arieties on some twenty thousand bushes; a special
greenhouse for orchids; and landscaped grounds calling for the service
of six professional gardeners and forty assistants. Here he delighted to
entertain his friends. Frequently, there were fifteen to twenty of them
for dinner on the garden terrace; and, as the moon came up through the
tall hemlocks and shone through the majestic pines brought from Oregon,
a full military band from Heidelberg, adown the hillside among the rose
trees, mingled its music with the dinner discussions. There was nothing
at that dinner table but peace and harmony, although every language in
Europe was spoken; for Sielcken knew them all from his youth. Sometimes
he entertained his guests with stories of his California life, and
sometimes with those of shipwrecks in South America.

All the post-telegraph boys in Baden knew every foot of the sharply
winding road up the Yburg Strasse to Villa Mariahalden; and the guests
therein have counted more than eighty cables received, and more than
thirty sent in a single day. And those daily cable messages were to and
from all quarters of the globe, and to and from the master, who handled
them all, without even a secretary or typewriter. Nowhere in the entire
establishment was there even an appearance of business, except as the
messages came and went on the highway. Sielcken manifested his greatest
delight in showing his friends his orchids, his roses, his pigeons, his
trout, and his trees.

Like Napoleon, this merchant prince required only five hours sleep. It
was his custom to go to bed at one and to be up at six. Did he wish to
know anything that the cables did not bring him, he jumped into his
eighty-horse-power Mercedes with a party of guests and was off with the
sunrise, down the Rhine Valley, on his way to Paris or Hamburg; and
before one realized that he was gone, he was back again.

In 1913, Sielcken admitted to partnership in his firm two employees of
long service, John S. Sorenson and Thorlief S.B. Nielsen. He went to
Germany in 1914, shortly before the beginning of the World War, and
remained at Mariahalden until he died in 1917. Sielcken never would
believe that war was possible until it had actually started. Up to the
last moment in July, 1914, he was cabling his New York partner that
there would probably be no hostilities. He lost a bet of a thousand
pounds made with a visiting Brazilian friend a few days before war was
declared. The guest