r been abroad, and Jennie, too, would enjoy it. Vesta could
be left at home with Gerhardt and a maid, and he and Jennie would
travel around a bit, seeing what Europe had to show. He wanted to
visit Venice and Baden-Baden, and the great watering-places that had
been recommended to him. Cairo and Luxor and the Parthenon had always
appealed to his imagination. After he had had his outing he could come
back and seriously gather up the threads of his intentions.

The spring after his father died, he put his plan into execution.
He had wound up the work of the warerooms and with a pleasant
deliberation had studied out a tour. He made Jennie his confidante,
and now, having gathered together their traveling comforts they took a
steamer from New York to Liverpool. After a few weeks in the British
Isles they went to Egypt. From there they came back, through Greece
and Italy, into Austria and Switzerland, and then later, through
France and Paris, to Germany and Berlin. Lester was diverted by the
novelty of the experience and yet he had an uncomfortable feeling that
he was wasting his time. Great business enterprises were not built by
travelers, and he was not looking for health.

Jennie, on the other hand, was transported by what she saw, and
enjoyed the new life to the full. Before Luxor and Karnak--places
which Jennie had never dreamed existed--she learned of an older
civilization, powerful, complex, complete. Millions of people had
lived and died here, believing in other gods, other forms of
government, other conditions of existence. For the first time in her
life Jennie gained a clear idea of how vast the world is. Now from
this point of view--of decayed Greece, of fallen Rome, of
forgotten Egypt, she saw how pointless are our minor difficulties, our
minor beliefs. Her father's Lutheranism--it did not seem so
significant any more; and the social economy of Columbus,
Ohio--rather pointless, perhaps. Her mother had worried so of
what people--her neighbors--thought, but here were dead
worlds of people, some bad, some good. Lester explained that their
differences in standards of morals were due sometimes to climate,
sometimes to religious beliefs, and sometimes to the rise of peculiar
personalities like Mohammed. Lester liked to point out how small
conventions bulked in this, the larger world, and vaguely she began to
see. Admitting that she had been bad--locally it was important,
perhaps, but in the sum of civilization, in the