danger of running into a night-long Robert W. Chambers
scenario. It was in the days before such developments. Then across the
street was an "Automat," and there, for a cent and a quarter apiece, we
could hold a glass under a little spigot, press a button, and
get--refreshments. Then we walked home.

O Heidelberg--I love your every tree, every stone, every blade of grass!

But at last our year came to an end. We left the town in a bower of
fruit-blossoms, as we had found it. Our dear, most faithful friends,
the Kecks, gave us a farewell luncheon; and with babies, bundles, and
baggage, we were off.

Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then,
and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the
same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out.

CHAPTER VII

The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carl
to settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he did
research work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts,
coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent several
days searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country for
a place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fit
and suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was:
pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minute
where the children would be playing.

On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl
went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage,
and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's
inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my
impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim
had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in
execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of
sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions,
one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over a
beer-hall, with such a racket going on all night as never was; and next
morning took the first train out--this time for Duesseldorf.

It is a trifle momentous, traveling with two babies around a country you
know nothing about, and can find no one to enlighten you. At Duesseldorf
Carl searched through the town and suburbs for a spot to settle us in,
getting more and more depressed at the thought of