From Leipzig we went to Berlin.  We did not want to go to Berlin—­Jena was the spot we had in mind.  Just as a few months at Harvard showed us that one year there would be but a mere start, so one semester in Germany showed us that one year there would get us nowhere.  We must stay longer,—­from one to two years longer,—­but how, alas, how finance it?  That eternal question!  We finally decided that, if we took the next semester or so in Berlin, Carl could earn money enough coaching to keep us going without having to borrow more.  So to Berlin we went.  We accomplished our financial purpose, but at too great a cost.

In Berlin we found a small furnished apartment on the ground floor of a Gartenhaus in Charlottenburg—­Mommsen Strasse it was.  At once Carl started out to find coaching; and how he found it always seemed to me an illustration of the way he could succeed at anything anywhere.  We knew no one in Berlin.  First he went to the minister of the American church; he in turn gave him names of Americans who might want coaching, and then Carl looked up those people.  In about two months he had all the coaching he could possibly handle, and we could have stayed indefinitely in Berlin in comfort, for Carl was making over one hundred dollars a month, and that in his spare time.

But the agony of those months:  to be in Germany and yet get so little Germany out of it!  We had splendid letters of introduction to German people, from German friends we had made in Leipzig, but we could not find a chance even to present them.  Carl coached three youngsters in the three R’s; he was preparing two of the age just above, for college; he had one American youth, who had ambitions to burst out monthly in the “Saturday Evening Post” stories; there was a class of five middle-aged women, who wanted Shakespeare, and got it; two classes in Current Events; one group of Christian Scientists, who put in a modest demand for the history of the world.  I remember Carl had led them up to Pepin the Short when we left Berlin.  He contracted everything and anything except one group who desired a course of lectures in Pragmatism.  I do not think he had ever heard of the term then, but he took one look at the lay of the land and said—­not so!  In his last years, when he became such a worshiper at the shrine of William James and John Dewey, we often used to laugh at his Berlin profanity over the very idea of ever getting a word of such “bunk” into his head.

But think of the strain it all meant—­lessons and lessons every day, on every subject under heaven, and in every spare minute continued grinding at his German, and, of course, every day numerous hours at the University, and so little time for sprees together.  We assumed in our prosperity the luxury of a maid—­the unparalleled Anna Bederke aus Rothenburg, Kreis Bumps (?), Posen, at four dollars a month, who for a year and a half was the amusement and desperation of ourselves and our friends.  Dear, crooked-nosed, one-good-eye