was in the strongest contrast to the onslaught upon Princeton. The dif- 

 ference was enhghtening. 



The taking of my degree was a means, not an end, and therefore I 

 went on with my work very much as before, but with far less strain, 

 for I could now aflford some relaxation and amusement and did not 

 feel compelled to devote every waking minute to work. Linguistically, 

 too, I felt safe against corruption in speaking English and reading 

 novels and newspapers. I had learned to speak German so fluently, 

 that, while educated people could usually detect my native tongue, the 

 unlearned assumed that my accent meant that I came from some other 

 part of the country. The laboratory servants thought that I was from 

 Pomerania, because Gadow was. 



I had gone to Germany with a fair knowledge of the elements of 

 the language, had had excellent teaching in Dresden and constant prac- 

 tice in Heidelberg, yet, for a long time, I seemed to make no progress. 

 Talking was a slow, laborious operation and, then, almost suddenly, I 

 had a sense of emancipation, when it became easy to converse fluently. 

 No longer translating mentally, I was thinking in German and was 

 greatly amused to find that, in anticipating interviews with Dr. McCosh, 

 I was making him talk German, a language in which, probably, he 

 could not form the simplest sentence, though, of course, he could read 

 it. I was even dreaming in German and then, at long last, I felt that I 

 had the language by the tail. Needless to say, I continued to make mis- 

 takes in plenty, but, as a means of expression, I could use German 

 almost as readily as English. One evening, I was with Gadow and a 

 party of English girls on a hilltop across the river, waiting for the 

 illumination of the Castle to begin. Annoyed at the delay, I made use 

 of some impatient slang phrases when I heard Gadow chuckle and say 

 to his neighbour: "Der Scott, der kann deutsch." This facility in using 

 German was, perhaps, the most valuable result of my life in Heidel- 

 berg, though the benefits were many. In noting in my diary my farewell 

 to Gegenbaur, I wrote: "I never did a better thing for myself than 

 coming here." 



In that summer, I made some very pleasant acquaintances among 

 the English young people and, for several weeks, I made picnics and 

 excursions in the afternoons and evenings, in larger and smaller parties. 

 In this way, I learned to know the country around Heidelberg and up 

 the Neckar valley much more thoroughly than before. All this asso- 

 ciation with pleasant companions and pretty girls was especially de- 

 lightful to me, not only because it came at the end of two years of 



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