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 one