A DAY WITH FRIEDRICH.
Page: 1

(23d July, 1779.)

"OBERAMTMANN (Head-Manager) Fromme" was a sister's son of Poet,
Gleim,--Gleim Canon of Halberstadt, who wrote Prussian "grenadier-
songs" in, or in reference to, the Seven-Years War, songs still
printed, but worth little; who begged once, after Friedrich's
death, an OLD HAT of his, and took it with him to Halberstadt
(where I hope it still is); who had a "Temple-of-Honor," or little
Garden-house so named, with Portraits of his Friends hung in it;
who put Jean Paul VERY SOON there, with a great explosion of
praises; and who, in short, seems to have been a very good
effervescent creature, at last rather wealthy too, and able to
effervesce with some comfort;--Oberamtmann Fromme, I say, was this
Gleim's Nephew; and stood as a kind of Royal Land-Bailiff under
Frederick the Great, in a tract of country called the RHYN-LUCH (a
dreadfully moory country of sands and quagmires, all green and
fertile now, some twenty or thirty miles northwest of Berlin);
busy there in 1779, and had been for some years past. He had
originally been an Officer of the Artillery; but obtained his
discharge in 1769, and got, before long, into this employment.
A man of excellent disposition and temper; with a solid and heavy
stroke of work in him, whatever he might be set to; and who in this
OBERAMTMANNSHIP "became highly esteemed." He died in 1798; and has
left sons (now perhaps grandsons or great-grandsons), who continue
estimable in like situations under the Prussian Government.

One of Fromme's useful gifts, the usefulest of all for us at
present, was "his wonderful talent of exact memory." He could
remember to a singular extent; and, we will hope, on this occasion,
was unusually conscientious to do it. For it so happened, in July,
1779 (23d July), Friedrich, just home from his troublesome Bavarian
War, [Had arrived at Berlin May 27th (Rodenbeck, iii. 201).] and
again looking into everything with his own eyes, determined to have
a personal view of those Moor Regions of Fromme's; to take a day's
driving through that RHYN-LUCH which had cost him so much effort
and outlay; and he ordered Fromme to attend him in the expedition.