letter in German from Osborn, who had been spending most of the 

 summer in a German family in Coburg. He gave my leg a tremendous 

 pull by writing that he had fallen in love with a beautiful German girl. 

 I wrote him a reply, full of interest and sympathy, only to be laughed 

 at for my pains. He answered, with much truth: "If I had meant my 

 news to be taken seriously, I should not have written it to you in 

 German." 



We had greatly enjoyed our life in Dresden and left it with sincere 

 regret and at an earlier date than we had planned, for we wished to 

 meet Osborn at Eisenach. He was on his way to London, where he 

 entered Huxley's laboratory and took the same course that I had taken 

 the year before. In writing to tell me of this decision, he suggested our 

 meeting in Eisenach on September 24. This we did and had a delightful 

 gUmpse of him "for a day and a night and a morrow." We explored 

 Luther's town together and especially enjoyed the Wartburg, even 

 though I had not yet seen Tannhduser and did not know what a great 

 role the Wartburg plays in that opera. 



We saw in Eisenach the house of Fritz Renter, the great novelist, a 

 name which did not mean very much to me then. I had no premonition 

 of the many delightful hours which I was to spend over his books, 

 especially his Ut Mine Stromtid, which I have read and reread many 

 times and which I regard as one of the very greatest novels ever writ- 

 ten, in any language. Often my German friends expressed surprise that 

 I could read Platt-Deutsch with ease, but, to one who knows both 

 English and High German, Piatt offers no great difficulty and the way 

 in which Reuter used it was so perfectly adapted to his style and pur- 

 pose, that translation, even into High German, gives altogether unsatis- 

 factory results. 



[106] 



