also teacher for some
time in an asylum for idiots, and his conscience often reproved him,
then and afterwards, for not remaining in that position; but he
asserted that he was too much a devotee of the beautiful.

Yes, he wanted to explore what kind of humane institutions were
established among the Greeks and Romans. He found that they had very
few children morally and physically diseased. Knopf had a plan, which
he held on to for some time, of establishing an institution for the
care of sick children at some salt-spring; for iodine is the watch-word
of the cultivated, that is, the possessing world, whose humours are
acrid: he hoped to find an associate for the sacred iodine. Meanwhile
he remained a make-shift teacher for girls.

Greek and Roman mythology was his strong point, and it is extremely
important that a maiden in cultivated society should make no mistake in
that. His favorite pursuit was, however, the interpretation of the
poets, especially the romantic. Of course, he was himself a poet, but
modestly, only to himself. There, were probably in the capital few
albums, begun by very young girls and afterwards abandoned, which did
not contain a sonnet, or oftener a triolet, beautifully written by Emil
Knopf for his dear pupil. He had also a musical knowledge sufficient to
direct the private practising of pupils, and he was particularly
strict, yes, even unmerciful, in keeping time. He could also draw
sufficiently well to give assistance in that respect, especially in
drawing flowers. He was also handy and popular in wedding-games,
whenever one of his pupils was married. He not only knew how to make
the maidens speak, in the language of flowers, as "I am the rose," "I
am the violet," but he could bring out jokes and sportive allusions;
and while the players in their fine dresses were declaiming; and
forming charming tableaux, he sat in the prompter's box, and breathed
to them the words. How happy he was, too, at some public dinner, and
how assentingly he nodded, when this or the other speaker recited by
heart, or read from a manuscript, the toast he had himself composed!

Emil Knopf was one of the most serviceable of men; he was proud of
never having advertised in the newspapers; he was recommended from
mouth to mouth, and for the most part from one fair mouth to another,
one mother speaking in his commendation to another, and the fathers
smiling and saying, "Yes, Herr Knopf is a very conscientious teacher."

If