ttle titbits,
crisp corners, and knotty excrescences, until the loaf took the
appearance of a dismantled wreck. He also squinted, not with that broad
outside squint, ever ready to see both sides, to embrace all things,
but with a narrow selfish inside squint which slid down his nose, and
from there watched the focussing and absorption of the titbits with keen
interest and an irritating show of gratified tastes.

And not only was the professor's field of vision thus distressingly
limited, but there was also some moral obliquity in his composition. He
mistook certain piles of fire-logs, which had been stocked for the use
of the public school, for his own private property. When this was
discovered, the authorities, happily for the professor, winked at his
delinquencies with an eye to avoiding a scandal--a course they might be
well justified in taking, as Justice herself is admitted to be blind.

There were two female servants to minister to our wants--two female
drudges, I should say. In lieu of their real names they had been dubbed
"Die grosse Biene" and "Die kleine Biene"--the great bee and the little
bee--with a view, I suppose, to encouraging them in the delusion that
they were not born white slaves, one large and the other small, but busy
bees whose nature it was to improve the shining hour, whether it shone
by the light of the day or the oil of the night.

The German language, as spoken in the Fatherland, its irregularities,
vagaries, and varieties, gave me much trouble. In Hamburg I had learnt
to pronounce the words "stehen" and "stossen" with a sharp and incisive
_st_; in the south, all the stiffness and stubbornness was taken out of
it, and I had to say "schtehe" and "schtosse." Then the words
themselves changed, and "laufen" stood for "gehen," "springen" for
"laufen." This surprised me, as I did not know then that the Southerner
generally calls running what the Northerner calls walking.

Titles, too, puzzled me, especially when applied to ladies. The first
time I heard the "Frau Professorin" mentioned, I looked so blank, not to
say shocked, that I evoked general mirth. (It is surprising how well one
remembers the occasions when one was laughed at.) But the "Frau
Professorin" seemed a strange creature to me in those days, and I little
thought that for many a year I was to hear my own mother called by that
title.

I had my first skirmishes with the French language too, and I certainly
thought I was being made