s than to make sure that all our various parcels were
properly dragged out along with ourselves. For a wonder no Dienstman
appeared to give us aid--showing how unexpected is the arrival of any
wayfarer at this untoward season--and for a moment one seemed in danger
of being reduced to the unheard-of expedient of carrying one's own
satchel. But, fortunately, one is rescued from this most un-German
predicament by the porter of a waiting hotel omnibus, and so at last we
have time to look about us, and to awaken to a realizing sense that we
have reached the land of traditions; that we have come to Mecca; that we
are in the quondam home of Guericke, Fichte, Goethe, Schiller, Oken, and
Gagenbaur; in the present home of Haeckel.

The first glimpse of a mountain beaming down at us from across the way
was in admirable conformity with our expectations, but for the rest, the
vicinage of the depot presented a most distressing air of modernity. A
cluster of new buildings--some of them yet unfinished--stared back at us
and the mountain with the most barefaced aspect of cosmopolitanism. Was
this, then, Jena, the home of traditions? Or were we entering some Iowa
village, where the first settlers still live who but yesterday banished
the prairie-dog and the buffalo?

But this disappointment and its ironical promptings were but fleeting.
Five minutes' drive and we were in the true Jena with the real flavor of
mediaeval-ism about us. Here is the hostelry where Luther met the Swiss
students in 1522. There is nothing in that date to suggest our Iowa
village, nor in the aspect of the hostelry itself, thank fortune. And
there rises the spire of the city church, up the hill yonder, which was
aging, as were most of the buildings that still flank it, when Luther
made that memorable visit. America was not discovered, let alone Iowa,
when these structures were erected. Now, sure enough, we are in the
dream city.

A dream city it truly seems, when one comes to wander through its
narrow, tortuous streets, between time-stained walls, amid its rustic
population. Coming from Berlin, from Dresden, from Leipzig--not to
mention America--one feels as if he had stepped suddenly back two or
three centuries into the past. There are some evidences of modernity
that mar the illusion, to be sure; but the preponderance of the
old-time emblems is sufficient to leave the mind in a delightful glow
of reminiscences. As a whole, the aspect of the central portion of t