ifty cents. (It was Uncle K. who wrote, "The world is so different
with Carl gone!") Once we rented bicycles and rode all through the
Tiergarten, Carl and I, with the expected stiffness and soreness next
day.

Then there was Christmas in Berlin. Three friends traveled up from Rome
to be with us, two students came from Leipzig, and four from
Berlin--eleven for dinner, and four chairs all told. It was a regular
"La Boheme" festival--one guest appearing with a bottle of wine under
his arm, another with a jar of caviare sent him from Russia. We had a
gay week of it after Christmas, when the whole eleven of us went on some
Dutch-treat spree every night, before going back to our studies.

Then came those last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a
breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German
hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and
Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our
Wohnung, and Carl and Anna had to move the family out. We decided that
we had had all we wanted of coaching in Berlin,--we came to that
conclusion before any of the breakdowns,--threw our pride to the winds,
borrowed more money from my good father, and as soon as the family was
well enough to travel, we made for our ever-to-be-adored Heidelberg.

CHAPTER VI

Here I sit back, and words fail me. I see that year as a kaleidoscope of
one joyful day after another, each rushing by and leaving the memory
that we both always had, of the most perfect year that was ever given to
mortals on earth. I remember our eighth wedding anniversary in Berkeley.
We had been going night after night until we were tired of going
anywhere,--engagements seemed to have heaped up,--so we decided that the
very happiest way we could celebrate that most-to-be-celebrated of all
dates was just to stay at home, plug the telephone, pull down the
blinds, and have an evening by ourselves. Then we got out everything
that we kept as mementos of our European days, and went over them--all
the postcards, memory-books, theatre and opera programmes, etc., and,
lastly, read my diary--I had kept a record of every day in Europe. When
we came to that year in Heidelberg, we just could not believe our own
eyes. How had we ever managed to pack a year so full, and live to tell
the tale? I wish I could write a story of just that year. We swore an
oath in Berlin that we would make Heidelberg mean Germany to us--no
Engli