repetitious delivery. Heidelberg professors of that day not only at- 

 tached no importance to ease and grace in speaking, but most of them 

 actually disapproved of those qualities in the lecture-room. 



Up to the outbreak of the Great War, Heidelberg was the seat of 

 relatively very large English and American colonies. The English 

 Church was well filled, often crowded, on Sundays, and there was a 

 flourishing Anglo-American Club, made famous by Mark Twain's 

 Fourth of July address on the German Language. I took pains to avoid 

 this club and with so much success that I never so much as learned 

 its whereabouts. I had determined, to the utmost of my ability, to 

 master the German tongue and, to this end, I devoted myself to the 

 exclusive cultivation of German and reduced English to the lowest 

 possible minimum, avoiding, with the exception of my Mother, every- 

 one who would try to talk English to me. There were plenty of warn- 

 ing examples, whom I met, or of whom I heard. One Englishman, 

 who had lived in the place for fourteen years, hadn't learned enough 

 German to ask for a pencil. Americans were no better and most of 

 them never learned to speak German well. 



Though this policy of mine meant the condemnation of my Mother 

 to six months of almost solitary confinement, she approved of it, as 

 she would cheerfully have accepted much greater hardship in the in- 

 terests of my education. At the end of the period, when the lease ex- 

 pired, we decided that the regimen was too severe and moved to a 

 pension on the river bank, where my Mother found congenial com- 

 panions and was much happier, in consequence. 



As previously mentioned, the winter of 1 879-1 880 in Europe was of 

 phenomenally severe and long-continued cold. It was currently re- 

 ported to be the coldest winter in two hundred and fifty years, as in- 

 dicated by the fact that loaded wagons crossed the Lake of Constance 

 on the ice, for the first time since 1629. The winter began before the 

 middle of November and kept up, without intermission, till after 

 Christmas. There followed a week's thaw and then came another six 

 weeks of intense cold. Spring began before the end of February and it 

 was the most beautiful and gradual spring that I have ever seen. It 

 repaid us well for the hardships of the winter. Not only was the winter 

 remarkable for the steady and long-continued cold, but for the intensity 

 of it; for weeks the mercury hovered about 0° F. and sometimes 

 dropped to — 10°. This was the cause of great suffering, especially as 

 the watermains froze in the streets and the plumbing in the houses. 



c "2 : 





