ocks and to begin
immediately my giant stride. Ordinarily this was an unremunerative
art, but on a few occasions I derived real profit from it, when my
stilts enabled me to escape storms that were about to break over my
head. That was in the days just after Captain Ferber, who had served
out his time with the "Neufchatellers," retired on a pension and moved
to Swinemuende. Ferber, whom the Swinemuenders called Teinturier, the
French translation of his name, because of his relation to Neufchatel,
came of a very good family, was, if I mistake not, the son of a high
official in the ministry of finance, who could boast of long-standing
relations to the Berlin Court, dating back to the war times of the
year 1813. This was no doubt the reason why the son, in spite of the
fact that he did not belong to the nobility and was of German
extraction--the Neufchatel officers were in those days still for the
most part French-Swiss--was permitted to serve with the elite
battalion, where he was well liked, because he was clever, a good
comrade, and an author besides. He wrote novelettes after the fashions
then in vogue. But in spite of his popularity he could not hold his
position, because his fondness for coffee and cognac, which soon
became restricted to the latter, grew upon him so rapidly that he was
forced to retire. His removal to Swinemuende was doubtless due to the
fact that seaports are better suited for such passions than are inland
cities. Fondness for cognac attracts less attention.

Whatever his reason may have been, however, Ferber was soon as popular
in his new place of residence as previously in Berlin, for he had that
kindliness of character which is the "dearest child of the
dram-bottle." He was very fond of my father, who reciprocated the
sentiment. But this friendship did not spring up at the very beginning
of their acquaintance. In fact it developed out of a little
controversy between them, that is to say, a defeat sustained by my
father, one of whose amiable peculiarities it was, within twenty-four
hours at the latest to convert his anger at being put to flight, into
approbation bordering on homage for the victor.

His defeat came about thus. One day the assertion was made by Ferber,
that, whether we liked it or not, a German must be looked upon as the
"father of the French Revolution," for Minister Necker, though born in
Geneva, was the son or grandson of a Kuestrin postmaster. This seemed
to my father a perfect