to Ingo! Ingo was just ten years old. He wore a little sailor suit of
blue and white striped linen; his short trousers showed chubby brown
calves above his white socks; his round golden head cropped close in the
German fashion. His blue eyes were grave and thoughtful. By great good
fortune we sat next each other at table, and in my rather grotesque
German I began a conversation. How careful Ingo was not to laugh at the
absurdities of my syntax! How very courteous he was!

Looking back into the mysterious panorama of pictures that we call
memory, I can see the long dining room of the old gasthaus in the Black
Forest, where two Americans on bicycles appeared out of nowhere and
asked for lodging. They were the first Americans who had ever been seen
in that remote valley, and the Gasthaus zur Krone ("the Crown Inn")
found them very amusing. Perhaps you have never seen a country tavern
in the Schwarzwald? Then you have something to live for. A long, low
building with a moss-grown roof and tremendous broad eaves sheltering
little galleries; and the barn under the same roof for greater warmth in
winter. One side of the house was always strong with an excellent homely
aroma of cow and horse; one had only to open a door in the upper hall, a
door that looked just like a bedroom entrance, to find oneself in the
haymow. There I used to lie for hours reading, and listening to the
summer rain thudding on the shingles. Sitting in the little gallery
under the eaves, looking happily down the white road where the yellow
coach brought the mail twice a day, one could see the long vista of the
valley, the women with bright red jackets working in the fields, and the
dark masses of forest on the hillside opposite. There was much rain that
summer; the mountains were often veiled all day long in misty shreds of
cloud, and the two Americans sat with pipes and books at the long dining
table, greeted by gales of laughter on the part of the robust landlord's
niece when they essayed the native idiom. "_Sie arbeiten immer_!" she
used to say; "_Sie werden krank_!" ("You're always working; you'll be
ill!")

There is a particular poignance in looking back now on those happy days
two years before the war. Nowhere in all the world, I suppose, are there
more cordial, warmhearted, simple, human people than the South Germans.
On the front of the inn there was a big yellow metal sign, giving the
military number of the district, and the mobilization points f