And then, on the night of December 5, came the telegram of success to “Frau Dr. Parker.”  We both knew he would pass, but neither of us was prepared for the verdict of “Summa cum laude,” the highest accomplishment possible.  I went up and down the main street of little Swanage, announcing the tidings right and left.  The community all knew that Carl was in Germany to take some kind of an examination, though it all seemed rather unexplainable.  Yet they rejoiced with me,—­the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,—­without having the least idea what they were rejoicing about.  Mrs. Meber tore up and down Osborne Road to have the fun of telling the immediate neighbors, all of whom were utterly at a loss to know what it meant, the truth being that Mrs. Meber herself was in that same state.  But she had somehow caught my excitement, and anything to tell was scarce in Swanage.

So the little family that fared forth from Oakland, California, that February 1, for one year at Harvard had ended thus—­almost four years later a Ph.D. summa cum laude from Heidelberg.  Not Persia as we had planned it nine years before—­a deeper, finer life than anything we had dreamed.  We asked Professor Miller, after we got back to California, why in the world he had said just “one year in Europe.”

“If I had said more, I was afraid it would scare you altogether out of ever starting; and I knew if you once got over there and were made of the right stuff, you’d stay on for a Ph.D.”

On December 12 Carl was to deliver one of a series of lectures in Munich for the Handelshochschule, his subject being “Die Einwanderungs und Siedelungspolitik in Amerika (Carleton Parker, Privatdocent, California-Universitaet, St. Francisco).”  That very day, however, the Prince Regent died, and everything was called off.  We had our glory—­and got our pay.  Carl was so tired from his examination, that he did not object to foregoing the delivery of a German address before an audience of four hundred.  It was read two weeks later by one of the professors.

On December 15 we had our reunion and celebration of it all.  Carl took the Amerika, second class, at Hamburg; the boys and I at Southampton, ushered thither from Swanage and put aboard the steamer by our faithful Onkel Keck, son of the folk with whom Carl had stayed in Heidelberg, who came all the way from London for that purpose.  It was not such a brash Herr Doktor that we found, after all:  the Channel had begun to tell on him, as it were, and while it was plain that he loved us, it was also plain that he did not love the water.  So we gave him his six days off, and he lay anguish-eyed in a steamer-chair while I covered fifty-seven miles a day, tearing after two sons who were far more filled with Wanderlust than they had been three years before.  When our dad did feel chipper again, he felt very chipper, and our last four days were perfect.