nexplainable. 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.