As soon as I saw your letter I realised at once that it was from 
you although I don’t know your handwriting. Because the letter is 
just like you—written in a terrible hurry, everything in a lovely 
confusion, sermons that are not a bit seriously meant: how are 
you, your health, news about Emilchen* and Adelinchen,” acci- 
dents, all mixed up together. We had an accident here too, a 
house painter—the second in a week—fell from the scaffolding 
and died immediately. 

It is a great surprise to hear that Emilchen and Adelinchen are 
leaving. The Treviranuses at any rate were quite astonished; they 
all thought that Karl‘ was bringing them up. 

August 29 

It’s a very good thing that you want to go to Xanten and you 
should really go there if Mother‘? promised Auntie‘ and 
Grandmother‘ that you would. You must arrange to go there 
during the grape season, for then you will be able to eat all you 
can manage. We have grapes in our garden here too, but they are 

not ripe yet. But we have apples which are ripe— Paradise apples; 
they are much more delicious than those on the big tree in 
Caspar’s* yard, the one they have now cut down. 

Just think, Marie, we’ve got a broody hen here with seven 
chicks hardly eight days old and when there’s nothing to do at the 
office, we go down to the yard and catch flies, gnats and spiders 
and then the old hen comes and takes them out of our hands and 
feeds them to the chicks. But there’s a black chick, the size of a 
canary, which gobbles up the flies out of our hands. And all these 
little creatures will become hens with croups and have feathers 
growing on their feet. I wager that you would be delighted with 
this hen and her chicks. You are a chicken yourself, just like them. 
You must tell Mother that next year she too should place some 
eggs under a hen. There are also pigeons here, not only at the 

‘Treviranuses’ but also at the Leupolds’, crested pigeons and 
pouters, which are called crown pigeons (because they have a crest 
on their fronts which is called a crown here). The crested ones are 
particularly handsome. We—Eberlein and I—feed these every 
day. They don’t eat vetch, which doesn’t grow here, but they will 
eat peas or very small beech nuts, which are no bigger than peas. 

You should see some time, when the market is full in the 
morning, what remarkable costumes the peasant women wear. 
Their caps and straw hats are especially remarkable. If I can only 
get a quiet look at one of them some time, Ill try and draw her 
and send it to you. The girls wear very small red caps over their 
hair, which is coiled up in a bun, while old women have big 
close-fitting winged bonnets which hang over their foreheads, or 
big velvet caps trimmed with black frilled lace in front. It looks 
quite odd. 

The window of my room looks out on an alley which is 
uncanny. If I’m still up late of an evening, round about eleven 
o’clock, things begin to get noisy in the alley and the cats squeal, 
the dogs bark, the ghosts laugh and howl and rattle the windows 
of the house opposite. But it’s all quite natural because the 
lamplighter lives in the alley and he goes on his rounds at eleyen 
o’clock. 

Now I have written two full pages and if I wanted to do what 
you do, I would now write: “Now you will probably be satisfied 
because I have told you so much. Next time I shall tell you just as 
much.” This is the way you do it; you write me two pages, with 

the lines set very far apart, and you leave the other two pages 
quite empty. But so that you can see that I don’t do the same as 
you and do not give tit for tat, I shall do my best to fill up four 
closely written pages for you. 

This morning a barber came round and Herr Pastor* wanted 
me to have a shave for he said I looked quite revolting. But I do 
not do so. Father? said that I should leave my razors locked up 
until I need them and he left ‘a fortnight ago today and my beard 
certainly cannot have grown so much in that time. And now I shall 
not shave until I have a moustache as black as a raven. And you 
know, Mother told Father to give me a razor to take with me and 
Father answered that would be tempting me to start shaving, and 
he would buy me some himself in Manchester, but I don’t use 
them on principle. 

I have just come back from the parade which takes place every 
day on the Domshof. There the great Hanseatic army, composed 
of about 40 soldiers and 25 bandsmen as well as 6 to 8 officers, 
does its exercises, and (if I leave out the drum major) they all have 
as much moustache between them as one Prussian hussar. Most of 
them have no beard at all; others just a suspicion of one. The 
parade lasts the whole of two minutes. The soldiers arrive, line up, 
present arms and go off again. But the music is good (very good, 
wonderful, beautiful, say the Bremen people). Yesterday one of 
these Hanseatic soldiers, who had deserted, was brought in. This 
fellow was a Jew and was taking religious instruction with Pastor 
Treviranus and wanted to be baptised. Then he deserted, without 
leaving the town, but wrote a letter to Pastor Treviranus saying he 
was in Brinkum and had been persuaded by a relative to go there. 
He asked the Pastor to intercede for him so that his punishment 
might be mitigated. The Pastor wanted to do this too, when the 
fellow was suddenly arrested near Bremen yesterday and it came 
out where he was. He will now probably get a stretch or sixty 
strokes, for the soldiers always get whipped here. 

No Jews at all live in Bremen, only a couple of Jews with 
permits in the suburbs, but none can move into the town. 

It has been raining again all day long today. Yesterday week it 
did not rain at all for once, otherwise it has rained every day even 
though often only a little. It was very hot on Sunday and yesterday 
too the air was somewhat oppressive although the sky was 
frequently overcast, but as for today, really it’s unbearable. You 

get soaking wet as soon as you put your nose out of doors. What is 

it like in your place? Now I am going to write to Mother.— Have 

you made it up again with the Kampermanns, old geese? 
Adieu, Marie. 

Your brother 

Friedrich