I could scarce wait for Carl to get home—­it was too good to be true.  And that was but the beginning.  Invitation after invitation came to Carl, first from one corps, then from another; almost every Saturday night he saw German student-life first hand somewhere, and at least one day a week he was invited to the duels in the Hirsch Gasse.  Little by little we got the students to our Wohnung; then we got chummier and chummier, till we would walk up Haupt Strasse saluting here, passing a word there, invited to some student function one night, another affair another night.  The students who lived in Heidelberg had us meet their families, and those who were batching in Heidelberg often had us come to their rooms.  We made friendships during that year that nothing could ever mar.

It is two years now since we received the last letter from any Heidelberg chum.  Are they all killed, perhaps?  And when we can communicate again, after the war, think of what I must write them!  Carl was a revelation to most of them—­they would talk about him to me, and ask if all Americans were like him, so fresh in spirit, so clean, so sincere, so full of fun, and, with it all, doing the finest work of all of them but one in the University.

The economics students tried to think of some way of influencing Alfred Weber to give another course of lectures at the University.  He was in retirement at Heidelberg, but still the adored of the students.  Finally, they decided that a committee of three should represent them and make a personal appeal.  Carl was one of the three chosen.  The report soon flew around, how, in Weber’s august presence, the Amerikaner had stood with his hands in his pockets—­even sat for a few moments on the edge of Weber’s desk.  The two Germans, posed like ramrods, expected to see such informality shoved out bodily.  Instead, when they took their leave, the Herr Professor had actually patted the Amerikaner on the shoulder, and said he guessed he would give the lectures.

Then his report in Gothein’s Seminar, which went so well that I fairly burst with pride.  He had worked day and night on that.  I was to meet him at eight after it had been given, and we were to have a celebration.  I was standing by the entrance to the University building when out came an enthused group of jabbering German students, Carl in their midst.  They were patting him on the back, shaking his hands furiously; and when they saw me, they rushed to tell me of Carl’s success and how Gothein had said before all that it had been the best paper presented that semester.

I find myself smiling as I write this—­I was too happy that night to eat.

The Sunday trips we made up the Neckar:  each morning early we would take the train and ride to where we had walked the Sunday previous; then we would tramp as far as we could,—­meaning until dark,—­have lunch at some untouristed inn along the road, or perhaps eat a picnic lunch of our own in some old castle ruin, and then ride home.  Oh, those Sundays!  I tell you no two people in all this world, since people were, have ever had one day like those Sundays.  And we had them almost every week.  It would have been worth going to Germany for just one of those days.