From Munich we went direct to England.  Vicissitudes again in finding a cheap and fit place that would do for children to settle in.  After ever-hopeful wanderings, we finally stumbled upon Swanage in Dorset.  That was a love of a place on the English Channel, where we had two rooms with the Mebers in their funny little brick house, the “Netto.”  Simple folk they were:  Mr. Meber a retired sailor, the wife rather worn with constant roomers, one daughter a dressmaker, the other working in the “knittin” shop.  Charges, six dollars a week for the family, which included cooking and serving our meals—­we bought the food ourselves.

Here Carl prepared for his Ph.D. examination, and worked on his thesis until it got to the point where he needed the British Museum.  Then he took a room and worked during the week in London, coming down to us week-ends.  He wrote eager letters, for the time had come when he longed to get the preparatory work and examination behind him and begin teaching.  We had an instructorship at the University of California waiting for us, and teaching was to begin in January.  In one letter he wrote:  “I now feel like landing on my exam, like a Bulgarian; I am that fierce to lay it out.”  We felt more than ever, in those days of work piling up behind us, that we owned the world; as Carl wrote in another letter:  “We’ll stick this out [this being the separation of his last trip to London, whence he was to start for Heidelberg and his examination, without another visit with us], for, Gott sei dank! the time isn’t so fearful, fearful long, it isn’t really, is it?  Gee!  I’m glad I married you.  And I want more babies and more you, and then the whole gang together for about ninety-two years.  But life is so fine to us and we are getting so much love and big things out of life!”

November 1 Carl left London for Heidelberg.  He was to take his examination there December 5, so the month of November was a full one for him.  He stayed with the dear Kecks, Mother Keck pressing and mending his clothes, hovering over him as if he were her own son.  He wrote once:  “To-day we had a small leg of venison which I sneaked in last night.  Every time I note that I burn three quarters of a lampful of oil a day among the other things I cost them, it makes me feel like buying out a whole Conditorei.”

I lived for those daily letters telling of his progress.  Once he wrote:  “Just saw Fleiner [Professor in Law] and he was fine, but I must get his Volkerrecht cold.  It is fine reading, and is mighty good and interesting every word, and also stuff which a man ought to know.  This is the last man to see.  From now on, it is only to study, and I am tickled.  I do really like to study.”  A few days later he wrote:  “It is just plain sit and absorb these days.  Some day I will explain how tough it is to learn an entire law subject in five days in a strange tongue.”