At the moment the equinoctial gales are raging frightfully; in 
our house a window was blown in last night and the trees are 
creaking most pitiably. Tomorrow and the day after there will be 
news of shipwrecks coming in! The Old Man? is standing by the 
window and pulling a wry face because the day before yesterday a 
ship went to sea in which he has 3,000 talers’ worth of linen which 
is not insured. You don’t say anything about the letter to Ida 
which I enclosed in my previous letter; or did I forget to put it 
in?—I am now really staying here till Easter, which for various 
reasons is most welcome to me. So Ida has gone now; that will be 
very awkward for you. 

We have quite a good camp here too, almost 3,000 men strong, 
Oldenburg, Bremen, Lübeck and Hamburg troops. I went there 

the other day, it was great fun. Right in front of the tent (a tavern 
owner has put up a big refreshments tent) sat a French- 
man, he was quite sozzled and could no longer stand on his 
feet. The waiters hung a big wreath round him, and he began to 
shout: Wreathe in gree-en the flo-owing bowl.* Afterwards they 
dragged him to the mortuary, that is, the hayloft, where he stayed 
on his back and fell asleep. When he was sober again, he 
borrowed a horse from somebody, mounted it and kept galloping 
up and down the camp. All the time he was on the point of falling 
off most agreeably. We had plenty of good fun there and 
especially fine wine. Last Sunday I rode to Vegesack, during which 
tour I had the pleasure of being drenched with rain four times, 
but I had so much inner heat that every time I dried immediately. 
But I had a dreadful horse with a terribly hard trot so that one’s 
bones were jarred to the marrow.— At this moment another 6 
bottles of beer are being carried in for us, and they will at once 
enter upon the process of being lit—I was thinking of cigars, that 
should read of being emptied.— One bottle I have almost finished 
already and with it I smoked a cigar; presently, our Don 
Guillermo, the young principal, will go out again, and then we 
shall start anew. 

Sept. 19, 1840. You have a more boring life than we do. 
Yesterday afternoon there was no more work to do, and the Old 
Man was out, and Wilhelm Leupold did not show up often either. 
So I lit a cigar, first wrote the above to you, then took Lenau’s 
Faust from my desk and read some of it. Afterwards I drank 
a bottle of beer and at half past seven went to Roth’s; we 
went off to the Club, I read Raumer’s Geschichte der Hohenstaufen 
and then ate beefsteak and cucumber salad. At half past ten I 
went home and read Diez’s Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen 
until I felt sleepy. Moreover, tomorrow is Sunday again and 
Wednesday is a day of penance and prayer in Bremen, and so we 
carry on gradually into the winter. This winter I shall take dancing 
lessons with Eberlein so as to accustom my stiff legs to a little 
graceful movement. 

Here you have a scene in the Schlachte, i. e., the street which 
has the Weser on one side and where the goods are unloaded. 
The fellow with the whip is the waggoner who is about to drive 
away the sacks of coffee lying in the background; the fellow with 
the sack on the right is the Schlachte pirate who is loading them 

on the cart; by his side a cooper who has just taken a sample and 
is still holding it in his hand, and next to him is the bargeman 
from whose barge the sacks were unloaded. You won't be able to 
deny that these figures are most interesting. When the waggoner 
drives he mounts the horse without saddle, stirrup or spurs, and 
keeps digging his heels into its ribs, like this: 

Now it is raining again quite improperly for a Saturday evening, 
it should really rain only during the week, but from midday 
Saturday it should be fine. Do you know what superfine medium 
good ordinary Domingo coffee is? That again is one of those 
profound concepts which occur in the philosophy of the commer- 

cial profession and which your mental powers cannot understand. 
Superfine medium good ordinary Domingo coffee is coffee from 
the Island of Haiti which has a slight touch of green, is otherwise 
grey, and in which with ten good beans you get into the bargain 
four bad ones, six bits of stone and an eighth of an ounce of dirt, 
dust, etc. Now you will have grasped it. One pound of this now 
costs 9'/, groats, that is 4 silver groschen and 8'”/,3, pfennigs. I 
should not really betray these trade secrets, since one does not tell 
tales out of school, but because it is you I shall make an 
exception.— Just now our workman is saying: Herr Derkhiem, wann 
Se sek met de Jungens gemein mokt, so mét Se sek en beten mehr en 
Respekt hohlen, sons krigt Se dat Volk ganz unner de Fote, Heinrich, dat 
es en slimmen Jung, do hebb’ ick manch’ en Tuck med har’d, Se met nich 
so veel domet speelen, Se mét se gliks wat achter de Ohren geven, anners 
helpt nich, un wann Se no’n Ohlen goht, de dait de Jungens ok nix, de 
segt man blot*: Don’t bother me with the fellow. There you can 
practise our Low German a little. For the rest I am your most 
devoted 

Friedrich 
Bremen, 19.9.40