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 Swinemuende the thermometer stood at 15 deg. 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.  Swinemuende 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 Swinemuende.

To me the word represented but a strange sound....

When we arrived in Swinemuende, 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,