to elaborate for himself.  Among the oldest professors, on the contrary, many are for a long time stationary:  they deliver on the whole only fixed views, and, in the details, much that time has already condemned as useless and false.  Between the two arises a sad conflict, in which young minds are dragged hither and thither, and which can scarcely be set right by the middle-aged professors, who, though possessed of sufficient learning and culture, always feel within themselves an active desire for knowledge and reflection.

Now, as in this way I learned to know much more than I could digest, whereby a constantly increasing uncomfortableness was forced upon me; so also from life I experienced many disagreeable trifles,—­as, indeed, one must always pay one’s footing when one changes one’s place and comes into a new position.  The first thing the ladies blamed me for was my dress, for I had come from home to the university rather oddly equipped.

My father, who detested nothing so much as when something happened in vain, when any one did not know how to make use of his time, or found no opportunity for turning it to account, carried his economy of time and abilities so far, that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to kill two birds with one stone. [Footnote:  Literally, “to strike two flies with one flapper.”—­TRANS.] He had, therefore, never engaged a servant who could not be useful to the house in something else.  Now, as he had always written every thing with his own hand, and had, latterly, the convenience of dictating to the young inmate of the house, he found it most advantageous to have tailors for his domestics, who were obliged to make good use of their time, as they not only had to make their own liveries, but the clothes for my father and the children, besides doing all the mending.  My father himself took pains to have the best materials and the best kind of cloth, by getting fine wares of the foreign merchants at the fair, and laying them up in store.  I still remember well that he always visited the Herr von Loewenicht, of Aix-la-Chapelle, and from my earliest youth made me acquainted with these and other eminent merchants.

Care was also taken for the fitness of the stuff:  and there was a plentiful stock of different kinds of cloth, serge, and Goetting stuff, besides the requisite lining; so that, as far as the materials were concerned, we might well venture to be seen.  But the form spoiled almost every thing.  For, if one of our home-tailors was any thing of a clever hand at sewing and making up a coat which had been cut out for him in masterly fashion, he was now obliged also to cut out the dress for himself, which did not always succeed to perfection.  In addition to this, my father kept whatever belonged to his clothing in very good and neat order, and preserved more than used it for many years.  Thus he had a predilection for certain old cuts and trimmings, by which our dress sometimes acquired a strange appearance.