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, step by step, as one followed the course of the river.
Here ran out from the sloping bank into the river a number of board
rafts, some smaller, some larger, floating benches upon which, from
early morning on, one saw maids at work washing clothes, always in
cheerful conversation with one another, or with the s