aving a wife. But it seemed that he
had, and a daughter, too, at a conservatory of music
--yet he never spoke of her--and that he himself was
musical and played the flute, and was the sidesman of a
church--yet he never referred to it to me. In fact, in
thirty years we never spoke of religion. It was hard to
connect him with the idea of it.

As I went out I seemed to hear his voice still saying,
"And nothing to-day in shirtings?"

I was sorry I had never bought any.

There is, I am certain, a deep moral in this. But I will
not try to draw it. It might appear too obvious.

Peace, War, and Politics

XI. Germany from Within Out

The adventure which I here narrate resulted out of a
strange psychological experience of a kind that (outside
of Germany) would pass the bounds of comprehension.

To begin with, I had fallen asleep.

Of the reason for my falling asleep I have no doubt. I
had remained awake nearly the whole of the preceding
night, absorbed in the perusal of a number of recent
magazine articles and books dealing with Germany as seen
from within. I had read from cover to cover that charming
book, just written by Lady de Washaway, under the title
_Ten Years as a Toady, or The Per-Hapsburgs as I Didn't
Know Them_. Her account of the life of the Imperial Family
of Austria, simple, unaffected, home-like; her picture
of the good old Emperor, dining quietly off a cold potato
and sitting after dinner playing softly to himself on
the flute, while his attendants gently withdrew one by
one from his presence; her description of merry, boisterous,
large-hearted Prince Stefan Karl, who kept the whole
court in a perpetual roar all the time by asking such
riddles as "When is a sailor not a sailor?" (the answer
being, of course, when he is a German Prince)--in fact,
the whole book had thrilled me to the verge of spiritual
exhaustion.

From Lady de Washaway's work I turned to peruse Hugo von
Halbwitz's admirable book, _Easy Marks, or How the German
Government Borrows its Funds_; and after that I had read
Karl von Wiggleround's _Despatches_ and Barnstuff's
_Confidential Letters to Criminals_.

As a consequence I fell asleep as if poisoned.

But the amazing thing is that, whenever it was or was
not that I fell asleep, I woke up to find myself in
Germany.

I cannot offer any explanation as to how this came about.
I merely state the fact.

There I was, seated on the grassy bank of a country road.

I kn