thus crammed with books, that he used to entertain the little parties he invited to sup with him.  The repast was always frugal; the conversation, on his part, such as might have gone into print.  A man-servant brought in the refreshments on a tray; or, sometimes, one of his pupils officiated.  His only sister, who kept house for him during the greater part of his life, never made her appearance at these exclusively masculine entertainments.  He himself rarely paid any attention to the progress of the meal, but seemed to be as much a visitor as any of his guests.  The little he needed was soon dispatched, and his thoughts were again afloat, sounding along from theme to theme.

He never married, and, at the time I speak of, was almost alone in the world.  Neither father, nor mother, nor any other near relative remained to him, save his sister, Johanna, whose care of him had need to be almost maternal.  Well-nigh every day in the year these two might be seen walking out together to take the air.  They went always arm in arm, a beautiful embodiment of the tenderest affection.  Hardly the king himself attracted more attention in the street.  Scarcely a person he met failed to raise his hat and salute the venerable scholar with the heartiest good will.  As he was both short-sighted and suffering from diseased vision, he had to depend upon his sister to know who bowed to him; and it was amusing to see his returning salutation bestowed, in almost every instance, a little too late.  Many anecdotes were afloat in Berlin, and indeed all over Germany, going to illustrate his habits of abstraction and absent-mindedness, some of which no doubt were true, and all of which were likely enough to have been so.

An exact description of his manners in the lecture-room would, by any one who never saw him, be thought a caricature.  He entered the room with his eyes upon the floor, as if feeling his way; a student stood ready to take his hat and overcoat and hang them up in their places; while he went directly to his stand—­a high pine desk; threw his left elbow upon it; dropped his head so low that his eyes could not be seen; tilted the desk over on its front legs, so that you expected every moment to see it pitching forward into the lecture-room, with the lecturer after it; and, seizing a quill, always provided for the purpose, began at once to speak, and to twist and twirl and tear in pieces the quill.  Sometimes, in the heat of his discourse, he would suddenly jerk up his head, whirl entirely round with his face to the wall and his back to the audience, and then as suddenly whirl back again, his words all the while pouring along in a perfect torrent of involved and fervent thought.  Add to this a constant writhing and swinging of his legs, with a frequent slight spitting, produced by a chronic weakness of the salivary glands, and you have a picture of the outward man known in Berlin as John William Augustus Neander; to be known in history as one of the most learned, revered and beloved teachers of our century.