AMERICA, GERMANY, AND SPAIN 1897-1903 179 



speech was long, over an hour, for I had a message to 

 deliver, and was determined to give it a message which 

 I hoped might impress upon my great audience reasons 

 for a friendly judgment of my country. As I began, 

 Mommsen came to my side just back of me, his hand at 

 his ear, listening intently. There the old man stood from 

 the first word to the last, and on my conclusion he grasped 

 me heartily with both hands a demonstration rare indeed 

 with him. It was our last greeting in this world. 



Would that there were space to dwell upon those in the 

 present generation of professors who honored me with 

 their friendship; but one is especially suggested here, 

 since he was selected to make a farewell address on the 

 occasion above referred to Adolf Harnack. At various 

 times I had heard him discourse profoundly and bril 

 liantly at the university, but came to know him best at 

 the bicentenary of the Berlin Academy, when he had just 

 added to the long list of his published works his history of 

 the academy, in four quarto volumes : a wonderful work, 

 whether considered from an historical, psychological, or 

 philosophical point of view. His address on that occasion 

 was masterly, and his conversation at various social func 

 tions instructive and pithy. I remember in one of them, 

 especially, his delineation of the characteristics and ser 

 vices of Leibnitz, who was one of the founders of the Eoyal 

 Academy, and it was perfection in that kind of conversa 

 tion which is worthy of men claiming to possess immor 

 tal souls : for it brought out, especially, examples of Leib 

 nitz s amazing forethought as to European policy, which 

 seemed at times like divinely inspired prophecies. He 

 also gave me a number of interesting things which he had 

 noted in his studies of Frederick the Great. Some of them 

 I had found already in my own reading, but one of them 

 I did not remember, and it was both comical and charac 

 teristic. A rural Protestant pastor sent a petition to the 

 King presenting a grievance and asking redress. It was 

 to the effect that his church was on one side of a river 

 in Silesia, and that a younger pastor, whose church was 



