We landed in New York on Christmas Eve, in a snowstorm; paid the
crushing sum of one dollar and seventy-five cents duty,--such a jovial
agent as inspected our belongings I never beheld; he must already have
had just the Christmas present he most wanted, whatever it was. When he
heard that we had been in Heidelberg, he and several other officials
began a lusty rendering of "Old Heidelberg,"--and within an hour we were
speeding toward California, a case of certified milk added to our
already innumerable articles of luggage. Christmas dinner we ate on the
train. How those American dining-car prices floored us after three years
of all we could eat for thirty-five cents!

CHAPTER VIII

We looked back always on our first semester's teaching in the University
of California as one hectic term. We had lived our own lives, found our
own joys, for four years, and here we were enveloped by old friends, by
relatives, by new friends, until we knew not which way to turn. In
addition, Carl was swamped by campus affairs--by students, many of whom
seemed to consider him an oasis in a desert of otherwise-to-be-deplored,
unhuman professors. Every student organization to which he had belonged
as an undergraduate opened its arms to welcome him as a faculty member;
we chaperoned student parties till we heard rag-time in our sleep. From
January 1 to May 16, we had four nights alone together. You can know we
were desperate. Carl used to say: "We may have to make it Persia yet."

The red-letter event of that term was when, after about two months of
teaching, President Wheeler rang up one evening about seven,--one of the
four evenings, as it happened, we were at home together,--and said: "I
thought I should like the pleasure of telling you personally, though you
will receive official notice in the morning, that you have been made an
assistant professor. We expected you to make good, but we did not expect
you to make good to such a degree quite so soon."

Again an occasion for a spree! We tore out hatless across the campus,
nearly demolishing the head of the College of Commerce as we rounded the
Library. He must know the excitement. He was pleased. He slipped his
hand into his pocket saying, "I must have a hand in this celebration."
And with a royal gesture, as who should say, "What matter the costs!"
slipped a dime into Carl's hand. "Spend it all to-night."

Thus we were started on our assistant professorship. But always before
and al