Carl felt that he must take his Master’s degree, but he had no foreign language.  Three terrible, wicked, unforgivable professors assured him that, if he could be in Germany six weeks during summer vacation, he could get enough German to pass the examination for the A.M.  We believed them, and he went; though of all the partings we ever had, that was the very worst.  Almost at the last he just could not go; but we were so sure that it would solve the whole A.M. problem.  He went third class on a German steamer, since we had money for nothing better.  The food did distress even his unfinicky soul.  After a particularly sad offering of salt herring, uncooked, on a particularly rough day, he wrote, “I find I am not a good Hamburger German.  The latter eat all things in all weather.”

Oh, the misery of that summer!  We never talked about it much.  He went to Freiburg, to a German cobbler’s family, but later changed, as the cobbler’s son looked upon him as a dispensation of Providence, sent to practise his English upon.  His heart was breaking, and mine was breaking, and he was working at German (and languages came fearfully hard for him) morning, afternoon, and night, with two lessons a day, his only diversion being a daily walk up a hill, with a cake of soap and a towel, to a secluded waterfall he discovered.  He wrote a letter and a postcard a day to the babe and me.  I have just re-read all of them, and my heart aches afresh for the homesickness that summer meant to both of us.

He got back two days before our wedding anniversary—­days like those first few after our reunion are not given to many mortals.  I would say no one had ever tasted such joy.  The baby gurgled about, and was kissed within an inch of his life.  The Jello lady sent around a dessert of sixteen different colors, more or less, big enough for a family of eight, as her welcome home.

About six weeks later we called our beloved Dr. J——­ from a banquet he had long looked forward to, in order to officiate at the birth of our second, known as Thomas-Elizabeth up to October 17, but from about ten-thirty that night as James Stratton Parker.  We named him after my grandfather, for the simple reason that we liked the name Jim.  How we chuckled when my father’s congratulatory telegram came, in which he claimed pleasure at having the boy named after his father, but cautioned us never to allow him to be nicknamed.  I remember the boresome youth who used to call, week in week out,—­always just before a meal,—­and we were so hard up, and got so that we resented feeding such an impossible person so many times.  He dropped in at noon Friday the 17th, for lunch.  A few days later Carl met him on the street and announced rapturously the arrival of the new son.  The impossible person hemmed and stammered:  “Why—­er—­when did it arrive?” Carl, all beams, replied, “The very evening of the day you were at our house for lunch!” We never laid eyes on that man again!  We were almost four months longer in Cambridge, but never did he step foot inside our apartment.  I wish some one could have psycho-analyzed him, but it’s too late now.  He died about a year after we left Cambridge.  I always felt that he never got over the shock of having escaped Jim’s arrival by such a narrow margin.