"But," said I, "your Gelehrter, of the present day, we may also certainly style the learned."
"By all means; and, thank God, but with few exceptions."
"Knowest thou," asked friend Eckhardt, "whence comes the term school-fox?"
"Not clearly?"
"Then hear! M. Just Ludwig Brismann, born at Triptis, in Voiglande, who had been schoolmaster in Hof, Zwickau, and Naumburg, and who died Professor of Greek in Jena, on the 19th of August, 1585, was accustomed to wear a greatcoat lined with fox-skin. This sort of clothing, which he had been used to wear before he came to live at Jena, he still continued to sport there. The students in Jena looked upon this raiment, which was then quite out of date and very singular, as so odd that they made game of it, and those of them who had previously known him as schoolmaster, dubbed him School-fox. Thence sprung the name of school-foxery, which comprehends every thing pedantic, contemptible, and degrading."
"And may I ask," I added, "what you pay this precious Bursche for his important services? I ask, since I think of staying here this winter, and would therefore willingly enlighten myself on all matters of housekeeping."
"He receives a gulden (twenty-pence English) monthly."
"A servant for a pound a-year! Was the like ever heard!"
"You must recollect," said Freisleben, "that we are for the rest of the day attended by the house-besom," the student phrase for housemaid, who also in Berlin is styled schlavin, or she-slave.
"Hast thou heard the anecdote," interrupted Eckhardt, "of Schmidt's answer to our boot-fox the other morning?"