538 P? folE&amp;gt; DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-V 



to give bonds for the payment of my debts in Germany. I 

 owe no such debts; but I know no one who will give 

 such a bond. I am notified that the banns must be pub 

 lished a certain number of times before the wedding. 

 What kind of a country is this, anyhow ? 9 



We did the best we could. In an interview with the 

 minister of public worship I was able to secure a dispen 

 sation from the publishing of the banns ; then a bond was 

 drawn up which I signed and thus settled the question 

 regarding possible debts in Germany. As to the baptismal 

 certificate, I ordered inscribed, on the largest possible 

 sheet of official paper, the gentleman s affidavit that, in 

 the State of Ohio, where he was born, no Taufschein, or 

 baptismal certificate, was required at the time of his birth, 

 and to this was affixed the largest seal of the legation, with 

 plenty of wax. The form of the affidavit may be judged 

 peculiar; but it was thought best not to startle the au 

 thorities with the admission that the man had not been 

 baptized at all. They could easily believe that a State like 

 Ohio, which some of them doubtless regarded as still in 

 the backwoods and mainly tenanted by the aborigines, 

 might have omitted, in days gone by, to require a Tauf 

 schein; but that an unbaptized Christian should offer him 

 self to be married in Germany would perhaps have so 

 paralyzed their powers of belief that permission for the 

 marriage could never have been secured. 



In this and various other ways we overcame the diffi 

 culties, and, though the wedding did not take place upon 

 the appointed day, and the return to America had to be 

 deferred, the couple, at last, after marriage first before 

 the public authorities, and then in church, were able to de 

 part in peace. 



Another case was typical. One morning a gentleman 

 came into the legation in the greatest distress ; and I soon 

 learned that this, too, was a marriage case but very dif 

 ferent from the other. This gentleman, a naturalized 

 German-American in excellent standing, had come over 

 to claim his bride. He had gone through all the formali- 



