he were in a house where smoking was disagreeable, he chewed roasted
coffee-berries, and he was just as contented with that. Knopf liked to
take snuff, but he did it only when he was alone, and very quietly; he
carried a colored and a white pocket-handkerchief, so that the
gentleman and the lady of the house might not notice that he took
snuff. One very peculiar habit he could not break himself of, that of
hitching up the trousers on both legs, as if they were going suddenly
to drop down from his body.

But this is no sufficient reason for his appearing destined to be only
a temporary teacher, nothing but a pedagogical nurse for a few weeks.
Knopf is taken into some family until the stress of sickness or need of
some kind is over, and then he is dismissed with very courteous, very
friendly words; but still always dismissed. Fourteen half-yearly
terms--Knopf always reckoned by the semester, and we must do the same
by him--Knopf lived at the capital; and, during this period, he always
intended to procure a wholesale quantity of a brand of cigars which
should taste right, but he never made up his mind. Fourteen semesters
he smoked, from week's end to week's end, different kinds of cigars on
trial, and was perpetually asking what was the price by the thousand,
but he never succeeded in getting the thousand at one time.

Knopf was, naturally, one of the clumsiest of mortals, but he trained
himself to be one of the best swimmers and gymnastic performers, so
that he was, for a time, assistant teacher of gymnastics. Having been
employed twice in the country, where it is so difficult to procure
piano-tuners, he had been led to learn how to tune pianos himself; but
he would never do it except in the house where he happened to be
temporarily living. Several persons asserted that he could also knit
and do plain sewing, but this was unmitigated slander. He could darn
stockings in a most masterly style, but no one had ever seen him do it,
he always did it secretly by himself.

Knopf had come to Herr Sonnenkamp likewise as a temporary candidate and
temporary teacher; here a longer tarrying seemed to be allotted to him,
and a future free from anxiety. Knopf had an enthusiastic love for
Roland, and although the boy learned nothing thoroughly with him, Knopf
used to say to his crony, the teacher Fassbender,--

"The Gods never learned anything, they had it all in themselves. Who
can tell us the name of Apollo's teacher of music, or wi