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 questions and replies made it every minute more difficult to shake him off. However, I must confess, that if I had shaken him off you would not have had this book to read, for it owes its existence to that meeting! I like to look at the bright side of everything, and those who do not are discontented creatures: I can’t bear them. Yes, yes, it was the same person who had rescued me out of the clutches of the Greek! Don’t think, however, that I had been taken prisoner by pirates, or that I had had a brawl in the Levant. I have told you already that I went, after my marriage, with my wife to the Hague, where we saw the Museum, and bought flannel in Veene Street,—the only excursion that my extensive business at Amsterdam ever allowed me. No; it was on my account that he gave a Greek a bloody nose, for always interfer­ing with other people’s business. It was in the year 1834 I think, and in September, the annual fair-time at Amsterdam. As my parents intended to make a clergy­man of me, I learned Latin. Afterwards, I often won­dered why you must understand Latin to say in Dutch, “God is good.” Enough, I went to the Latin school, now called the Gymnasium, and there was the fair,—in Am­sterdam, I mean. On the Wester Market were booths; and if you, reader, are an Amsterdammer, and about my age, you will remember that in one of them was a most beautiful girl with black eyes, dressed as a Greek; her father too was a Greek, or at least he had the appearance