nutritious Teuton beer and Teuton
music in overflowing measures. In the Kaiser's realm, it appeared,
the digestions are always good. How desirable it would be for Gard
to take on some flesh in the German manner! In that climate,
Professor Rebner claimed with assurance, although he had never been
abroad, one can eat and drink his fill without causing the human
system to rebel as it is apt to in our dry, high-strung America. His
pupil's appetite would come back. Hearty meals of robust cheese and
sausages would be craved with an honest, clamorous hunger that meant
foolish indelicacy here at home.

Rebner also urged that Gard could in Deutschland improve his German
which, notwithstanding his affection for his preceptor, was
indifferent. Its gutturalness grated on his nerves, antagonized him.
But he criticized himself for this, not the language. Had not his
old mentor always sung of the superiorities of that tongue?

Kirtley could improve, too, his fingering on the piano by
familiarizing himself with the noble melodies that flooded the
German land. Two hairy hands would go up in exultation,

"To hear Beethoven and Wagner in their own country, filling the
atmosphere with their glories! And then Goethe and Schiller. Those
mighty deities. To read them in their own home!"

But the greatest thing, to the old professor's mind, would be to
behold the German people themselves, study them, profit by them in
their preeminence. What an example, what an inspiration, what a
grand symphony of concentrated harmony! Germany was the source of
Protestantism and therefore of modern morals--honest, uncompromising
morals. German discipline would have a bracing, solidifying effect
on a typically casual, slack American youth like Gard, whose latent
capabilities were never likely to be fully called upon in the
comparatively hit-and-miss organization of Yankee life.

For he had not yet begun to find himself. He had not even decided on
a calling at an age when the German is almost a full-fledged
citizen, shouldering all the accompanying obligations. Kirtley's
exemplary conduct and the gravity cast over him by the death of his
loved ones, had led him to think a little of Rebner's suggestions
about the ministry. And for this, Luther's country would be expected
to be sublime.

The loudly reiterated praise of Germany and the Germans had at last
produced the desired effect on Gard. He was prevailed upon to break
away from the old associations, go