"Yes, yes; this name is given contemptuously to one of those teachers who, without penetrating into the spirit of knowledge, turns into his scholars, by hogsheads, the unfermented deluge of material, and reckons a man learned if he has only piled up in his hollow skull a chaos of things merely gathered by rote. God be praised, these scarecrows become scarcer from day to day. Yet, alas! there lies in the German word _Gelehrter_, the idea of one who has been _taught_ without our being able to say whether he has actually _learned_. The French say not _les enseignes_ but _les savants_; and the English not _the taught ones_. but the _learned_." "But," said I, "your _Gelehrter_, of the present day, we may also certainly style the learned." "By all means; and, thank God, but with few exceptions." "Knowest thou," asked friend Eckhardt, "whence comes the term school-fox?" "Not clearly?" "Then hear! M. Just Ludwig Brismann, born at Triptis, in Voiglande, who had been schoolmaster in Hof, Zwickau, and Naumburg, and who died Professor of Greek in Jena, on the 19th of August, 1585, was accustomed to wear a greatcoat lined with fox-skin. This sort of clothing, which he had been used to wear before he came to live at Jena, he still continued to sport there. The students in Jena looked upon this raiment, which was then quite out of date and very singular, as so odd that they made game of it, and those of them who had previously known him as schoolmaster, dubbed him School-fox. Thence sprung the name of school-foxery, which comprehends every thing pedantic, contemptible, and degrading." "And may I ask," I added, "what you pay this precious Bursche for his important services? I ask, since I think of staying here this winter, and would therefore willingly enlighten myself on all matters of housekeeping." "He receives a gulden (twenty-pence English) monthly." "A servant for a pound a-year! Was the like ever heard!" "You must recollect," said Freisleben, "that we are for the rest of the day attended by the house-besom," the student phrase for housemaid, who also in Berlin is styled _schlavin_, or she-slave. "Hast thou heard the anecdote," interrupted Eckhardt, "of Schmidt's answer to our boot-fox the other morning?" "No; let us hear it." "The Famulus came very early to Schmidt's bedside, and said, very laconically--'the Geheimrath Forst is dead to-night. Have you any other commands?' 'Yes,' answered Schmidt, still heavy with sleep, 'I command the Geheimrath Langsam (a very rich and miserly old gentleman) to die too, and to make me his heir.'"