried away by his social graces. These matters were to her most repugnant when treated lightly and jestingly. "Whatever is serious is not funny, that's all." But she never disputed the fact that, as a happy humorist, he always succeeded in drawing people over to his side, though she never failed to add: "unfortunately."

And now let us return to the summer visitors in our home. At times it was rather difficult to furnish continual rounds of entertainment for the young women, and would perhaps have proved impossible, if it had not been for the horses. Almost every afternoon, when the weather was good, the carriage drove up to our door, and such days during the bathing season, when we were often almost completely overwhelmed with visitors, were probably the only times when my mother, without in the least sacrificing her fundamental convictions, was temporarily reconciled to the existence of horse and carriage. Whoever knows Swinemünde, and there are many who do know the place, is aware of the fact that one is never embarrassed there for a beautiful spot to visit on afternoon drives, and even in those days this was as true as it is today. There was the trip along the beach to Heringsdorf, or, on the other side, out to the moles; but the most popular drives, because they afforded protection from the sun, were those back into the country, either through the dense beech forest toward Corswant, or better still to the village of Camminke, situated near the Haff of Stettin and the Golm (mountain). There was a much frequented skittle-alley there, where women played as well as men. I myself liked to stand by the splintery lath trough, in which the skittle-boy rolled back the balls. My only reason for choosing this position was because I had heard a short time before that one of the players at this very alley, in catching a ball as it rolled to him, had run a long lath splinter under the nail of his index finger. That had made such an impression on me that I always stood there shuddering for fear of a repetition of the accident, which fortunately did not occur. When I finally grew tired of waiting I stepped through a lattice gate, always hanging aslant and always creaky, into a garden plot running along close by the skittle-alley and parallel with it. It was a genuine peasant's garden, with touch-me-nots and mignonette in bloom, and in one place the mallows grew so tall that they formed a lane. Then when the sun went down behind the forest the Golm, which lay to the west, was bathed in red light, and the metal ball on its tall pillar looked down, like a sphere of gold, upon the village and the skittle-garden. Myriads of mosquitoes hung in the air, and the bumble bees flew back and forth between the box-edged beds.

Our visitors usually left at the beginning of August, and when September came the last of the hotel guests departed from the city. If anybody chose to remain longer it was inconvenient for the landlords, in which connection the following scene occurred. A man, a Berliner of course, on returning to his hotel, after accompanying some departing friends to their steamer, sat down leisurely by his host and hostess, rubbed his hands together, and said: "Well, Hoppensack, at last the Berliners are all gone, or at least nearly all of them; now we shall have a good time, now it will be cozy." He expected, of course, that the host and hostess would agree with him most heartily. But instead of that he found himself looking into long faces. Finally he screwed up his courage and asked why they were so indifferent. "Why, good heavens, Mr. Schünemann," said Hoppensack, "a recorder and his wife came to us the last of May and now it is almost the middle of September. We want to be alone again, you see." As Mrs. Hoppensack nodded approvingly, there was nothing left for Schünemann to do but to depart himself the next day.

Not long after the last summer guests had gone the equinoctial storms set in, and, if it was a bad year, they lasted on into November. First the chestnuts fell, then the tiles rattled down from the roof, and from the eaves-troughs, always placed with their outlets close by bedroom windows, the rain splashed noisily down into the yard. In the course of time, scattered clouds sailed across the clearing sky and the air turned cold. Everybody felt the chilliness, and all day long there was an old woodchopper at work in the shed. My father would often go down to see him, take the ax and split wood for him a half-hour at a time.

Social activities were at a standstill during these late autumn days. People were recovering from the strain of the summer season and storing up strength for winter entertainments. Before these began there was an interregnum of several weeks, the slaughtering and baking times, the latter coinciding with the Christmas period. First came the slaughtering of geese. A regular household without a goose-killing time could hardly have been thought of. Many things had to be taken into account. First of all, perhaps, were the feathers to make new beds, which were always needed for guest chambers; but the chief concern were the smoked goose-breasts, almost as important articles as the hams and sides of bacon hanging in the chimney. Shortly before St. Martin's day, if enough geese had been collected to supply the needs, they were penned up for fattening, in the court, which gave rise to a horrible cackling, well calculated to rob us of our night's rest for a whole week. But a day was straightway set for the beginning of the feast, about the middle of November. In the court, in a lean-to built near the end of the house, and, strange to say, with a dove-cote over it, was the servants' room, in which, beside the cook, two house-maids slept, provided always they did any sleeping. The coachman was supposed, according to a rule of the house, to occupy the straw-loft, but was happy to forego the independence of these quarters, which went with his position, preferring by his presence to crowd still worse the already crowded space of the servants' room, in full accord with Schiller's lines,

"Room is in the smallest hovel
For a happy, loving pair."

But when goose-killing time came it meant a very considerable further overcrowding, for on the evening that the massacring was to begin there was added to the number of persons usually quartered in the servants' room a special force of old women, four or five in number, who at other times earned a living at washing or weeding.

Then the sacrificial festivities began, always late in the evening. Through the wide-open door—open, because otherwise it would not have been possible to endure the stifling air—the stars shone into the smoky room, which was dimly lighted by a tallow candle, with always a thief in the candle. Near the door stood in a semi-circle the five slaughter priestesses, each with a goose between her knees, and as they bored holes through the skullcaps of the poor fowls, with sharp kitchen knives—a procedure, the necessity of which I have never understood—they sang all sorts of folk-songs, the text of which formed a strange contrast, as well to the murderous act as to the mournful melody. At least one had to suppose this to be the case, for the maids, who sat on the edge of the bed with their guest from the straw-loft between them, followed the folksongs with never-ending merriment, and at the passages that sounded specially mournful they even burst into cheers. Both my parents were morally strict, and they often discussed the question, whether there were not some way to put a stop to this insolent conduct, but they finally gave it up. My father had a lurking suspicion that such a custom had existed in antiquity, and, after he-had looked the matter up, said: "It is a repetition of ancient conditions, the Roman saturnalia, or, what amounts to the same thing, a case where the servants temporarily lord it over the so-called lords." When he had thus classified the occurrence historically he was satisfied, the more so as the maids always amused him the following morning by lowering their eyes in a most unusually modest fashion. Then he would make fantastically extravagant remarks, as though Gil Blas had been his favorite book. That was not the case, however. He read Walter Scott exclusively, for which I am grateful to him even to this day, since, even then, a few crumbs fell from his table for me. His favorite among all the works was Quintin Durward, probably on account of its French subject.

I have here further to add that the terrors of this goose-killing time were by no means ended with the slaughter night and the mournful melodies. On the contrary, they lasted at least three or four days longer, for the slaughtering time was also the time when the giblets dressed with goose-blood were served daily at our table, a dish which, according to the Pomeranian view, stands unrivaled in the realm of cookery. Furthermore my father considered it his duty to support the view peculiar to this region, and, when the great steaming platter appeared, would say: "Ah, that is fine! Just eat some of this; it is the black soup of the Spartans, full of strength and stamina." But I observed that he, along with the rest of us, picked out the dried fruit and almond dumplings, leaving the nourishing gravy for the servants outside, above all for the slaughtering and mourning women, who by their boring operations had established the most legitimate claim to it.

About a fortnight later came the pig-killing, toward which my feeling remained exactly the same as on that occasion when, hardly seven years of age, I had fled from the city toward Alt-Ruppin, in order to escape, not only the spectacle, but a whole gamut of ear-and-heart-rending sounds. But I had meanwhile grown out of childhood into boyhood, and a boy, whether he will or no, feels honor-bound manfully to take everything that comes along, even if his own deepest nature revolts against it. That the prospect of rice pudding with raisins in it was a contributing factor in this comedy of bravery, I am unable to say, for fond as I am of good things to eat, I was always, during the weeks just preceding Christmas, half upset by the smell of hot grease that drifted through the house. At least I never had what could be called a really good appetite during this period, despite the fact that it would have been particularly worth while just then. Especially would such have been the case when, as usually happened about the first of December, a stag was sent in from the chief forester's and was hung up, eviscerated, as game usually is, against the gable end of the servants' house. Day after day the cook would go to this horrible gable ornament and cut out, first the haunch, then the shoulders and legs, with the result that we always heaved a sigh of relief when the glory of this venison was a thing of the past.

A far happier time was the baking week, which began with spice-nuts and sugar cookies, and ended with bretzels, wreath-cakes, and cakes baked on tins. Not only were we admitted to the bakeroom, where there was a most alluring odor of bitter almonds and grated lemons; we also received, as a foretaste of Christmas, a bountiful supply of little cake-rolls, baked especially for us children. "I know," said my mother, "that the children will upset their stomachs eating them, but even that is better than that they should be restricted to too low a diet. They shall have joyful holiday feeling during all these days, and nothing can give it to them better than holiday cakes." There is something in that view, and it may be absolutely right if the children are thoroughly robust. But we were not so robust that the principle could be applied to us without modification. And so, about Christmas time, I was always much given to crying.

On New Year's Eve there was a club ball, which I, being the oldest child, was allowed to witness. I took my position in one corner of the hall and looked on with vacillating feelings. When the dancing couples whirled past me I was happy, on the one hand, because I was permitted to stand there as a sort of guest and share in the pleasure with my eyes, and yet, on the other hand, I was unhappy, because I was merely an onlooker instead of a participator in the dance. My personal insignificance weighed heavy upon me, doubly heavy because of the gastric condition I was regularly in at this reason, and it continued so until the nightwatchman, wrapped in his long blue cloak, came into the hall at midnight and, after blowing a preliminary signal on his horn, wished everybody a happy New Year. Then, as if by magic, my feeling of sentimentality vanished entirely, and I was carried away by the comic grotesqueness of the scene, and soon regained my freedom and buoyancy of spirit.

Just about this time social activities began, taking the form of a series of weekly feasts, many of which resembled that of Belshazzar, in so far as a spirit hand was at the very time writing the bankruptcy of the host upon the wall. However, my knowledge of the details of these feasts was derived only from hearsay. But any special banquets, whether great or small, that fell to the lot of our own house I saw with my own eyes and it is about these that I now propose to tell.

When it came our turn to entertain, the whole house was pervaded with a feeling of solemnity, which had a certain similarity to the feeling at the time of a wedding. Furthermore, a parallel to the tripartite division into wedding-eve celebration, wedding day, and the day after, appeared in the form of preparation day, real feast-day, and eating of the remnants. Which of these three days deserved the prize may remain an open question, but I am inclined to believe I liked the first the best. To be sure, it was unepicurean and called for much self-restraint, but it was rich in anticipation of glorious things to come.

On this day of preparation the widow Gaster, a celebrated cook, came to our house, as she did to all other houses on similar occasions. Her personal appearance united complacence with dignity, and by virtue of this latter quality she was received with respect and unlimited confidence. Because of a dislike, easily understood, for all the things she had to prepare day in and day out, especially sweets, she lived-almost exclusively on red wine, deriving the little other sustenance she needed from the vapors of hot grease, with which she was continually surrounded. Her arrival at our house was always a signal for me to plant myself near the kitchen, where everything that took place could be observed and, incidentally, admired. It was always her first task to bake a tree-cake on a spit. She kept a record of all the tree-cakes she baked, and when the number reached a thousand the housewives of Swinemünde gave her a well-deserved feast in celebration of the achievement. To be sure, tree-cakes are to be had even today, but they are degenerations, weak, spongy, and pale-cheeked, whereas in those days they had a happy firmness, which in the most successful specimens rose to crispness, accompanied by a scale of colors running from the darkest ocher to the brightest yellow. It always gave me great pleasure to watch a tree-cake come into being. Toward the back wall of a huge fireplace stood a low half-dome, built of bricks, the top projecting forward like a roof, the bottom slanting toward the back. Along this slanting part was built a narrow charcoal fire about four feet long and by it were placed two small iron supports, upon which a roasting spit was laid, with a contrivance for turning it. However, the spit resting upon the supports proved to be something more than a mere rod. In fact the spit itself was run lengthwise through a hollow wooden cone, which had a covering of greased paper over its outer surface, and the purpose of which was to form a core for the tree-cake. Then, with a tin spoon fastened upon a long stick, the cook began to pour on a thin batter, which at first dripped off in a way that made the method of application appear futile, and this continued for a considerable length of time. But from the moment that the batter became more consistent, and the dripping slower, hope began to revive, and in a few hours the splendidly browned and copiously jagged tree-cake was taken off the wooden cone. All this had a symbolical significance. The successful completion of this pièce de résistance inspired confidence in the success of the feast itself. The tree-cake cast the horoscope, so to speak, of the whole affair.

I shall pass over the kitchen activities on the day of the entertainment and describe instead the feast itself. Along extension table was moved into my mother's parlor—the only room available for the purpose—and soon stood well set in front of the moire sofa with the three hundred silver studs. The guests were not seated at the table till the candles were lit. The man who presided over the banquet always sat with his back toward the Schinkel mirror, whereas all the other guests could, with little or no inconvenience, observe themselves in the glass.

So far as I can recall they were always gentlemen's dinner parties, with twelve or fourteen persons, and only on rare occasions did my mother appear at the table, then usually accompanied by her sister, who often visited us for months at a time in the winter season and was in those days still very young and handsome. It was always a specially difficult matter to assign her a suitable place, and only when old Mr. von Flemming and Privy Councillor Kind were present was she in any degree safe from extremely ardent attentions. It was almost impossible to protect her from such attentions. The men had respect for virtue, perhaps, though I have my doubts even about that, but virtuous airs were considered in bad taste, and where was the line to be drawn between reality and appearance? That the ladies retired from the table toward the end of the meal and appeared again only for a brief quarter of an hour to do the honors at coffee, goes without saying.

I have spoken above of the culinary art of good Mrs. Gaster, but in spite of that art the bill of fare was really simple, especially in comparison with the luxury prevalent nowadays at dinner parties. Simple, I say, and yet stable. No man was willing to fall behind a set standard, nor did he care to go beyond it. The soup was followed by a fish course, and that, without fail, by French turnips and smoked goose-breast. Then came a huge roast, and finally a sweet dish, with fruits, spice-cakes, and Königsberg marchpane. An almost greater simplicity prevailed with respect to the wines. After the soup sherry was passed. Then a red wine of moderate price and moderate quality gained the ascendant and held sway till coffee was served. So the peculiar feature of these festivities did not lie in the materials consumed, but, strange to say, in a certain spiritual element, in the tone that prevailed. This varied considerably, when we take into account the beginning and the end. The beginning was marked by toasts in fine style, and occasionally, especially if the feast was at the same time a family party—a birthday celebration or something of the sort—there were even verses, which from the point of view of regularity of form and cleverness of ideas left nothing to be desired. Only recently I found among my father's papers some of these literary efforts and was astonished to see how good they were. Humor, wit, and playing on words were never lacking. There were special occasions when even deep emotion, was expressed and then those who were farthest from having a proper feeling, but nearest to a state of delirium, arose regularly from their seats and marched up to the speaker to embrace and kiss him. This kissing scene always denoted the beginning of the second half of the feast. The further the dinner advanced the freer became the conversation, and, when it had reached the stage where all feeling of restraint was cast aside, the most insolent and often the rudest badgering was indulged in, or, if for any reason this was not allowed, the company began to rally certain individuals, or, as we might say, began to poke fun at them. One of the choicest victims of this favorite occupation of the whole round table was my papa. It had long been known that when it was a question of conversation he had three hobbies, viz., personal ranks and decorations in the Prussian State, the population of all cities and hamlets according to the latest census, and the names and ducal titles of the French marshals, including an unlimited number of Napoleonic anecdotes, the latter usually in the original. Occasionally this original version was disputed from the point of view of sentence structure and grammar, whereupon my father, when driven into a corner, would reply with imperturbable repose: "My French feeling tells me that it must be thus, thus and not otherwise," a declaration which naturally served but to increase the hilarity.

Yes, indeed, Napoleon and his marshals! My father's knowledge in this field was simply stupendous, and I wager there was not in that day a single historian, nor is there any now, who, so far as French war stories and personal anecdotes of the period from Marengo to Waterloo are concerned, would have been in any sense of the word qualified to enter into competition with him. Where he got all his material is an enigma to me. The only explanation I can offer is that he had in his memory a pigeonhole, into which fell naturally everything he found that appealed to his passion, in his constant reading of journals and miscellanies.

* * * * *

When we had been safely lodged, at Midsummer, 1827, in the house with the gigantic roof and the wooden eavestrough, into which my father could easily lay his hand, this question immediately presented itself: "What is to become of the children now? To what school shall we send them?" If my mother had been there a solution of the problem would doubtless have been found, one that would have had due regard for what was befitting our station, at least, if not for what we should learn. But since my mama, as already stated, had remained in Berlin to receive treatment for her nerves, the decision rested with my father, and he settled the matter in short order, presumably after some such characteristic soliloquy as follows: "The city has only one school, the city school, and as the city school is the only one, it is consequently the best." No sooner thought than done. Before a week was passed I was a pupil of the city school. About the school I remember very little, only that there was a large room with a blackboard, stifling air in spite of the fact that the windows were always open, and an endless number of boys in baize and linen jackets, unkempt and barefoot, or in wooden shoes, which made a fearful noise. It was very sad. But even then, as unfortunately in later years, I had so few pleasing illusions about going to school that the conditions previously described to me did not appear specially dreadful when I became personally acquainted with them. I simply supposed that things had to be thus. But toward autumn, when my mother arrived on the scene and saw me coming home from school with the wooden-shoe boys, she was beside herself and cast an anxious glance at my hair, which she doubtless thought she could not well trust in such company. She then had one of her heart-to-heart talks with my father, who was probably told that he had again taken only himself into consideration. That same day my withdrawal from school was announced to Rector Beda, who lived diagonally across the street from us. He was not angry at the announcement, declared, on the contrary, to my mother that "he had really been surprised. * * *" Thus far all was well. Just criticism had been exercised and action had been taken in accord with it. But now that it was necessary to find something better to substitute for the school, even my mother was at her wits' end. Teachers seemed to be, or were in fact, lacking, and as it had been impossible in so short a time to establish relations to the good families of the city, it was decided for the present to let me grow up wild and calmly to wait till something turned up. But to prevent my lapsing into dense ignorance I was to read an hour daily to my mother and learn some Latin and French words from my father, in addition to geography and history.

"Will you be equal to that, Louis?" my mother had asked.

"Equal to? What do you mean by 'equal to?' Of course I am equal to it.
Your same old lack of confidence in me."

"Not twenty-four hours ago you yourself were full of doubt about it."

"I presume the plan did not appeal to me then. But if it must be, I understand the Prussian pharmacopoeia as well as anybody, and in my parents' house French was spoken. As for the rest, to speak of it would be ridiculous. You know that in such things I am more than a match for ten graduates."

As a matter of fact he really gave me lessons, which, I may say in advance, were kept up even after the need of them no longer existed, and, peculiar as these lessons were, I learned more from them than from many a famous teacher. My father picked out quite arbitrarily the things he had long known by heart or, perhaps, had just read the same day, and vitalized geography with history, always, of course, in such a way that in the end his favorite themes were given due prominence. For example:

"Do you know about East and West Prussia?"

"Yes, papa; that is the country after which Prussia is called Prussia and after which we are all called Prussians."

"Very good, very good; a little too much Prussia, but that doesn't matter. And do you also know the capitals of the two provinces?"

"Yes, papa; Königsberg and Danzig."

"Very good. I myself have been in Danzig, and came near going to Königsberg, too, but something intervened. Have you ever heard perchance who it was that finally captured Danzig after the brave defense of our General Kalckreuth?"

"No, papa."

"Well, it is not to be expected. Very few people do know it, and the so-called higher educated never know it. Well, it was General Lefèvre, a man of rare bravery, upon whom Napoleon later bestowed the title of Duc de Dantzic, spelled with a final c, in which regard the languages differ. That was in the year 1807."

"After the battle of Jena?"

"Yes, it may be put that way; but only in the same sense as if you were to say, it was after the Seven Years' War."

"I don't understand, papa."

"Doesn't matter. I mean, Jena was too long ago. But one might say it was after the battle of Prussian Eylau, a fearfully bloody battle, in which the Russian Guard was almost annihilated, and in which Napoleon, before surrendering, said to his favorite Duroc: 'Duroc, today I have made the acquaintance of the sixth great power of Europe, la boue.'"

"What does that mean?"

"La boue means the mud. But one can express it more strongly in German, and I am inclined to think that Napoleon, who, when he felt like it, had something cynical about him, really meant this stronger expression."

"What is cynical?"

"Cynical—hm, cynical—it is a word often used, and one might say, cynical is the same as rough or brutal. But I presume it may be defined more accurately. We will look it up later in the encyclopedia. It is well to be informed about such things, but one does not need to know everything on the spur of the moment."

Such was the character of the geography lessons, always ending with historical anecdotes. But he preferred to begin at once with history, or what seemed to him history. And here I must mention his pronounced fondness for all the events and the persons concerned in them between the siege of Toulon and the imprisonment on the island of St. Helena. He was always reverting to these persons and things. I have elsewhere named his favorites, with Ney and Lannes at the head of the list, but in that enumeration I forgot to mention one man, who stood perhaps nearer to his heart than these, namely, Latour d'Auvergne, of whom he had told me any number of anecdotes back in our Ruppin days. These were now repeated. According to the new stories Latour d'Auvergne bore the title of the "First Grenadier of France," because in spite of his rank of general he always stood in the rank and file, next to the right file-leader of the Old Guard. Then when he fell, in the battle of Neuburg, Napoleon gave orders that the heart of the "First Grenadier" be placed in an urn and carried along with the troop, and that his name, Latour d'Auvergne, be regularly called at every roll-call, and the soldier serving as file-leader be instructed to answer in his stead and tell where he was. This was about what I had long ago learned by heart from my father's stories; but his fondness for this hero was so great that, whenever it was at all possible, he returned to him and asked the same questions. Or, to be more accurate, the same scene was enacted, for it was a scene.

"Do you know Latour d'Auvergne?" he usually began.

"Certainly. He was the First Grenadier of France."

"Good. And do you also know how he was honored after he was dead?"

"Certainly."

"Then tell me how it was."

"Very well; but you must first stand up, papa, and be file-leader, or
I can't do it."

Then he would actually rise from his seat on the sofa and in true military fashion take his position before me as file-leader of the Old Guard, while I myself, little stick-in-the-mud that I was, assumed the part of the roll-calling officer. Then I began to call the names:

"Latour d'Auvergne!"

"He is not here," answered my father in a basso profundo voice.

"Where is he, pray?"

"He died on the field of honor."

Once in awhile my mother attended these peculiar lessons—the one about Latour, however, was never ventured in her presence—and she did not fail to give us to understand, by her looks, that she considered this whole method, which my father with an inimitable expression of countenance called his "Socratic method," exceedingly dubious. But she, by nature wholly conventional, not only in this particular, but in others, was absolutely wrong, for, to repeat, I owe in fact to these lessons, and the similar conversations growing out of them, all the best things, at least all the most practical things, I know. Of all that my father was able to teach me nothing has been forgotten and nothing has proved useless for my purposes. Not only have these stories been of hundredfold benefit to me socially throughout my long life, they have also, in my writing, been ever at hand as a Golden Treasury, and if I were asked, to what teacher I felt most deeply indebted, I should have to reply: to my father, my father, who knew nothing at all, so to speak, but, with his wealth of anecdotes picked up from newspapers and magazines, and covering every variety of theme, gave me infinitely more help than all my Gymnasium and Realschule teachers put together. What information these men offered me, even if it was good, has been for the most part forgotten; but the stories of Ney and Rapp have remained fresh in my memory to the present hour.

My father's method, which, much as I feel indebted to it, was after all somewhat peculiar and utterly devoid of logic and consistency, would in all probability have led to violent quarrels between my parents, if my critical mother, who saw only its weaknesses and none of its virtues, had attached any special significance to it in general. But that was not the case. She only felt that my father's way of teaching was totally different from the usual way, in that it would not lead to many practical results, i.e., would not give me much preparation for an examination, and in this respect she was perfectly right. However, as she herself attached so little value to knowledge in general, she contented herself with smiling at the "Socratic method," as she saw no reason for becoming seriously wrought up over it. According to her honest conviction there were other things in life of far greater importance than knowledge, to say nothing of erudition, and these other things were: a good appearance and good manners. That her children should all present a good appearance was with her an article of faith, so to speak, and she considered it a natural consequence of their good appearance that they either already had or would acquire good manners. So the only essential was to present a good appearance. Serious studies seemed to her not a help, but, on the contrary, a hindrance to happiness, that is to say, real happiness, which she looked upon as inseparable from money and property. A hundred-thousand-dollar man was something, and she respected, even honored him, whereas chief judges and councillors of the chancery commanded very little respect from her, and would have commanded even less, if the State, which she did respect, had not stood behind them. She was incapable of bowing in good faith to any so-called spiritual authority, not because she cherished too exalted an opinion of herself—she was, on the contrary, entirely without vanity and arrogance—but solely because, constituted as she was, she could not recognize an authority of knowledge, much less of erudition, in a practical field of life—and with her the non-practical fields never entered into consideration.

I still remember the time, some twenty years after the events just narrated, when my parents were thinking of separating and of eventually being divorced. A separation actually came about, the divorce idea was dropped. But the latter was for a time considered in all seriousness, and a friend of our family, Pastor Schultz, the then preacher at Bethany, who made a specialty of divorce questions—it was in the reign of Frederick William IV., when such problems were treated with revived dogmatic severity—Pastor Schultz, I say, opposed the plan, as soon as he heard of it, with all his power and eloquence. My mother had a great deal of admiration for him and knew, besides, the respect he enjoyed of "those highest in authority," and "those highest in authority" meant something to her; nevertheless his severe presentation of the matter made not the slightest impression upon her; in fact his argument was so fruitless that, as soon as he finished, she said with a reposeful air of superiority: "My dear Schultz, you understand this question thoroughly; but whether or not I have a right to secure a divorce is a question which no human being in the whole world can answer so well as I myself." With that she closed the conversation.

She was similarly skeptical of every kind of authority, and had no confidence whatever in the ability of the three university faculties. For example, since patriarchal conditions were her ideal, she questioned whether mankind derived any material advantages from jurisprudence. It settled everything, as she thought, by favoritism or personal advantage, or at least in a mechanical way. Riches, property, especially landed property, accompanied if possible by the airs of a legation attaché—that was something that unlocked the world and the hearts of men, that was real power. Everything else was comedy, illusion, a soap-bubble, that threatened to burst any moment. And then nothing was left. One can readily understand why my mother, with such views, insisted upon taking me out of the barefoot school, and did not consider an interim, with no regular school instruction, any special misfortune. The evil in it was that it violated the rule. As for the rest, the little bit of learning lost could be made up at any time. And if not, then not….

It is a pretty saying that every child has its angel, and one does not need to be very credulous to believe it. For the little tots this angel is a fairy, enveloped in a long white lily veil, which stands smiling at the foot of a cradle and either wards off danger or helps out of it when it is really at hand. That is the fairy for the little ones. But when one has outgrown the cradle or crib, and has begun to sleep in a regular bed, in other words, when one has become a robust boy, one still needs his angel just the same, indeed the need is all the greater. But instead of the lily angel it needs to be a sort of archangel, a strong, manly angel, with shield and spear, otherwise his strength will not suffice for his growing tasks.

As a matter of fact, I was not wild and venturesome, and all my escapades that were attributed to me as of such a nature were always undertaken after a wise estimate of my strength. Nevertheless I have, with respect to that period, a feeling that I was constantly being rescued, a feeling in which I can hardly be in error. When I left home at the age of twelve, the age at which, as a usual thing, real dangers begin, there was doubtless a sudden change in my case, for it now seems to me as though my angel had had a vacation from that time on. All dangers ceased entirely or shrank into such insignificance that they left no impression upon me. In view of the fact that the two periods were so close together, there must have been this difference, otherwise I should not have retained such entirely different feelings about them.

It was one of our chief sports to fire off so-called shooting-keys. That the children of large cities know anything about shooting-keys is hardly probable, hence I may be permitted to describe them here. They were hollow keys with very thin walls, consequently of enormous bore, so to speak, and were used to lock trunks, especially the trunks of servant girls. It was our constant endeavor to gain possession of such keys and at times our expeditions were nothing short of piracy. Woe be unto the poor servant girl who forgot to take a key out of its lock! She never saw it again. We took possession of it, and the simple procedure of filing out a touchhole produced a finished firearm. As these keys were always rusty, and occasionally split, it not infrequently happened that they burst; but we always escaped injury. The angel helped.

Much more dangerous was the art of making fireworks, which I was always practicing. With the help of sulphur and saltpeter, which we kept in a convenient place in the apothecary's shop, I had made of myself a full-fledged pyrotechnician, in which process I was very materially aided by my skill in the manipulation of cardboard and paste. All sorts of shells were easily made, and so I produced Catherine-wheels, revolving suns, and flower-pots. Often these creations refused to perform the duty expected of them, and then we piled them up and, by means of a sulphurated match, touched off the whole heap of miscarried glory and waited to see what it would do. This was all done with comparatively little danger. Fraught with all the more danger for us was the thing which was considered the simplest and lowest product of the art of pyrotechnics, and was so rated by us, viz., the serpent. Very often the serpents I made would not burn properly, because I had not used the right mixture, no doubt, and that always vexed me greatly. When a Catherine-wheel refused to turn, that could at least be tolerated, for a Catherine-wheel is a comparatively difficult thing to make. A serpent, on the other hand, could not well help burning, and when, for all that, one simply would not burn, that was a humiliation that could not be suffered. So I would bend over the shells as they stuck in the pile of sand and begin to blow, in order to give new life to the dying tinder fire. When it went out entirely, that was really the best thing for me. But if it went off suddenly, my hair was singed or my forehead burned. Nothing worse ever happened, for the angel was protecting me with his shield.

That was the element of fire. But we also came in contact with water, which was not to be wondered at in a seaport.

In the autumn of 1831 a Berlin relative made me a present of a cannon, not just an ordinary child's plaything, such as can be bought of any coppersmith or tinner, but a so-called pattern-cannon, such as is seen only in arsenals,—a splendid specimen, of great beauty and elegance, the carriage firm and neat, the barrel highly polished and about a foot and a half long. I was more than delighted, and determined to proceed at once to a bombardment of Swinemünde. Two boys of my age and my younger brother climbed with me into a boat lying at Klempin's Clapper, and we rowed down-stream, with the cannon in the bow. When we were about opposite the Society House I considered that the time had arrived for the beginning of the bombardment, and fired three shots, waiting after each shot to see whether the people on the "Bulwark" took notice of us, and whether they showed due respect for the seriousness of our actions. But neither of these things happened. A thing that did happen, however, was that we meanwhile got out into the current, were caught by it and carried away, and when we suddenly saw ourselves between the embankments of the moles, I was suddenly seized with a terrible fright. I realized that, if we kept on in this way, in ten minutes more we should be out at sea and might drift away toward Bornholm and the Swedish coast. It was a desperate situation, and we finally resorted to the least brave, but most sensible, means imaginable, and began to scream with all our might, all the time beckoning and waving various objects, showing on the whole considerable cleverness in the invention of distress signals. At last we attracted the attention of some pilots standing on the West mole, who shook their fingers threateningly at us, but finally, with smiling countenances, threw us a rope. That rescued us from danger. One of the pilots knew me; his son was one of my playmates. This doubtless accounts for the fact that the seamen dismissed us with a few epithets, which might have been worse. I took my cannon under my arm, but not without having the satisfaction of seeing it admired. Then I went home, after promising to send out Hans Ketelböter, a lusty sailor-boy who lived quite near our home, to row back the boat, which was meanwhile moored to a pile.

This was the most unique among my adventures with water, but by no means the most dangerous. The most dangerous was at the same time the most ordinary, because it recurred every time I went swimming in the sea. Any one who knows the Baltic seaside resorts, knows the so-called "reffs." By "reffs" are meant the sandbanks running parallel to the beach, out a hundred or two hundred paces, and often with very little water washing over them. Upon these the swimmers can stand and rest, when, they have crossed the deep places lying between them and the shore. In order that they may know exactly where these shallow places are, little red banners are hoisted over the sandbanks. Here lay for me a daily temptation. When the sea was calm and everything normal, my skill as a swimmer was just sufficient to carry me safely over the deep places to the nearest sandbank. But if the conditions were less favorable, or if by chance I let myself down too soon, so that I had no solid ground beneath my feet, I was frightened, sometimes almost to death. Luckily I always managed to get out, though not by myself. Strength and help came from some other source.

Another danger of water which I was destined to undergo had no connection with the sea, but occurred on the river, close by the "Bulwark," not five hundred paces from our house. I shall tell about it later; but first I wish to insert here another little occurrence, in which no help of an angel was needed.

I was not good at swimming, nor at steering or rowing; but one of the things I could do well, very well indeed, was walking on stilts. According to our family tradition we came from the region of Montpelier, whereas I personally ought by rights to be able, in view of my virtuosity as a stilt-walker, to trace my ancestry back to the Landes, where the inhabitants are, so to speak, grown fast to their stilts, and hardly take them off when they go to bed. To make a long story short, I was a brilliant stilt-walker, and in comparison with those of the western Garonne region, the home of the very low stilts, I had the advantage that I could not get my buskins high enough to suit me, for the little blocks of wood fastened on the inner side of my stilts were some three feet high. By taking a quick start and running the ends of the two poles slantingly into the ground I was able to swing myself without fail upon the stilt-blocks and to begin immediately my giant stride. Ordinarily this was an unremunerative art, but on a few occasions I derived real profit from it, when my stilts enabled me to escape storms that were about to break over my head. That was in the days just after Captain Ferber, who had served out his time with the "Neufchâtellers," retired on a pension and moved to Swinemünde. Ferber, whom the Swinemünders called Teinturier, the French translation of his name, because of his relation to Neufchâtel, came of a very good family, was, if I mistake not, the son of a high official in the ministry of finance, who could boast of long-standing relations to the Berlin Court, dating back to the war times of the year 1813. This was no doubt the reason why the son, in spite of the fact that he did not belong to the nobility and was of German extraction—the Neufchâtel officers were in those days still for the most part French-Swiss—was permitted to serve with the élite battalion, where he was well liked, because he was clever, a good comrade, and an author besides. He wrote novelettes after the fashions then in vogue. But in spite of his popularity he could not hold his position, because his fondness for coffee and cognac, which soon became restricted to the latter, grew upon him so rapidly that he was forced to retire. His removal to Swinemünde was doubtless due to the fact that seaports are better suited for such passions than are inland cities. Fondness for cognac attracts less attention.

Whatever his reason may have been, however, Ferber was soon as popular in his new place of residence as previously in Berlin, for he had that kindliness of character which is the "dearest child of the dram-bottle." He was very fond of my father, who reciprocated the sentiment. But this friendship did not spring up at the very beginning of their acquaintance. In fact it developed out of a little controversy between them, that is to say, a defeat sustained by my father, one of whose amiable peculiarities it was, within twenty-four hours at the latest to convert his anger at being put to flight, into approbation bordering on homage for the victor.

His defeat came about thus. One day the assertion was made by Ferber, that, whether we liked it or not, a German must be looked upon as the "father of the French Revolution," for Minister Necker, though born in Geneva, was the son or grandson of a Küstrin postmaster. This seemed to my father a perfectly preposterous assertion, and he combated it with a rather supercilious mien, till it was finally shown to be substantially correct. Then my father's arrogance, growing out of a conviction of his superior knowledge, was transformed first into respect and later into friendship, and even twenty years after, whenever we drove from our Oderbruch village to the neighboring city of Küstrin, he never had much to say about Crown Prince Fritz, or Katte's decapitation, but regularly remarked: "Oh yes, Necker, who may be called the father of the French Revolution, traced his ancestry back to this city of Küstrin. I owe the information to Ferber, Captain Ferber, whom we called Teinturier. It is a pity he could not give up his aqua vitæ. At times it was pitiable."

Yes, pitiable it was, but not to us children, who, on the contrary, always broke out into cheers whenever the captain, usually in rather desolate costume, came staggering up the Great Church Street to find a place to continue his breakfast. We used to follow close behind him and tease and taunt him till he would try to catch and thrash one or the other of us. Occasionally he succeeded; but I always escaped with ease, because I chose for my teasings only days when it had rained a short time before. Then there stood in the street between our house and the church on the other side a huge pool of water, which became my harbor of refuge. Holding my stilts at the proper angle, I sprang quickly upon them as soon as I saw that Teinturier, in spite of his condition, was close on my heels, and then I marched triumphantly into the pool of water. There I stood like a stork on one stilt and presented arms with the other, as I continued scoffing at him. Cursing and threatening he marched away, the poor captain. But he took care not to make good his threats, because in his good moments he did not like to be reminded of the bad ones.

We had several playgrounds. The one we liked best perhaps was along the "Bulwark," at the point where the side street branched off from our house. The whole surroundings were very picturesque, especially in the winter time, when the ships, stripped of their topmasts, lay at their moorings, often in three rows, the last pretty far out in the river. We were allowed to play along the "Bulwark" and practice our rope-walking art on the stretched hawsers as far as they hung close to the ground. Only one thing was prohibited. We were not allowed to go on board the ships, much less to climb the rope ladders to the mastheads. A very sensible prohibition. But the more sensible it was, the greater was our desire to disregard it, and in the game of "robber and wayfarer," of which we were all very fond, disregarding of this prohibition was almost a matter of course. Furthermore, discovery lay beyond the range of probability; our parents were either at their "party" or invited to dine out. "So let's go ahead. If anybody tells on us, he will be worse off than we."

So we thought one Sunday in April, 1831. It must have been about that time of year, for I can still recall the clear, cold tone of the atmosphere. On the ship there was not a sign of life, and on the "Bulwark" not a human soul to be seen, which further proves to me that it was a Sunday.

I, being the oldest and strongest, was the robber, of course. Of the eight or ten smaller boys only one was in any measure able to compete with me. That was an illegitimate child, called Fritz Ehrlich (Honorable), as though to compensate him for his birth. These boys had set out from the Church Square, the usual starting-point of the chase, and were already close after me. I arrived at the "Bulwark" exhausted, and, as there was no other way of escape, ran over a firm broad plank walk toward the nearest ship, with the whole pack after me. This naturally forced me to go on from the first ship to the second and from the second to the third. There was no going any further, and if I wished, in spite of this dilemma, to escape my enemies, there was nothing left for me but to seek a hiding-place on the ship itself, or at least a spot difficult of access. I found such a place and climbed up about the height of a man to the top of the superstructure near the cabin. In this superstructure was usually to be found, among other rooms, the ship's cuisine. My climbing was facilitated by steps built in the perpendicular wall. And there I stood then, temporarily safe, gazing down as a victor at my pursuers. But the sense of victory did not last long; the steps were there for others as well as for me, and an instant later Fritz Ehrlich was also on the roof. Now I was indeed lost if I foiled to find another way of escape. So, summoning all my strength, I took as long a running start as the narrow space would permit and sprang from the roof of the kitchen over the intervening strip of water back to the second ship and then ran for the shore, as though chased by all the furies. When I had reached the shore it was nothing to run to the base in front of our house and be free. But I was destined not to enjoy my happiness very long, for almost the very moment I once more had solid ground beneath my feet I heard cries of distress coming from the third and second ships, and my name called repeatedly, which made me think something must have happened. Swiftly as I had made for the shore over the noisy plank walk, I now hastened back over it. There was no time to lose. Fritz Ehrlich had tried to imitate my leap from the kitchen, but, failing to equal my distance, had fallen into the water between the ships. And there the poor boy was, digging his nails into the cracks in the ship's hull. Swimming was out of the question, even if he knew anything about it. Besides, the water was icy cold. To reach him from the deck with the means at hand was impossible. So I grasped a piece of rope hanging from a rope ladder and, letting myself down the side of the ship, tried every way I could think of to lengthen my body as much as possible, till finally Fritz was barely able to catch hold of my left foot, which reached furthest down, while I held on above with my right hand. "Take hold, Fritz!" But the doughty fellow, who may have realized that we should both be lost if he really took a firm hold, contented himself with laying his hand lightly upon the toe of my boot, and little as that was, it nevertheless sufficed to keep his head above water. To be sure, he may have been by natural endowment a "water treader," as they are called; or he may have had the traditional luck of the illegitimate, which seems to me on second thought more probable. In any case he kept afloat till some people came from the shore and reached a punt-pole down to him, while some others untied a boat lying at Hannemann's Clapper and rowed it into the space between the ships to fish him out. The moment that the saving punt-pole arrived some man unknown to me reached down from the ladder, seized me by the collar, and with a vigorous jerk hoisted me back on deck.

On this occasion not a word of reproach was uttered, though I could not say as much of any other occasion of the kind. The people took Fritz Ehrlich, drenched and freezing, to a house in the immediate neighborhood, while the rest of us started home in a very humble frame of mind. To be sure, I had also a feeling of elation, despite the fact that my prospects for the future were not of the pleasantest. But my fears were not realized. Quite the contrary. The following morning, as I was starting to school, my father met me in the hall and stopped me. Neighbor Pietzker, the good man with the nightcap, had been tattling again, though with better intentions than usual.

"I've heard the whole business," said my father. "Why, in the name of heaven, can't you be obedient! But we'll let it pass, since you acquitted yourself so well. I know all the details. Pietzker across the street …"

Hereupon I was allowed to go to school.