ing
his luggage in a wire basket hanging over one of the red plush seats in a
coach which was one of a train of six or seven similar coaches, long and
elegantly built, he returned to the platform. All of a sudden the whole
little colony of artists appeared, with the master-sculptor at their
head--_in corpore_, as college students say. Miss Burns, too, had come,
like the rest of them, carrying three of those purplish-red, long-stemmed
roses with deep green leaves which were not yet being grown in Europe.

"I feel like a prima donna," Frederick said, really touched, as he took
the roses from each.

The platform and the train were as quiet as a cemetery, as if there never
were arrivals or departures between friends. But here and there, the face
of a traveller, aroused by the "temperamental" chatter of the Germans,
peered from behind the window-panes of the train to look curiously upon
the little rose procession. Finally, without a signal, or a word from any
official, the train started to move, as if by chance.

Soon the group of artists in the station receded. There stood Bonifacius
Ritter, dignified and elegant, waving his handkerchief. There was
Lobkowitz, friendly and serious, Willy Snyders the good-hearted, Franck
the gypsy painter, and, last but not least, Miss Eva Burns. Frederick
felt that with this moment, an epoch of his life had come to a close. He
was conscious of what he owed these fellow-countrymen and kindred spirits
for their warmth and hospitality, and of what he lost in losing them.
Nevertheless, after the strange way of man, he was in a state of joyous
excitement because his future, in a real and in a metaphoric sense, had
been set in motion.

At first the train rolled for some time through a dark tunnel under the
city, then through an open cut between high walls of masonry, and finally
it burst into a wide, free landscape. So this was America's real face.
Only now, after the noises of the Witches' Sabbath, the turmoil of the
great invasion, had somewhat subsided, Frederick breathed the true breath
of the virgin country's soil.

Observing that all the passengers in the coach stuck their tickets in
their hat bands, Frederick did the same, and then turned his eyes on the
fields and hills clothed in their white winter garments. To the young
man, uprooted from his native soil, there was a happy, stimulating
mystery in this landscape, which in the light of the winter sun so
closely resembled his birthplac