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