It did not take me long to find out that apothecary Schulz was an educated man.  At the rear of the store hung two diplomas of which he was very proud.  One was a certificate from the Stuttgart Oberrealschule; the other his license to practise homicidal pharmacy in the German Empire, dated 1880.  He had read the “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”, and found it more interesting than Henry James, he told me.  Julia and I used to drop into his shop of an evening for a mug of hot chocolate, and always fell into talk.  His Minna, a frail little woman with a shawl round her shoulders, would come out into the store and talk to us, too, and their pet dachshund would frolic at our feet.  They were a quaint couple, she so white and shy and fragile; he ruddy, sturdy, and positive.

It was not till I told him of my years spent at a German University that he really showed me the life that lay behind his shopman activity.  We sometimes talked German together, and he took me into their little sitting room to see his photographs of home scenes at Stuttgart.  It was over thirty years since he had seen German soil, but still his eyes would sparkle at the thought.  He and Minna, being childless, dreamed of a return to the Fatherland as their great end in life.

What an alluring place the little drugstore was!  I was fascinated by the rows and rows of gleaming bottles labelled with mysterious Latin abbreviations.  There were cases of patent remedies—­Mexican Mustang Liniment, Swamp Root, Danderine, Conway’s Cobalt Pills, Father Finch’s Febrifuge, Spencer’s Spanish Specific.  Soap, talcum, cold cream, marshmallows, tobacco, jars of rock candy, what a medley of paternostrums!  And old Rhubarb himself, in his enormous baggy trousers—­infinite breeches in a little room, as Julia used to say.

I wish I could set him down in all his rich human flavour.  The first impression he gave was one of cleanness and good humour.  He was always in shirtsleeves, with suspenders forming an X across his broad back; his shirt was fresh laundered, his glowing beard served as cravat.  He had a slow, rather ponderous speech, with deep gurgling gutturals and a decrescendo laugh, slipping farther and farther down into his larynx.  Once, when we got to know each other fairly well, I ventured some harmless jest about Barbarossa.  He chuckled; then his face grew grave.  “I wish Minna could have the beard,” he said.  “Her chest is not strong.  It would be a fine breast-protector for her.  But me, because I am strong like a horse, I have it all!” He thumped his chest ruefully with his broad, thick hand.

Despite his thirty years in America, good Schulz was still the Deutsche Apotheker and not at all the American druggist.  He had installed a soda fountain as a concession, but it puzzled him sorely, and if he was asked for anything more complex than chocolate ice cream soda he would shake his head solemnly and say:  “That I have not got.”  Motorists sometimes turned off the Jericho turnpike and stopped