and even at police headquarters were in civilian dress and had laid 

 aside, with their uniforms, their notoriously bad manners. The only 

 rudeness I met with was from the German official at the French end of 

 the Rhine bridge at Kehl. 



The German revolution seemed, to me, to have been a very super- 

 ficial sort of thing and a very large party, apparently including all the 

 nobility, were still monarchists and desired a Hohenzollern restoration, 

 though I met no one who wanted to have the Kaiser or the Crown 

 Prince brought back. Even the women were bitter against them, though 

 they would have been glad to see the eldest son of the Crown Prince 

 on the throne. As to the spectre of Bolshevism, one got very different 

 impressions from different people. The Conservatists maintained that 

 the danger of a Bolshevist revolution was by no means past, but the 

 middle-class folk, shopkeepers, for example, with whom I talked, 

 laughed at such notions and said they were all nonsense. At Strassburg, 

 I was surprised to hear people say that they preferred German to French 

 rule. 



Of course, an individual's impressions are of no great importance, 

 for another traveller, talking with a different lot of people, might have 

 had totally different experiences. However, what I saw and heard is not 

 without significance and may be set down for what it is worth. 



To return to the 191 1 visit, I greatly enjoyed some weeks in Switzer- 

 land, of which wonderful country I had seen but little before. Our head- 

 quarters were at Rossiniere, from where we made many delightful ex- 

 cursions. Zermatt, the Corner Grat and the Schynige Platte were all 

 new to me. We went from Zermatt to Paris in a day, a terrible journey 

 because of the phenomenal heat of that summer, and then, after a few 

 days in Paris and Fontainebleau, my daughters went to England and 

 I sailed from Antwerp. 



The following summer, I returned to England for the 250th anniver- 

 sary of the Royal Society, to which I had been appointed the delegate of 

 the American Philosophical Society. Of my adventures in England I 

 cannot give a more succinct account than by inserting here a copy of 

 a letter which I wrote to my friend Smyth. The extremely hot weather 

 which I encountered in London, the continuous round of festivities and 

 ceremonies and the sleeplessness from which I suffered almost all the 

 time I was in England used me up completely and I welcomed the 

 steamer that took me home as a chance to get a sadly needed rest. 



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