m the south, north, and east of Germany. Altogether
there are nearly four hundred steerage passengers, among them five babies
at the breast and fifty children between the ages of one and fifteen."

Doctor Wilhelm invited Frederick to accompany him the next day on his
tour of inspection. He was a man of not more than twenty-six. He had a
fair complexion and wore glasses. His manner was somewhat stiff. Ever
since he had passed his examinations, two years before, he had been a
physician on a vessel. Once he had taken the trip to Japan, once to South
America, and several times to the United States. Frederick, of course,
immediately thought of his dying friend, George Rasmussen, put his hand
in his pocket, and presented his new colleague with Simon Arzt
cigarettes.

The cigarettes furnished a starting-point to tell all about George
Rasmussen; and when Doctor Wilhelm had learned everything about him,
except his name, and then learned his name, too, the world again turned
out to be a very small place. Doctor Wilhelm was a friend of George
Rasmussen's. They had studied together, one semester in Bonn and one
semester in Jena, and had belonged to the same club in Jena. The last few
years they had even corresponded. Naturally, the discovery instantly
brought the two physicians closer.

The tone in the smoking-room was that of jolly carousals in German
_Bierstuben_. The men let themselves go, talked in loud voices, and gave
rein to that coarse humour and noisy gaiety in which time flies for them
and which to many of them is a sort of narcotic, giving them rest and
ease for a while from the mad chase of existence. Neither Frederick nor
Doctor Wilhelm was averse to this tone, which revived old memories of
their student days, when they had become accustomed to it. Though to the
average student the carousals, now taboo, may be an evil, physically and
intellectually, they are the time and place, nevertheless, at which the
phoenix of German idealism soars up from tobacco smoke and beer froth
to wing its flight to the sun.

Hans Fuellenberg soon felt bored in the company of the two physicians who,
in fact, had completely forgotten him; and he slipped away, back to his
lady.

"When Germans meet," he said to her, "they must scream and drink
_Bruederschaft_ until they get tipsy."

Doctor Wilhelm seemed to be proud of the smoking-room.

"The captain," he said, "is very strict about not having the gentlemen
disturbed. He has given abso