"But you never see any men in these German churches, do you? They don't go to church. Nor the women very much. You see old women and children at worship. This is because the German has always typically worshipped Gott on the battlefield or in the military camps—out in the open. The German God is an out-of-doors God and is distinctively associated with the thought of war. God within walls, within a church, is a deity of good will on earth. He is a deity of peace. Naturally this does not appeal to the Goth. He don't pay much lively attention to God unless there's a war on hand or in immediate prospect. Then he begins to shout and 'holler' at Him to attract His attention, because He is so far off from Germany."

Gard laughed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost shyly,

"If German morals and religion have little necessary relation—little actual relation—how about love?"

"The German would never have known of love if he had not heard it talked of," replied Anderson with responsive geniality, pleased with Kirtley's amused face. "Generally an excess of a moral religion destroys love, just as the absence of it in the past has been apt to go with an indecent and widespread sensuality. So we have, what is called, the beastliness in the Teuton. For he has to go, as you know, to an extreme in things—logical extreme. This is why he is only partly human, from our standpoint. The human is so constructed that he can't stand excess in any direction very long and remain human. Everything has to be diluted, alloyed, temporized for him or it is not bearable—it will not work successfully.

"We see this in medicine—conspicuously. Medicines pure from the hands of Mother Nature are too strong, too rank in their purity, to be properly effective. They have to be weakened, reduced, compounded with inferior elements, to be of service. So with Truth. People are always begging for Truth, seeking the ultimate Truth, as if that would bring the perfect state of happiness. This is childlike ignorance. Truth in its pure, perfect condition would simply kill them—like unadulterated drugs. They could not stand its blinding light. They could not stand the shock. Like the rest—to change the metaphor—it has to be made up so largely of shoddy to wear well or wear at all.

"Love, the same way. When the world talks of love so much, it means only friendliness—you like me and I like you—you do something kind for me and I will do something kind for you. Love in its alloyed form of friendship is its efficacious shape for universal use. Pure love, which poor humanity is always reaching out its hands for, simply—as George Sand said—simply tears people to pieces without doing them any good. The result is tragedy, despair, wrecked lives, death before one's time. We see that everywhere depicted in fiction, in the drama, at the opera.

"So the German has kept love in a practical state—for him—by associating it so prominently with his procreative capacities. It is a case of Mars and Venus producing fighting men."

"If the German is not governed by love as an ideal," put in Gard, "how is it then that he is so sentimental? People always assure us that Fritz must be really at bottom as affectionate, tender, emotional, as anyone because he is so sentimental."

"Yes, that's the old conundrum that the enthusiasts over everything German confuse one with. The German's fondness—gobbling-down fondness—for food does not prove that he is a gourmet. The Teuton sentimentality is like mush. It's principally for children. As Fritz keeps a good deal of his childishness about him as he grows up, he keeps this taste for mush. It takes the place of sentiment which is of the proper mental pabulum for enlightened adults. You can't write poetry about mush. So the Germans have little poetry worth talking about. Where their emotional side ought to be, they are slightly developed beyond the youthful stage of sentimentalism. Their abortive conception of love, their treatment of their women and children—other things—all account for this naturally enough. One is rather forced, in spite of himself, to take the Germans at either of two extremes in order to understand them candidly—mushiness or iron."



CHAPTER XXII

MAKING FOR WAR

Anderson did not care for the Buchers and only came two or three times to Villa Elsa. So Gard did the calling. The elder would invariably bring out from his table drawer his "bachelor's bride" in the form of a box of clear Havanas, and the "lecture" would begin again before, what he said, was the most select audience in Deutschland.

"Have you heard anything from your spy?" he queried one day.

"No. You don't seriously mean that Rudolph—you assume it's Rudolph—is watching me?" returned Kirtley, a little disturbed over the recurrence to this subject. "What am I guilty of? I'm as innocent as an unborn lamb."

"Certainly you are. But, my dear boy, what's innocence in Germany? The Secret Police can make an alien like you a lot of trouble about nothing. You wouldn't believe how systematic they are, and serious as stuffed owls. Take my advice and don't do things at too loose ends as we are apt to over home. But if you do get into trouble, come to me and I will tell you what to say.

"Sometimes they even have one spy spying on another in the home. Of course the spy system, like the army and navy, belongs to the Kaiser. All the people have to do is to furnish the men and the money. It's as Heine said, the royal palaces and so forth are owned by the princes, but the debts owing for them are assumed by the public. The Hohenzollerns have the property, the Germans have the obligations.

"You see, the spy system tends to prevent the Teuton from talking politics. But he can theorize concerning the State. The State is an active philosophic concept that holds off the people from discussing and gossiping about Wilhelm. It does not exist apart from the ruling family and apart from the bureaucracy which is the ruling family in action. It takes on their character. The State is a mirage which the citizen is made to gawk at in the air, thinking he sees something besides the frowning German sky. It surrounds the Emperor with the divine halo, removes him up above the rumbling clouds where the distant views lend enchantment."

There hung about Anderson's talk to-day, as so frequently, a certain sententious and acidulous manner that, to Gard, evidenced twinges of rheumatism.

The dialogue fell once more on war. After the demonstration in Villa Elsa against America, Anderson was gratified by this proof of his contentions. While Kirtley admitted the force in the argument that this excited and confident condition of feeling among the common German people pointed toward hostilities, he could not really believe that such a horror would break forth upon Europe. There was the Hague Convention—

"Pooh!" exclaimed Anderson. "What does the Hague Convention signify in face of the growing armaments? What have you ever seen in Prussian history to show that Prussia would stop for any agreement when she was sure of winning?"

"You expect war soon," said Gard. "Why soon? Granted the Germans want war to carry out their world plans, why should it come before another generation, for instance?"

"Because the Kaiser is getting along in years. Time does not wait even for him. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon were young in comparison. So he is talking a lot about God now and that means war. He wants to enjoy ruling Europe awhile before he dies. He does not get on with the Crown Prince and is not greatly interested in leaving all such glory for him to sport about in. Soon Wilhelm the Deuce will be too old to take part in a military campaign. He has not many years to live at his age. He is not a well man. The longer he puts it off, the shorter will be the triumph he craves."

The talk shifted angles and Anderson was saying after awhile:

"When you have the German statesmen, generals, magnates, press, professors, theologians, everybody, insisting on the incomparable virtues of the Germans and never on their failings—on their rights and privileges and never on their duties to humanity—do you wonder that the plain people, like your Buchers, think it devolves upon them to turn foreign lands into waste by the sword in order to convert them into German countries? It is hard to find in any German publication a frank and commending acknowledgment that a foreigner has really completed anything to his credit. If such evidence is too strong in any case and forces an admission, the foreign inventor or discoverer is rather made to appear presumptuous in acting before some German got around to it. The Teutons never think, talk and write in terms of humanity—only in terms of Germanity. Do you not begin to see that the Teutons are, in intent, as murderously fanatical about their greatness as the mad Mullah and his followers were about their bigotry? The Germans have been educated to these views since childhood....

"You tell me that Charlemagne took on Christian religion as a prop to, an ally of, his military power—an aid to the extension of his rule. Well, then, the Teutons have turned what they call their Christianity into a warlike worship of themselves. Their preachers must stand in with the Kaiser. He is to them God on earth. It is the old story of the throne upheld by the official church."

"But how about all Catholic Germany?" parried Gard. "About one-third is Catholic."

"True, true. Yet from what I've seen, the German Catholics will be found fighting for the Protestants when war comes, just as the Socialists will be found fighting for the Emperor. This is because the feeling for race and nation is far stronger than for creed or doctrine. If the Kaiser succeeds in getting control of Europe, he will take to himself the spiritual and religious headship of the world and the Pope will become essentially his vassal, for the Pope will be impotent as against the victorious sword. Hasn't Wilhelm already assumed to be the head of Mohammedanism?

"And look at it. South Germany, which is Catholic, and Saxony here, are cramped up in the interior. Their manufacturing interests are increasing by leaps and bounds. Isn't it natural they should want a direct outlet to the Atlantic and Mediterranean? Wouldn't these Saxons be proud to have a piece of real ocean shore to use as their own?

"Another thing. As the Germans are brutal among themselves, I predict that, stirred up as they are, they will be brutal like Huns in this war. You see how they deal with their own women. Imagine what they will do to foreign women. How do you yourself think your young military Bucher would act toward Americans if he landed on our coast with a gun? The German will be like a Hun just as he was in the treacherous days of Ariovistus and Arminius—the Teutoberger forest and all that over again. He will red-handedly rebuff civilizing influences just as he did in those days."

"How do you define Hun?" asked Gard. "The Germans are not Huns by race."

"No. I said like Huns. I mean by Huns a people who insist on their tribal sovereign right of conquest by means of ruthless murder and senseless destruction—wiping out foreign races and property."

One evening the conversation drifted to this theme:

"Is Luther—Protestantism—one of the reasons why Protestant America is so favorably inclined to Germany?" suggested Kirtley.

"Americans would be surprised to find there is no such thing as Lutheranism here. A bumptious military cult has usurped its place. There are no Lutherans in Deutschland—only Evangelicals and Dissidents. And of course Catholics. If you ask an ordinary Teuton what Protestantism is, he will scarcely know what you mean precisely. American Protestantism and German Protestantism are radically unlike. The one is peaceful and trustful, the other is warlike and knavish.

"And it seems to me so plain that, besides our religionists, our American education is playing in with the Kaiser's plans. It tends to weaken faith in our government. It makes unpatriotic citizens. Our colleges turn out young men who feel no political duties. We teach them to look for benefits without responsibilities. How different with the German universities! Our school histories, too, nurse active hatred of England, and everywhere with us the main opinion about the French is fostered that they are immoral and therefore to be despised. All this works in with the advancement of German popularity and interests, while at the same time our young men, like you, are sent here to study. Only the best in Germany is diligently kept before our people. The worst is never known as you and I are learning to know it over here."

"So you think," said Gard companionably, "that the Kaiser will set his fiery ball rolling this spring."

"I put the date at March first." The old man's hands trembled as he relighted his cigar stub. His voice almost broke.

"I know they think I'm getting in my dotage—brain a little cracked—and all that. I'm a poor chap possessed of a foolish and wicked delusion. Mean well, but head rickety. Sometimes I really think I must be crazy, with all the world against me about the German danger. They call me Jeremiah and Mother Goose rolled into one. But, by God, Kirtley, as my soul's immortal, I tell you I'm right—I'm right! The deluge is just ahead!—and nothing being done to prevent it." He shouted the words till Gard almost shook.

Every time he left Anderson, he would settle back into the lulling arms of false security, but always a little less assured. How could the old newspaper man be correct and the rest of mankind be in error? He used the stock arguments with himself. Granted that the obese Germans about him on the tram trundling along toward Loschwitz were talking war and preparing for war. They had been doing so for forty-three years and no conflict had come. Immense populations of peace and unpreparedness were growing up who would discourage a world war—would not permit it. There were increasing millions of people who had never seen a soldier, never seen a battleship. Would they want to pay the cost in blood and billions of treasure? It was unthinkable.

And so everyone was floating on with these comfortable convictions—floating on toward the imminent cataclysm, smiling pityingly on the few lugubrious Andersons who were right.



CHAPTER XXIII

SOCIAL ETIQUETTE

Balls and dancing are a notable expression of life and character in Germany. The Teuton has a passion for them. In what country are they so institutional? The German dance music is on the whole by far the best any land has composed. The waltzes are fine productions of the race. They are not enemic, lascivious or empty of meaning. They are noble, wholesome and full-throbbing with the pounding blood of men and women.

German balls are most varied in kind, responding to the complete scale of existence from high to low. However dowdy, rigid, ungainly or sensual they may be, their music is nearly always elevating or at least of merit because it is written by thoroughly trained composers of whom Germany has a full complement. One of the dreams of any American woman in Europe has been to dance with a German officer who, in his handsome, well-fitting uniform setting off his commanding proportions and guarded forcefully by his clattering sword and jingling spurs, appealed to those instincts for knightliness and chivalric appearance which excite the feminine nature.

Nevertheless the general unloveliness of the social disposition and activities of the Teutons is normally reflected in their balls, and is increased by their tremendous and perspiring energies in this diversion where usually pervades an atmosphere thick with the odors of beer, sausage, cheese.

The Royal Court Ball opened the fashionable season every winter in Dresden as proper in an orthodox monarchy. It was Kirtley's one opportunity to view German royalty, in its intimacy of pumps and low necks, at a ceremonious function in a whirl of music and the dance. Naturally he wanted to be present with Elsa who was, of course, competent in the art of Terpsichore. To say the least she was the only young lady he knew well in Saxony, and to have her hair of ripe corn color dancing in its luxuriance before his eyes to the inspiring melodies of the opera bands would be something to thrill him and his memories afterward. He would take a box and somehow manage to moor Frau Bucher in its depths.

His hopes had sprung up about it for, luckily, Von Tielitz had gone away and Jim, who had put the family in such a state of intoxication, was to be in Prague and Warsaw for a month. It would be a chance for the obscured Gard to emerge into the light and see how Elsa was really affected by the Deming glamor. Of all her booby family she had comported herself so far with a dutiful steadiness in face of his dizzying coup de main. As for Von Tielitz and a respectable young woman—how could there be anything serious ahead?

During Jim's trip Fraeulein plunged into her etching to make up for absences. But Gard was pleased over the renewal of their piano duos which had been abandoned after Deming's arrival. She very loyally found a little time for this distraction, and so, as before, they played through earnest stuff and tasseled it off with lighter emotions in the form of "Heart and Hand," "Love's Dreams," "Affection True"—good things with which to court a musical girl. Her cordiality suddenly took on a frank warmness, as if she had come back to an old friend. He saw that she felt more at home with him. Wasn't she at last becoming like a "pal"? Yet sometimes the doubtful impression assailed him that she was merely acting in a sort of gratefulness for his having brought the stylish and princely James Alexander Deming of Erie, Pay, to Villa Elsa.

Gard was quite happy when his invitation to the ball was accepted. Both mother and daughter were most glad to go. He procured the box and Frau Bucher, steeped in the practices of economy and judging that his means were modest, pooh-pooed with material kindness at his idea of an expensive motor car. He insisted on compromising by ordering one at five in the morning for the return. It would be an event and he wished to carry it off quite grandly for Elsa's sake. She had never attended the Court Ball, it turned out, and, like all maidens of Saxony, had always longed to go.

Accordingly due preparations were started by her mother and by her in what had served, since Deming's arrival, as a kind of boudoir. The gala affair was talked over with the usual noisiness in the family. Anything that had to do with the King's household was wonderful. The neighbors were exultantly apprised. Certainly the Buchers were nowadays cutting a high figure—they to whom such costly festivities had been unknown. No one had ever associated Villa Elsa with the wand of prodigality, and its vulgar Americans were dumfounding.

But, four days before the ball, Frau Bucher, in a constant condition of agitation in her social upheaval, announced to Gard that she and Fraeulein could not accompany him because a telegram had been received from Friedrich. His sister at Meissen was coming for the occasion and he took it for granted that the Buchers would complete his company. Of course Friedrich and his sister could not be disappointed. They were old friends—really a part of the family. Gard, greatly disappointed, reclaimed his money for the box and countermanded the order for the motor. It was provoking, yet such things very reasonably happened.

The next morning another telegram from the always excited Von Tielitz. Plans were changed. Sister did not think she would be able to leave. Frau Bucher would much like to go with Gard. Elsa was so anxious to dance at Court. It would be too bad to dash her anticipations to the ground. Gard spent the day renewing the arrangements. It was a pleasure to do so.

That evening a note couched in the spacious terms of formality was handed in at his door by Tekla. Frau Bucher was extremely sorry, but Friedrich and his sister had found they could come and were making all preparations. Herr Kirtley's invitation must be declined again.

Beginning to be put out, he found that his box could not now be returned. And he had no one to go with. It would be stupid to be there without even an acquaintance. At last he thought of Anderson. The latter announced his satisfaction at the prospect of "seeing the Germans jump around." Gard's dancing was cut off, which was disappointing enough, yet he could at least see the spectacle.

The following morning, the day before the event, another wire, and another cramped, stiff note through the diplomatic channels of the kitchen reached the attic. More regrets, but the Von Tielitzes were unable to carry out their plan. Would not Herr Kirtley kindly renew his invitation? This stately despatching of communications, as with a foreign power, went on side by side of and unseparated from the usual daily informal intercourse of the family.

Gard's good nature wrestled with his balanced equilibrium and overcame it along the lines of gallant generosity. It would be a pity to deprive the ladies of what they had looked forward to, although his own expectations were already marred. He would bemean himself sufficiently to overlook Frau's caddishness. He went in town to see if the change would suit his invited friend. Anderson bravely rose to the occasion and accepted silently the duty of having to tour the ball room now and then with his arm despairingly clasping the rotundity of mother Bucher.

When Gard got back to Villa Elsa, another stilted letter with a new programme was awaiting him. It had developed that the Von Tielitzes could come, though the sister was slightly indisposed. It would be nice for all to form a party, and Frau Bucher would be so pleased if Herr Kirtley would have them joined in. But transportation to and fro must be provided because of the sister. He had so kindly, at first, spoken of a motor.

As Friedrich had admittedly no money, Gard saw that this was a project—likely on the part of both—to saddle him with the whole expense. The clumsy maneuvering had got down to bargaining. He was mad. He sent the scullery courier back definitely withdrawing all arrangements. The pleasure of his invited guest could not be complicated. Result, the Von Tielitzes did not appear, mother and daughter Bucher remained at home, and Kirtley went with Anderson.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE COURT BALL

The two sat the night out in the box. The reader is familiar with Thackeray's amusing references to the stuffy German Court balls. After his day and under the sway of the Empire, they had broadened and aired out somewhat in their automaton grandeurs.

Precisely at nine o'clock the Saxon Court entered, so far as possible in battle array, and unlimbered to a slight extent before their revering subjects. No one knew of anything this Royal family had ever said, commented Anderson. None of them had done anything original or brilliant except Louise, who had run off with the tutor. She could not stand the dullness here any longer. And the members of this Court represented civilization raised to the famous nth power!

How commonplace, uninspiring, they did look to Kirtley! As Germans can illy take on polish he thought he only beheld Rudolphs and Teklas jammed into court dress. The disenchantment of a medieval dynasty at near view!

After the midnight supper Anderson, refreshed, told of an illuminating book he might write on Germany with journalistic brevity and conciseness. It would run something like this:

Chapter on Gentlemen and Ladies. There are few gentlemen and ladies in Germany. Chapter on Manners. There are no manners in Germany. Only orders and servility. Chapter on Charm and Delicacy. No specimens to be found. Chapter on the Milk of Human Kindness. There is no milk of human kindness in Germany. Chapter on the Absence of Arrogance. There is no absence of arrogance in Germany.

And so forth. What did Kirtley think of it?

The journalist jestingly identified the dignitaries, the men about town, the titled ladies about whose bulbous red shoulders often hung scandal, and retailed other gossip from his newspaper files. The scene indeed scintillated with lights and diamonds and crystal. Two orchestras answered each other in a continuous strain of conquering music. Swords and spurs clanked and clattered through the riotous German dances, adding their martial clangor to the regal sounds. Trains were stepped on, dresses torn. The retiring rooms were often sought for repairs. Now and again commotion was caused by some heavy person tripping on her skirts and crashing to the floor. It was Triumphant Germany celebrating her undisputed position and pride—celebrating her mastery of the universe.

Gard really longed at moments to be actively throbbing with it all, circling in the throng, and holding Elsa with her blond florescence in his arms. Then a certain contentment would possess him as he pictured her mother forced to stay home with blighted hankerings. What a ridiculous appearance he would have presented towing her around here in a waltz before all these florid and grandiose figures of state!

* * * * *

Kirtley's disposition was somewhat slow-going, sure-footed. He had a gentle or quiet conservative tenacity that so often comes with the inheritance of a moderate income. It at least gave him time to look things deliberately in the face.

He had at first discounted heavily his old friend's pyrotechnic, cynical bill of complaints against the Teutons and Teutonism. It was diverting, salient, but therefore discouraging to credence. Such judgments were apt to be flashes in the pan. They startled but lacked rootage. Gard had not sufficiently taken into consideration that the journalist was speaking at the end of seven years in Germany instead of at the beginning. When one arrives in a country, extreme snap-shot impressions readily flare forth in the mind.

Yet the more Kirtley saw, the more did he turn toward the same divorced mental attitude. He realized how truly the typical Villa Elsa, though in quite a different key, justified Anderson's conclusions. The performance Frau Bucher had gone through verified another variant in racial traits—a variant which Anderson had stressed.

Namely, one must be forcible, even harsh, with a German. He does not respond satisfactorily to kindness, leniency, liberality. Little sunny courtesies, unselfishnesses, genial endeavors, do not characteristically illuminate the tenebrous interior of his consciousness. He misinterprets them as feeblenesses, as confessions of his dominating rights and privileges. The more one grants to him, the more one yields to him, the more advantage and aggressive advantage he assumes he is invited to take. To go out of one's way to be obliging, to attempt to ingratiate one's self, brings difficulties.

But stout decision, sternness, defiant ultimatums, win out with him. As long as Gard had tried to make himself agreeable in the affair of the Court ball, his efforts were misunderstood and he became a handball buffeted about for the superior convenience of others. As soon as he finally stiffened up and mentally told them to go to perdition, the ingrowing troubles ceased with disciplined promptness. A satisfactory relation resulted, and a hearty respect for him in the household, he recognized, was measureably and contentedly increased.

It was a little different phase of the old pagan German tribal habit of considering the outsider as one from whom all should be got that was possible, irrespective of return in kind or a decent proportion of benefits. To hear in hard, to gouge, are toward the foreigner procedures relied on by the Teuton nature as appropriate. In it there is to be found little mutuality or respectfulness of feeling that curbs, not to speak of the social spirit that restrains or breeds a fine dignity of self. A show of weakness in any form, however ideal or beautiful, makes small appeal. So far as any other "tribe" is concerned, life to the German is at base a knock-down argument. Misfortunes in an alien land do not awaken sympathy. They are rather to be regarded as windfalls, as a result of which a profit is to be grabbed or a steely hand of control inserted where it does not belong.



CHAPTER XXV

FRITZI AND ANOTHER CONVERSATION

When Jim Deming returned he resumed sway over Villa Elsa, though with less vehemence. The Buchers fell promptly again under his spell, the duos were dropped, and Gard retired into the attic for study, varying its monotony with sojourns in town to familiarize himself with the personal peculiarities of the German multitude.

During the long break-up of winter, when the Teuton skies were leaden, and it was neither cold enough nor hot enough to stay comfortably in his room, owing to the Bucher economy of heat in this mid-season, it was pleasanter to be stirring about en ville, and, when weary of this, seeking the agreeable cosiness of the cafes with their warmth of cooking and beverages that thawed one out. He usually lunched in some one of these well-known resorts where he became acquainted with the personnel and frequenters. It was Deming who introduced him to the inn where Fritzi served, whom Von Tielitz and Messer had urged upon Gard's attentions. Jim had learned of it through the former.

Imagine the tiniest of restaurants. It was scarcely large enough for six small tables. The miniature kitchen immediately adjoined this dining nook, so that these two rooms were in effect one. When the two young Americans first went there together, a very comely girl sat cutting colored papers into fantastic shapes with the apparent intention of having more floral decorations. For huge artificial bouquets decked the boards. The place was freshly painted and engagingly clean. The very low walls were covered with queer mottoes in grotesque Gothic script, with Meissen wares, Vienna glass, and also misshapen oddities that always interest the puerile part of mature German nature.

There was a bust of the Emperor covered with ivy and flower concoctions in cardboard. The coat of arms of Saxony embellished the ceiling which one could almost touch with the upraised hand. A cat and a dog were taking their noon-day nap. Sausages and cake in the form of the ever-popular Lebkuchen were made a specialty of here, and when Fritzi—for this was Fritzi—had served the young men she took a seat companionably by them, as became her role.

She had a rustic beauty and was sound and plump as a cherry. Her peasant headdress was high and elaborate, winged with chicken feathers, and her short skirts gave way before white stockings pulpily emerging from painted wooden shoes which clicked over the dull tiled floor.

By the table she knitted, watching the eating solicitously, and was by turns candid, sociable and saucy as a spoiled child. It was her business not to be affronted by familiar remarks and actions. She was there to draw trade. She knew how to drop quick curtsies in response to compliments and tips. Although Deming acted freely toward her like an old acquaintance, he could not make much headway owing to the bar of language—her jargon of dialect.

Gard, when touched with loneliness, went there several times and struck up quite an intimacy with her, the proprietor and his wife. It was a snug spot and she was picturesque. The Lebkuchen and famous sausages, which would have been a deadly combination in America, seemed to agree with him, soothed with beer. While Fritzi appeared keck at intervals, Gard did not see any excuse for agreeing with the scandalous hints Von Tielitz and Messer threw out about her. They would naturally see the wench in every domestic.

It was from the inn that Kirtley frequently went to Anderson's for the afternoon. Gard had found it desirable to write down in a notebook some of the facts and reflections he was accumulating on the subject of the German. He would want to show them to his old tutor when home was reached again. Among them, Anderson's ideas and comments were included, flanked by an occasional apothegm.

Gard copied off a sample of their many talks in somewhat the abridged form as given below. It was when, on one of these days, Kirtley learned that Anderson had moved, and traced him to his new abode. From the window of this apartment they could see, through the bleary March light, the dowager-like Grosse Garten where Deming paraded in style with Frau Bucher and Fraeulein. Although the trees and shrubbery were now so gaunt and chilly of aspect, soon they would be green and gay with beautiful spring, and Anderson would find them cheering.

"I am getting old," he said. "I have never wanted May to hurry up so much as this year. Here I can get a good view and the birds will come and nest in these branches. They will whistle to me. I can fill my pocket with crumbs and go out and make their acquaintance in the sunshine and flowers. Since the war failed me again, I can see that my friends pull away from me. They doubtless think that no one is more worthless than a prophet who cannot pull off his 'stunt' and has short gray hair in the bargain. Everyone is blissfully lolling in the embraces of enduring tranquillity and I am seeking the companionship of trees and birds that are not troubled with the machinations and delusions of mankind.

"So there will be this delightful summer of 1914 ahead. Christian civilization is spreading rapidly everywhere. More Bibles being sold than ever. More Hottentots and cannibals wearing clothes and losing their taste for human flesh. And so universal Peace has come to stay. There will not be another war.

"And yet the Dresden barracks were never so full of soldiers, and the German bases of military supplies are crammed. The munition factories are running on extra-time schedules. Has the world turned topsy-turvy or have I? Does what one actually see and hear have no meaning any more?"

"Why do you stay in Germany?" asked Gard. "The Germans antagonize you. And you look upon their Government as a wicked monster prepared to leap upon its innocent prey?"

"For about the same reasons that you remain at the Buchers'. Because it's so often exasperating here. And that's always exciting. I guess it's the Irish strain in us. Want to stick around where there's a good prospect for trouble—want something to swear at. And I consider it my duty to remain here as a sign post of warning. I am carrying about a small red flag with DANGER on it. If the Germans win command of the world, I will be here on the ground all ready to start in as a German and will have a great advantage over nearly all Yankees. I have conned my green book of irregular verbs, which I think would bother most of them considerably. I have got accustomed to the German eating and drinking which I imagine would prove the death of most of them, too. I have learned to sleep athwart the German bed—no small feat, as you know. For everything must become Germanized under German rule. Teutons know no other method."

"Is that the meaning of the sort of happy, triumphant feeling that one finds in Germany? It seems to pervade the whole Empire—rich and poor, merchant and peasant, housewife and children."

"Yes, because they know a victorious war is coming and they will all be lords and masters. The Empire will stretch out wide and there will be work at the highest wages and plenty of money. The German will be able to travel on his own railroads throughout most of Europe and Turkey. No matter how servile he may be at home, everyone will kowtow to him abroad.

"It will be a short, decisive campaign. It will cost some blood and some treasure, but then—the German millennium! The people a eager, ripe, fit for it. The coveted Government jobs will be more numerous and remunerative. They will confer more power on the incumbents, for they will be largely connected with conquered provinces. The German Michel will be no longer cramped up in his mid-continent."...



CHAPTER XXVI

SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY

"Why is it that this seems to be a nation of professionals while ours seems to be a nation of amateurs? I suppose it is, of course, because of the more general spread here of thorough instruction."

"Yes, with us unskilled mediocrity is the popular level because it is within the reach of everyone in a democracy. With the German, high skilled, highly instructed efficiency is the ideal. The failure of America to rise into the expert level is due to our unenforced higher education. We compel our people to have a common school education in order to preserve the Republic. Its voters must know how to read and write and 'figger' or they won't be able to vote intelligently.

"Now if we did in addition what Germany does, we would insist, as far as practicable, on advanced education or instruction in every family. Then we, too, would have a wealth of trained talent. Comparing the riches and population of the two countries there is a much greater proportion of university men and other competently instructed men in Germany. Only relatively few Americans can show diplomas for genuine and severe mental training. Take your own Bucher family as an illustration. All its men will have sheepskins that are worth while to show. With us, out of such a family none would have a sheepskin, or at most one. One of the boys might have gone to a university. And as for the difference in the women—little comparison. Your Frau, as you have told me, has several framed diplomas to her credit.

"You can see what a tremendous advantage all this gives the German people over us. You have hit it very well—we are nearly always amateurs. They are nearly always able to be professionals."

"Is it the same with the laboring classes—the mechanics and all that?"

"The same is true, in its way. A poor American boy thinks he will like to be a machinist. He gets a job as a new hand on a salary. He works at it a couple of years. Then somebody offers him ten dollars a week more to drive a truck, which is a simple, elementary task. He drops his machinist career for this. He gets more money and it requires no tedious training. So he remains an indifferent mechanic. It's the money he's looking for, not the satisfaction of proficiency in a skilled trade.

"Now, by contrast, the future of the poor German child is decided in a fashion at about the age of ten. When a boy is elected to go into industry, for instance, he is apprenticed at about fourteen for, say, four years to be a mechanic. He is given no wages. In fact he has to pay something, very often, for the opportunity to learn. But he must, at the same time, attend what they call here continuing schools. It is these schools, which we do not have in America, that hold him fixed to his line of work—prevent him from jumping from one kind of thing to another. He not only works in the shop but is forced to go to a continuing school.

"Hence at eighteen the German factory and Government are sure to find in him just the kind of instructed worker they need. There has never been any danger of his meanwhile changing to driving a truck. He sticks to his trade through life. He becomes a master mechanic. You can't lure him away into an unskilled channel by more money. It's not the money alone he is thinking of. It is also the pride of having a specific calling that lifts him out of the great commonplace market of untrained labor. So Germany is full of competent mechanical men while we limp along with our huge supply of the partly experienced. Every such German knows how to do at least one thing as well as and usually better than anyone else.

"This is one big reason why Germany is pushing ahead of every nation in the industrial world and one reason why I fear her. No matter what she wants to do, she has an abundance of efficient brain and muscle right at hand with which to do it well and at once. In our great United States the lack of this is the bane of American industry and development, and causes such immense and continual loss in time and money because of our having to deal with such a mass of inexperienced young workmen.

"But more than this. The German who is taught a trade acquires not only the technic of it in a shop or laboratory, but also acquires in his studies something of an enlightening and inspiring knowledge of its history and significance. He is, consequently, much more than a mere drudge. He is made intelligent about his calling. This particular feature, so pregnant and valuable, is not incorporated in the American plan, if we can be said to have a plan in these matters. For the Yankee ambition is to make plenty of money in any quick way, and therefore to rise above a trade which a German is content to remain in. We feel no keen necessity about careful instruction in such vocations. Luck, "pull," "cheek," mere cleverness, are prominently relied on in its stead.

"There is another thing in this trade instruction that we do not have in any noticeable degree. It teaches the German mechanic to become wedded to his Nation and Government. He is made to realize the great benefits and responsibilities he owes to them. He becomes an integral national citizen ready to serve his homeland. He is taught to think of something higher than his pay envelope. Under our system such a mechanic grows up loosely connected in thought and acts with the governing public under which he enjoys all his liberty and opportunity. In so far as national necessities go he is apt to be a weakened unit or pulling the wrong way. Unlike the German, he has been educated to have no self-sacrificing ideal of state or country."

Anderson had, at one time, drawn Gard's attention to the immense advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities—mere plodders—who are found in every race and who often weigh down its destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness.

Kirtley had since observed that one conspicuous German method was largely to employ this empty talent in small Government jobs. In general, these tasks seemed to be expressly for the swarming and uninspired nonentities, and meant most trivial duties for trivial pay. But such tasks kept this population occupied, orderly and more than self-respecting. In America incurable mediocrity is left to shift for itself in huge masses.

The natural ambition of a Teuton was to be in the national service. Rare was the German family who had not one member in "Government circles." Or if not, it was building expectations toward such a future. One in every eight wage-earning men a bureaucrat! It was not only a question of the salary, assured if small, but the honor. Any Government clerk or roustabout, not to speak of functionaries in higher duties, was looked up to in a way unfamiliar in America, for under that continuous regime his position remained fixed for life. Government officials and employees in the United States are quite freely thrown out under the frequent election upheavals and may to-morrow be ordinary citizens bereft of any sort of authority over their fellows. So they enjoy only a passing deference.

In Germany, owing to the use of plodders who made up extensively its ubiquitous and commanding official class, this bureaucratic scheme proved useful in more ways than one. It put faith and expectation into these stolid, menial lives and took them out of the ranks of the idle and discontented dullards who, in other countries, are a source of danger or decay. It attached Fritz firmly and loyally to the Nation. It held the links between the ruling caste and the people hard and tight. At the same time it tied his family and friends to the Hohenzollern, uniting them in a bond almost servile. The ever-swelling ranks of bureaucrats, in such a large measure imbecile and applying themselves to imbecile occupations, strengthened the incomparable solidarity of the race. And it was this army of State employees who were actively helping diffuse through Germany in 1913 the frothy ideas of a national triumph that intoxicated the populace.

But Kirtley, admiring this manifestation of practical and administrative wisdom, felt that there must be somewhere a tremendous weak spot. The expense of this plan and its withdrawal of muscle and even poor brain from directly productive channels, were costly. And there was about it a pompous vacancy, an arrogant nonsensicalness, a latent peril resulting from such a large number of automatons in unquestioned positions, that should all logically indicate this: If Germany once broke, it would collapse somewhat like an eggshell. It would be a formidable eggshell but with a content surprisingly void.

In a sentence, the mighty German bureaucracy kept the population from thinking. It meant—Obey and make no inquiry! And where in history, Gard asked himself, has a nation of such political and body slaves endured as against nations where the common individual was free to ask questions? Slavery in any important form is acknowledged to be an outworn, decadent economic policy. It cannot compete in the long run.

As a result of this bureaucratic domination in Germany there were, as Kirtley observed, many aspects of the organized public life so excessively worked out and applied in their development as to be unbelievable to Americans who had not come in actual contact with them. These logical extremes and exhaustive minutiae often enough combined a ferocious ostentation and comical absurdness that were so little realized by those afar who learned of the mighty seriousness and intelligence of the Germans merely from the printed page. The conduct and operations of the limitless bureaucracy were usually the form in which the foreigner in the flesh ran counter to this unconscionable discipline.

Of all this Government routine, the spy system stood out in relief, although, at the same time, it was so dovetailed into the civil administration as to be frequently indistinguishable. Like a typical Yankee Gard, always greatly impressed by the general emphasis everywhere laid on the perfection of the Germans and their methods in everything, had regarded Anderson's remarks and hints about the spy regime as exaggerations. He still could not believe that Rudolph was a kind of Government sleuth or that Teuton existence was honeycombed from cellar to roof with official suspicion and the tyranny of the detective.

But this phase was now brought within range of his personal knowledge, and he had a glimpse of this famous German service. And through whom? Of all persons, Jim Deming. Strange to relate, it brought to a sudden head the latter's stirring courtship of Fraeulein Elsa.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE IMPERIAL SECRET SERVICE

After New Year he had organized a little informal dancing club among the Americans. He called it the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie, in alliterative compliment to the daintiness of the ladies. He was the self-constituted secretary and sole official.

For the birthday of the Father of our country he sent out to the members a rollicking printed invitation reading:

In honor of our George's birthday, which comes as usual this year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers or singing of hymns.

By order

JAMES ALEXANDER DEMING, Sec., CCC. R. S. V. P.—the Senate and the Roman People.

The notice at least gave evidence that Jim had been in Italy.

Several weeks after the pleasant event, when he had forgotten all about it, he was loafing in his room one morning after breakfast, smoking an eccentric pipe from his collection, and comforting himself over his decision once more that German teachers and grammars are a failure.

A thump was heard at his door. He called out Herein! whereat a person in uniform strode in and stuck into Deming's hands a majestic communication from which he made out with some difficulty that he was peremptorily ordered to appear at Police Headquarters at eleven that forenoon. Fully conscious of the political innocence of his conduct, he welcomed this new diversion and, humming the latest opera bouffe air, he dressed in his best with a posy in his lapel.

His gay feelings were a little dampened at the Platz where he encountered a massive solemnity and sullen looks as if he were an arch criminal of State. A ponderous minor individual, not unarmed, commanded him to be seated in front of his desk and, eying him sternly, handed over one of Jim's invitations to the George Washington party.

"Do you know of this?"

"Yes, sir," replied Jim, surprised that this harmless missive had turned up among the Police, and wondering what it could all be about.

"Have you authorization?"

"Authorization, sir?"

"What is this?" roared the petty functionary.

"Why, nothing at all. It means dance—ball—a little dance we had."

"Dance—ball." The other repeated the words with a severity that champed upon its bits. "Are you this party?" He tried to pronounce Jim's formidable name on the card.

"Yes, sir."

"What does this mean—Sec., CCC?" he roared again.

Deming was getting upset, confused besides by his inadequate vocabulary.

"I don't know in German, but in English we say Secretary of the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie."

"Ah, you say Secretary. It is English." And an enlightened satisfaction furrowed the hardened face of the interlocutor. Then, abruptly to Deming's relief:

"You may go."

As Jim rose to leave he found a court flunkey at either elbow. They escorted him out with a military precision and flourish. He congratulated himself on the easy way he had got through with it. He must have somehow managed it pretty well.

Two days later, in the evening, an attendant from the Intelligence Office ushered himself into Deming's room without announcement. He bore a summons for the next day.

"Well, of all the damned fools!" Jim exclaimed to himself. "They don't seem to know I'm a free American citizen. I'll tell them this time. They are getting too familiar—walking into a chap's room without waiting to be invited."

This time he was brought before a higher official with a more exalted mien, and manners of inextinguishable anger. He held the tell-tale notice of February twenty-second in his horny paw. Deming was this time not asked to sit down.

"Who's this George?" was demanded.

"Why, that's our great George," confirmed Jim, sharing with jaunty confidence this bit of universal knowledge.

"George—George—the king of England," was the gratifying conclusion.

"And what does this mean?"

"That's Senate and the Roman People. That's just a joke."

"Senate—Senate! Official."

Several of the glowering army folk stood about. They took on menacing airs of importance, following the lead of their chief. An international intrigue, involving a foreign king and senate, was being rapidly unraveled. Deming was so suddenly and summarily dismissed again that he forgot to tell them proudly he was a free American citizen—with a hundred million people behind them.

He was becoming worried and consulted the experience of Miles Anderson whom he had, of course, met through Kirtley.

"In the toils of the German high police!" chuckled Anderson. "That is certainly funny."

"But what am I to do to get rid of them?" inquired Jim anxiously. "It seems I have no privacy. And I don't want to be going to the Platz all the time. Hadn't I better turn it over to our Consulate?"

"Heavens, no. American consuls won't do anything for you. They are considerably Germanic anyhow—work in with the local authorities. It's our easy-going American way. If you want anything done, go to the British or Japanese. Then you will get action. Our official attitude seems to be that an American ought not to be away from America. If he is away, he must look out for himself—has few rights abroad. The Germans respect the English and Japs for they mean business and their consular service is not to be trifled with."

"I don't want to go to foreigners—get this thing all advertised about—go to all that trouble."

"Then tell the Germans to go to hell. That's the only way to get on with Germans. They are used to being sworn at. They will quit you then. If you don't, they will keep you trotting to Headquarters for six months. If you try to be nice, try to placate them, you'll simply get into hotter water. They don't understand such things. They think they are uncovering a vast conspiracy. Cinderella Cotillion Coterie! Gad, of all the farcical happenings I have come across even in Germany!"

Deming was braced up by this advice, and if anything more came of the incident he determined to see it through with some of Anderson's good American bluff and independence.

The following morning he was plashing about in his bath tub when the door was bluntly opened and then partly closed. He faced around in amazement at the audacity of anyone boldly intruding into a bath room—the only place left in Germany for the self-respecting Naked Cult. His eyes fell upon another uniformed emissary from the Police. This one was very obsequious and bowed and scraped his excuses for the unseemly interruption.

"Excuse me, mein Herr, but I heard water splashing and I thought you were at breakfast."

Jim had adopted the fashion of talking derogatorily in English to Germans who, not understanding, usually agreed with his sentiments. This always amused him and satisfied his injured feelings.

"That's the way with you Germans. When you hear a noise, you think someone is eating."

"Ja wohl, ja wohl, mein Herr," assented the incomer with crude agreeableness, all the while grinning in shamefacedness. And floating in the water Jim received another order, from the retreating and apologizing minion of the law, to stand at attention at Headquarters. He was unfamiliar with courts of any sort and did not know he should ask for an interpreter. That the officials had not as yet used one showed apparently an attempt to let the accused, thus handicapped, stumble into an incriminating confession.



CHAPTER XXVIII

JIM DEMING'S FATE

The scene was now transferred to a third chamber which looked somewhat like an august tribunal of state. It was an imposing room divided by a long high rostrum upon which sat a terrible looking individual of the utmost lordliness. The attendants were numerous, and if Deming had ever heard of the trial of Warren Hastings he would have thought this appeared an occasion of almost equal importance and gravity. When he arrived for his ordeal before the bench, he seemed a rather small and defenseless figure.

For he was now to be subjected to a sort of "third degree," with a court interpreter at hand. Every word that might be significant in his bedeviling invitation of February twenty-second was gone over with the minatory harshness of medieval inquisitors.

"February twenty-second. Why is that day?"

Deming explained through his intermediary. His interrogators persisted in the idea that it was a pregnant date in English history and had some sinister meaning like Guy Fawkes day. The pages of British annals had evidently been scanned to find the hidden clew.

"'No flowers or singing of hymns.' What is all this?"

"Just a joke, tell him, just a little innocent fun," appealed Jim to his translator.

"You signed yourself as Secretary. That contravenes the law. You had no authority to assume an official position without conferring."

Then there was the mighty Senate and the Roman People again on the mystic communication with its cryptic letters as full of mystery as runes to these Germans. It was, of course, the language of a code.

"Tell him that there is no such thing in the world as the Roman Senate and People," explained Deming with nervous despair. "That was just fooling. Nothing political—nothing political!" he exclaimed. Everything became less convincing and therefore visibly more satisfactory, and looks and voices grew savage in proportion.

There was also the occult CCC.

"Who is Cinderella? Is he in Dresden with you? Where is he to be found?" The word was indicated by a big thumb. Poor Jim, whose specific information was as limited about Cinderella as about most subjects, entered nevertheless on a long explanation not only concerning her but concerning the playful innocence of the George Washington meeting.

"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.

"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested that sec might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.

"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a hoarse, triumphant tone.

"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.

"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."

"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was especially French. With us it's just dancing language—everybody uses it. Tell him"—Jim added encouragingly—"tell him I never knew a Frenchman in my life."

"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."

"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.

On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion—"What egregious asses such Germans can be!"—and also his own alarm over his situation. When would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.

But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief held up a little battered sheet.

"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"

"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn, but fully sure of himself on this ground.

"Untruth. Why did you not pay for three candles left in your room at Karlsruhe? Here is the unreceipted slip."

"Because I did not use them. I did not want them. I left them on the mantel."

"And here is a balance due on your laundry bill at Hamburg—twelve cents—unpaid. How do you explain that?" A torn and dirty washing schedule was handed down to him to refresh his memory.

"I didn't know I owed any balance," argued Jim to his spokesman. "Tell him it was not presented to me. Tell him I will be only too glad to pay anything I owe. I always pay what I owe." The examiner gingerly took up a crumpled napkin, brown from an overturned demi-tasse.

"August sixteenth, you spilled coffee on your napkin at lunch—half-past twelve. And you went away from the Hotel Bellevue—Bavaria—without making it good. What have you to say to that?" The sorry cloth was held up contemptuously for Jim's inspection and for the edification of the duly pained official audience, most of whom, however, doubtless made no use of such an article in their daily lives.

"I never heard anything about it!" cried Deming. "In my country such things are thrown in. Nothing said about them. But tell him I'll pay it—I'll pay anything—everything. How much is it?"

"Twenty-five cents, the bill claims."

"What is the total?" And Jim began digging in his pockets while holding up his head testily. He had never before been accused of hotel-beating. But payment did not yet appear to be in order. He stared at the mass of files and papers before his cross-questioner. He realized that his whole record in Germany lay there. The Imperial Service had traced him like bloodhounds. Due to his frequent irritated displays of proud American independence on his tour, the bill of small grievances, now accumulated, no doubt assumed troublesome proportions when exposed in its formidable length. Three hours had been consumed, accounted for in part by the necessity of an interpreter. As meal time was at hand Deming was commanded to appear the next morning at nine to have his testimony taken at length.

He departed, his buoyant nature rising once more in partial relief. True to his Yankee instincts he now concluded they were only after the money he owed.

"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three dollars and that will end the matter. These blamed Germans with their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"

He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by dinner at his favorite cafe. When he returned to his room late that night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer the first thing after the early morning meeting.

The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half the German States. Harassed by this muck and by the leering taunts of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the session was postponed to the second day after.

As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height of moral courage.

"Go to hell!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h——" in his great book, Jim slipped out.

He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circumstances, winding up elatedly with the last remark.

"Did they write that down too?"

"Yes."

The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton naivete. Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country. He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia and beyond German control.

And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of farewell from St. Petersburg.

"Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor," remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley. "It flourishes to a great extent by exaggerating mole hills into mountains with officious vacuity. It is so large that there is not enough serious work for it. So something often must be found to do. It is a civil army radiating the glory of the Kaiser. The more extensive it is, the more entrenched he is. It is official dry rot which is part of the price the people pay for having themselves governed. It is national graft. But while our American forms of graft at least stimulate individual cleverness among our compatriots, this German form tends to reduce its recipients to the level of donkeys, as seen in the Deming case."

Gard little suspected that he was to drift into a somewhat similar misadventure, but of an advanced type.



CHAPTER XXIX

WINTER AND SPRING

The sudden drop in the life in Villa Elsa occasioned by meteoric Jim Deming's disappearance, was terrific. Frau Bucher gasped, caught her breath and sank voluminously beneath the waters of social oblivion whence she had so grandly emerged. When she finally came up to her plain surface of existence she demanded, Where are now the theater parties, and drives in the Grosse Garten behind the King? The family had almost begun to wonder how they had got on before. She wailed:

"The good Herr Deming, the marvelous Herr Deming! How could he have abruptly left us? Something mightily strange must have forced him to go. He will surely return. How could he treat Elsa so? Here we are with our hopes, our plans and our new underwear. It is terrible."

For several days the house resounded with perturbation. This gradually decreased as the readjustment to the former flat conditions took place. The transition was not completed until the information arrived that Herr Deming was never coming back. The final stroke. It was indeed pitiable, tragic, amusing. And all because the American custom of flirtation was unknown to these matter-of-fact Germans, so deadly in earnest about everything.

But, Teuton-like, the brave ship Villa Elsa soon righted itself, being used to blows. It had at least entertained and been entertained by one of the Golden Youths of Good Fortune whose legends gild the expectations of every race. And it was a superior satisfaction to realize that this had not happened elsewhere in Loschwitz.

There were left behind no lingering animosities, no painful grievings. Feelings were too stout, sensibilities too tough, to admit of acknowledging rancors or sickly complaints. The daughter's marriageable future was apparently faced again with courageous determination. As she could not be a luxurious American queen, she must be a German housewife who ranked, to say the least, high enough in the eyes of Gott. But what German's wife? Oddly enough Frau Bucher, despite all her bluntness, never let a hint out of the bag of her franknesses before Kirtley.

After Jim Deming's second riotous invasion of Villa Elsa, when there had been confirmed the abject and tumultuous surrender of the two ladies, mind, body and soul, to mere money, prostrate at the feet of an American "pig," Gard experienced a numbness of heart. True, the daughter was tied to the apron strings of her mother. But then Jim could only fling his pocketbook in her face. He had done it and she, sheep-like, had obviously accepted the situation without a question, a murmur.

How could he, as an American, gage such a blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by works. The highest ideal of "Christian" character is expressed by self.

Spring was now at hand. The sunlit air invited to the out-door life. The windows and doors of Villa Elsa, which was stale and stuffy from the closed-up winter, stood open and the inmates came out of their hibernation, shook themselves and welcomed the warmth and lack-luster brightness. The lindens and plane trees and shrubberies began to hug the place under their cosy leafage. Herr Bucher's rose garden was prepared to grow merry with colors. The companionable garden corner for afternoon tea and beer became a nook of liveliness. The oncoming summer sent forth generally its exulting thrills.

This fine surging-in of sunny, revivifying Nature took at first such a strong and glad hold on Gard that his private emotions, which Elsa had so promptly sharpened and whose edge had become dulled, seemed to lay themselves pleasantly aside for the moment. Whether they were to become whetted again into keen interest remained to be seen, for the awakening green and white noon-tide of actual existence was absorbing.

Apparently she was not greatly affected by Deming's departure. She betook herself to her lessons and duties with well-drilled diligence. The years were cut out for her. She had only to follow the pattern. How much more fortunate it would be, Gard had often felt, if she were detached from her semi-civilized household! Her own attractions would then be freed from the surrounding thorns, prickly hedges, that bruised and tore and dismayed one. An American chap could marry her—but oh, her family!

It was not long, however, before she missed meals. She had begun again being mysteriously mute at times in her room, over the Heine poems. Gard had almost forgotten them.

There were no promenades this early season in the meadow, with the poet. No duos were played. Winter, for that matter, was a more favorable time for them, as it was also for the family concerts.

Fraeulein observed a meaningless familiarity with Kirtley as if he were an old member of the home circle. He wondered again if Rudolph had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him unwillingly and grabbed his occasional Trinkgelds with scarcely a thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact, stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism?

The spring weather somewhat curtailed, mollified, all the frank irascibility and wrangling that went on in the house, and it was under the lukewarm spell of this German virgin summer-time that the routine took on its most agreeable aspects, though accompanied with the usual Teuton domestic din. It was, in fact, very enjoyable, contrasted with what the cold months had permitted.

In the winter a pleasant feature had been the theater or opera nights. Darkness then came at four. Dinner would be served at five in order to reach the amusement place at half past six or seven. By eleven the family were back in Loschwitz, sitting down, starved, to a bouncing supper where frequently Kirtley regaled himself with the toothsome Pumpernickel. Over the hot dishes the feverish points of the entertainment were discussed, exclaimed about, while the party cooled off and solaced themselves with Schultheiss. These were rousing and satisfying little happenings.

Free public lectures had also been a source of enjoyment to the Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races. They close their eyes and drink in seriously. Naturally enough comes about the universality of their music and lectures.

Of these public dissertations a course on the Union between Greek Philosophy and Greek Poetry was especially raved over in Villa Elsa. Gard attended one of these evenings, inspired by the instructional ardors of Frau and Fraeulein and Ernst. The example of little Ernst, avid of such intellectual pleasures at his tender age, ever impressed Gard anew. He thought of American lads in comparison.

The German professor, as is well known, occupies a much more potent and exalted position in Germany than the American professor in America. He is considered a reliable fount of wisdom. He speaks with sure authority. He is an oracle, permanent and sounding afar.

On this occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular orator ascend the pulpit. He was in full dress—white waistcoat, white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable flow of formidable, finished periods, without a note, without a hesitation. Gard really felt there would never be anything else to say about Beauty, so profound, so complete, so final, seemed this survey of the topic.

At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt.

Gard almost choked, being crowded into close contact. Could he ever get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant, disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted to Teuton university expounders—those gods of wisdom who had repulsed him.

Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally, monumentally lacking in the German race—something shoddy, deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns.



CHAPTER XXX

VILLA ELSA OUTDOORS

In the vernal season the lectures and theaters were dropped for neighborhood excursions of which the Buchers, like all German families, were extremely fond. A rendezvous would be made for dinner, for instance, at some attractive spot up the Elbe. It would be a walking trip from Loschwitz along the winding banks or up on a higher path stretching from one smooth, low-lying hilltop to another. Everywhere the invigorating odor of pine lay in the air. The company assembled by twos or singly at their convenience during the late afternoon. Generally the Herr would be last. And when he was spied approaching, with a cock's feather in his hat and supporting himself authoritatively on his big stick, a chorus of acclaim greeted him, for craving appetites were now to be satisfied.

The household would pass the evening dining al fresco and enjoying the landscape studded with historic and other enduring memories. Near by was Hosterwitz, where Weber composed "Oberon" and "Der Freischuetz." Often mists from the Elbe rose mystically to engarland the crenelated castles here and there on the heights. A drowsy river boat in that long agreeable northern twilight would finally gather up the family at the dock and drop them off at home.

Sundays were the favorite time for these little outings. Lessons, classes, tasks, were then lightened. Gard had quickly become aware in Germany that the Sabbath is considerably a day of work as well as pleasure. The usual impression in America that the Germans are religious, not to speak of being moral, was dispelled. This had been a fragment of his erroneous idea that they are active Protestants in the sense that carries any Calvinistic or ethical meaning.

Neither the Buchers, nor any of the families whom Kirtley met through them, went to church. The Protestant churches were, in fact, gloomy, tasteless and almost empty. Their services appeared cheerless and forbidding. Tremendous fear was their keynote. It seemed far more agreeable to a German to partake of the national sacrament out in a beer garden.

His attitude seemed to be that his race were born so constitutionally and thoroughly in line with Divineness that they did not need to do anything about it. The religious element, as a shaper of conduct and thought, was accordingly not required. As for any restraining power, the Government furnished all of this that was necessary.

At any rate the rulers looked after religion. They observed all-sufficiently its rites. They stood next to Deity and represented and protected the people. Kirtley remarked that when the ordinary German began talking of God, which was rare, he was soon talking of the Emperor. Both deities were ever solicitous for him, working tirelessly in his behalf. The Kaiser was properly the national busybody, the head schoolmaster, who attended to everybody and everything and drove all constantly forward toward a unified and splendid destiny.

Thus arose the firm belief of the Germans in their natural righteousness—the righteousness of how they act, what they possess. Gard saw there existed among them little virtue in the way of religion to offer the youth of other lands. To send an American son or daughter to Deutschland for such influence and benefit was but another example of the prevailing misconception of real Teutonism.

Many an evening the family dined at the famous Schiller Garden which stretched along the shore, just across the river. Knitting and sewing and books were taken along, a large table was secured, and there the members ate and refreshed themselves with liquids in leisurely fashion from six o'clock until bed time. There would be plenty of talking and smoking and plying of needles as the moonlight or river lights danced forth to guide the active river traffic and also the large inflowings and outflowings of restaurant guests. And all to the bracing music of a capital orchestra reeling off jubilant marches and waltzes.

These were good times when the German was to be observed under the most favorable colors. After Tekla's little tragedy snatched her away from Villa Elsa, as will soon be seen, this dining out became the regular event of the day.

On one of these occasions in the Schiller Garden the conversation fell once more on America. The subject had not been touched since the eruption over Yankee "pigs". It had lain dormant under the mesmeric effect of Jim Deming's appearance.

Gard gathered the following for his notebook. The Buchers maintained that, even if the Hohenzollerns were not wanted, they were necessary to hold Germany together. Otherwise she would split up into many impotent states and be at the mercy of the solidary races adjoining her. But who could not want the Hohenzollerns? They had made of Germany—really a small, poor country—a mighty power. Look at huge America, by contrast! She was weak, disorganized, aimless. She was the proverbial giant with few bones. The western half of the United States was still practically undeveloped, and yet it abounded in natural wealth.

Then there was the Monroe Doctrine. It was a baseless fiat for which there was no legal or moral justification—as arrogant a presumption as could be claimed of any edict of a Kaiser. The Buchers asserted that the Doctrine was a crime against humanity. It had kept, for a hundred years, South America and Central America indifferently civilized, miserably governed, their thin populations uneducated, thriftless, superstitious, bigoted. Said the Herr:

"If our Germany had had full access to that half hemisphere it would be in a full blaze of progress. It would be affording prosperous homes to untold millions of Europeans now packed together like sardines. The mines, forests, rich soils, grazing lands, would have long ago been completely opened up, tilled, occupied, for the benefit of man who is still, in the main, inadequately fed and clothed. We Germans can, admittedly, manufacture cheaper and better goods than anyone. We ought to be free in our way and by our own methods to supply those Americas with the necessities and comforts of civilization and make them rich and happy.

"Their mongrel races are poverty stricken, disease stricken, and often fighting among themselves. The United States does little for them. Nor will she let anyone else. She plays the dog in the manger to the detriment of the world. And this is because she is vain, timid and without plan. Is that logical, wise and serving mankind for the best? Were conditions reversed, would she herself favor such a backward, lagging programme?"

Kirtley admitted to himself that this was a very good and valid point of view for Germans. He recognized its general source, for the Buchers, in the Dresden newspapers. But he did not enter into argument. He had satisfied himself that argument with Teutons, who do not have open minds, who are obsessed by fixed ideas bored into them, can only end in unpleasantness—a row. He had come to Germany to learn. It would be defeating this purpose to air what notions he might have.

In Villa Elsa itself a good deal of the feasting in April and May was carried on in the garden where flowers and dogs completed the picture, together with much open-air singing accompanied by the piano up in the salon. Were it not for the musical cult, it would have been difficult, Gard had concluded, to live in this household. As Anderson said, music had in a degree tamed the German "beast" of the north and made it possible to get on with him at all. Music rather than woman, religion, or the ideal of social intercourse, had partly softened him.

The Bucher sons liked to come to table outdoors with spurs or side arms, and the Herr's favorite hunting equipment was often in evidence, recalling to him days of valiant sport. With their stiff and long strides they affected to be larger, greater, than other males. Supermen in the form of Goliaths! The women loved the sight of such warlike paraphernalia. Such things added zest to the joyous toast—Der Tag! But none of these heroes had yet killed anyone or anything, so far as Kirtley discovered.

In warm weather Villa Elsa did not relax in the matter of six daily repasts. Breakfast at half-past seven. Bread, slices of cold meat and something in addition, at eleven. Luncheon at one, hearty enough for a dinner. At half-past four helles beer and tea with Butterbrods. Dinner at seven. And on going to bed a fortifying supper of pigs' feet, sausage, cheese and other man-like delicacies, flooded with potations.

Gard had, after the months, adjusted himself somewhat to these conditions. He had become, he thought, more used to the German way of living. To get the best out of it, he realized that one must coarsen instead of refine the senses and aptitudes. Instincts should be strengthened, roughened, rather than checked or made more esthetic. The German puts a heavy hand on things. He takes big bites at existence. Thunderous might envelops and clouds his idea of perfection.



CHAPTER XXXI

A CASUAL TRAGEDY

One morning early in June when Kirtley, who had been away the afternoon and evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up the rooms.

The parents were in a rage. They made no bones about it. Frau blurted out with German unreservedness:

"I packed Tekla off—the animal. She had no consideration for me. What do you think, Herr Kirtley? She is going to be a mother. And by Rudi. Wouldn't you have thought he would have more sense than this—right here at home—break up my service? He let her get him into the mess. I have no doubt it was her doings—my poor Rudi. We have sent him away for a couple of days. I told Tekla to go—be off. And she was out on the street—like that—with her bundle of belongings under her arm. And here I am with no servant. Ach Gott! they are all cattle, of course. One has to put up with them."

Herr was in a growling, ferocious state. He blamed Tekla. He blamed his Frau for not knowing what was going on. It was the woman's fault. Everything always was. His incomplete breakfast was late.

"Is there nothing left to eat in the house?" he cried out. He took on a famished and abused air, although he had had his usual six meals the day before. "Give me at least some cheese and bread!"

In this manner Tekla was roundly denounced for interrupting the course of family comfort. That she had mortally sinned awakened no attention, aroused no concern. There was no sympathy expressed for her in her condition, no responsibility felt for her in her downfall or anxiety about her future. Whether she would, from this misstep, have to take to the streets for a living occurred to no one but Kirtley.

Germans are little wrought up about such questions. There is no shuddering as from an admitted mortal sin. Natural impulses and facts are natural impulses and facts. Why should one be squeamish about them or have soul burnings? In general, carnal desires meet with no great fastidiousness in the German domestic circle. They are rather regarded as honest and healthy like desires for food and drink. The Teuton wife is ashamed of barrenness and considers it proper for women to be fully sexed in feeling. Sexuality is not something to be shrunk from, discouraged or denied, but is a candid, copious law of Nature to be recognized.

When Rudi returned shortly from Leipsic, where it had been deemed best for him to retire for the moment, he appeared as conceited and noisy as if nothing had happened. He was not cowed or penitent. His parents, who had got Villa Elsa in running order and were forgetting the contretemps, almost beamed upon him. He was now a full-fledged male. Any lingering uncertainties as to his completed manhood had been effectually removed. His affair was viewed from the standpoint of potent strength, not lapse from virtue. Young men had their wild oats to sow. His mistake had been to disturb his own household. Had it been another household, little heed would have been given.

In the Bucher minds the satisfying net result seemed to be that another soldier (it was to be hoped) was to be born for the army, for the Kaiser. Soldiers had to be. Tekla was to fulfill her highest mission as a German servant girl. She was to become a just and constituent part of the swelling Empire.

Frau's ideas and information on the subject provided Gard's journal with some more condensed material. They were talking out by the garden table.

"What becomes of the German servant girl under such conditions?" he inquired.

"Oh, she can get into another family and go on as before."

"And the baby? How does she manage with that?"

"She puts it out among poor farm people and pays a little for its keep. As the mother usually works about in different localities—sometimes being taken far away by her employers—the farmer often adopts the baby as it grows up. He can always use more help. If it's a girl, she is good for the farm as well as the house. If it's a boy, he becomes a soldier. A boy of this kind makes the best soldier because he has no parental and no home attachments. He only knows the barracks and has the officers to obey. He does not learn who his father is, and the mother becomes practically a stranger to him as she moves about in the city or country. He is ready to serve in the colonies or go anywhere or do anything, having no personal ties to hold him."

"Does not your large army badly demoralize these social conditions?"

"You know, we housewives don't like it much when a new regiment moves into the vicinity. It makes mothers among our domestics and we have to change about. Of course, you see, we have more women than men in Germany and we must have children growing up for the barracks and the cheap labor market. There seems to be no other way, but it is often a great nuisance for us housekeepers. Yet there is this to say: The girls rarely have more than one child by the same man. For another regiment comes along and there are new relations. The army is necessarily a floating population and not very responsible for what it does among us civilians because it protects us."

Kirtley concluded that this accounted for the large number of detached young men in Germany—in the army and out of it—who appeared to be so entirely footloose, ready for any mission or task in any part of the globe. As the two sat there talking about the question of lovelessness in these relations, Herr Bucher strolled up from his flower beds and joined them in his Tyrolean jacket of the chase and big army boots. Gard said,

"We were speaking of affection, Herr Bucher. Why do the Germans have the ideal of hate when other races are holding up the ideal of love?"

"Because it is good to hate!" exclaimed the host with rugged forcefulness as he squatted in a seat. "To hate is strong, manly. It makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for keeping up the fighting instinct. To love is a feebleness. It enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in the world because she hates. When you hate, you eat well, sleep well, work well, fight well. It is best for the health. When you love, it is like a sickness and disorganizes and debilitates."

"How do you reconcile that with Christ and His mission of love?" pursued Gard.

"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State. He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared, are the proper motives for life. They are life. Fear is a stronger and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and ends logically in death. With Christ the real victory, the real heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life."

The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military philosophers.

Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except under a quasi truce or other provisional conditions. To form a perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton reformation took place.

In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook hand:

Immer heller brennt die Licht, Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.

Offered to her meadow pupil By his meadow teacher.

(Ever brighter burns the light Of my sweet forget-me-not.)

The Germans are not original in love-making. Elsa had read of such things being done. But it was an admission or advance from her as unexpected as it was belated. Gard tossed about awhile on his bed, thinking of it. As he had often acknowledged to himself, he had been interested in her more than any girl he had yet known.

In the morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the gift. For it seemed to be apropos of nothing in particular at this unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to Americans and had at length struck a sentimental attitude.



CHAPTER XXXII

A GERMAN MARRIAGE PROPOSAL

A day or two afterward, another little tragedy visited Villa Elsa, following on the heels of the unfortunate departure of Tekla. Ernst came home at lunch time with his head swollen in reds and purples and hardly able to walk. At his morning drill his sergeant had knocked him down by a blow in the face and then kicked him in the knee. The little philosopher was a good deal of a dreamer and had failed in strict and prompt attention. To strike down and boot the rank and file are, of course, a normal part of Prussian army discipline.

Kirtley was incensed, horrified. But to his amazement the family sided with the officer. Although Ernst stood in grave danger of being crippled for life, they were ugly in their censures of him. They said it was a good thing to bring him down from the clouds.

The poor little fellow was a pitiable object for some time. He not only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the feet on the earth.

Gard thought how differently an American father and mother would act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide. The number of these boys and girls who, because of their hardships, destroy themselves in despair, is shockingly great. The statistics in other races offer little in comparison.

To break down the will by abasing youth before its comrades and elders, to lay its self-respect low, to beat dignified individuality into callous insensibility, manufactured a docile, automatic unit for the German mechanism. The peculiar strength of Deutschland lay in this early control and training of its young. And as the young surrendered their unimportant consciousness as individuals, they gained an important consciousness as factors in the State. For this reason, as they learned to be almost servile among their own folk, they became domineering among foreigners.

Villa Elsa now was true to the adage that misfortunes do not come or loom singly. One forenoon, about the middle of June, Kirtley was sitting in his attic, turning over in his mind the fact that his year in Germany would soon be up, and endeavoring to explain why he felt depressed. The recent events, it was true, had created a very unpleasant condition of mind, but his body itself also seemed to share in the inharmony. A dullness, a heaviness, had begun to weigh upon his physique and yet here were summer, Nature, the green earth, rejoicing all about him. It was odd. What was the full explanation?

As he sat there thinking somewhat dolefully about himself and forgetting his opened books, a loud knock was heard at his door. It was Frau Bucher with her knitting. She had never honored him with a call in his room. Something must be the matter.

At his invitation she came in and sank into a chair. Her face and hair were mussed. She was laboring under a great strain. The sons with their ill-luck had troubled her. The recent mishaps had evidently alarmed her, upset her, so that it was now the daughter filling the mother's anxious hours.

"Your daughter—Fraeulein Elsa!" Gard exclaimed in astonishment.

"Yes, my poor daughter. Oh, good Herr Kirtley, you have always been so kind. I have treated you this winter like a son—just like my own sons."

"You have been very good to me, Frau Bucher," interpolated Kirtley, hastening to offer any consolation, although he could not imagine what distress had brought her to him.

"Well, my daughter—you know it has always been the intention that she marry Friedrich—ever since they were almost children. But, mein Gott, the poor Friedrich does not arrive at anything. We love him. All our friends love him—admire him. But he can get no fixed position. We wait, he waits, Elsa waits. Always hopes and more hopes and nothing comes. And he is so disappointed. No Kapellmeistership. Only small engagements which do not pay much and soon end. He has no money and what little we have to give with Elsa will not answer until he is permanently established.

"You see Friedrich is a courageous fellow and he is apt to speak his mind. You remember how he mimicked the military. My husband and I think he makes enemies by his impulsive temper. You know what musicians are. They talk right out. We think his enemies put difficulties in his way. And so nothing is settled. We keep waiting and here we are. Elsa wants to marry. She wants children!" exploded the artless Frau.

The abruptness of this confession in the matter-of-fact German way almost overcame Gard with embarrassment. He recovered himself at length to ask:

"Does she love him?"

"Ach Himmel! does she love him? Haven't you seen her so dumb at times? But nothing comes to pass—and when will there be anything? She gets her grumpy spells over these postponements—always postponements. You know young people are impatient. They don't understand such things. She wants to marry. Every young girl wants to marry and have children. I may die. My husband may die at any time. And she won't be settled for life."

The mother went off in a vigorous scene of upheaval. The slender and youthful Kirtley felt himself unequal to the task of trying to comfort her bulky person with its commotions.