In the early nineties it was easier for foreigners to get into the Berlin University than it is now. To-day, I am told, certificates and diplomas from other institutions must be shown before the student can matriculate. In 1890, my matriculating year, all that was necessary to become enrolled as a student in good standing, was to have a twenty-mark piece in your pocket to pay the matriculation fee, and perhaps fifty marks more to pay for your first semester's lectures. Nothing was asked about your former studies or academic training. The university was open to all male foreigners over seventeen years of age. Germans had to show a Gymnasium certificate, but foreigners were accepted on their face value.

I can hardly suppress a smile now when I think of my entrance into this famous university. To be sure, I had the necessary amount of money and had long since passed the required age limit, but I am afraid that a stock-taking of my other qualifications would have left me woefully in the lurch had the other qualifications not been taken for granted. There were two years at an American college to my credit, it is true, and I had perhaps done more general reading than even the average German student. But what else was there to entitle me to matriculation? Nothing, I fear, unless it was my mother's earnest wish that this take place.

On my return from England I was determined to let her suggest what was best for me to do, having made such a fiasco of the English venture, a suggestion and enterprise of my own. The university and its professors loomed up large in my mother's eyes. If she could only see me once started on such a career, she said, she thought that her cup of happiness would be full, indeed. She was set on having at least one academic child in the family, and my presence in Berlin and willingness to behave, renewed her hopes that this ambition was to be realized. Fortunate it was for her ambition and my sensibilities that the matriculation ceremonies were so simple. My German at the time had been selected principally from the coal-passers' vocabulary, but I was quick in overhauling it, and when ready to matriculate, knew as much of the language probably as does the average American student on first entering the university. On receiving my matriculation certificate from the rector—a very formidable document it was, written in Latin, which I had long since forgotten—shaking hands with him and receiving the faculty's welcome into the institution, I asked that my faulty German be pardoned.

"Certainly, Herr Studiosus, certainly," the rector assured me. "You are here to learn; we all are. So excuses are not necessary."

This was all the formality that was attached to the entrance ceremony. In five minutes, thanks to the rector, I had changed from a quondam coal passer to a would-be Doctor of Philosophy in the great Friedrich Wilhelm Universitat, a royal institution. The importance of the royal protectorate over the university and the students never impressed me greatly, until a friend of mine had a wordy difference with one of the officials at the Royal Library. My friend was lame, having to use crutches. One day, when entering the room where borrowed books are returned, he proceeded to the desk with his hat on, being unable to remove it until freed of his armful of books. The officious clerk called his attention to the excusable breach of etiquette in none too polite language, adding: "You must remember that I am an Imperial official." "And do you remember," demanded my doughty Greek friend, "that I am an Imperial student."

I never had occasion to call attention to my "Imperialism" while in the university, but it was a kind of little joke that I was already to play if opportunity offered.

To take a Ph.D. at Berlin in my day at least one major study was required, and also two minors. Six semesters was the time necessary for preparation before one could promoviren, and an acceptable "Thesis" was absolutely necessary before examination was permissible. As a rule, a man with a well-written thesis and a fair mastery of his major subject succeeded in getting a degree. There were no examinations until the candidates for degrees were ready to promoviren, to try for their Doctor's degree. At the end of three years, six semesters, such candidates were called before their professors and made to tell what they knew both in their major and minor studies. The examination was oral and alleged to be pretty minute, but I have been told by a Japanese, with a Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University and preliminary study in German institutions, that, in his case, he would have preferred to take his chances in a bout with the Berlin examiners.

The significance of the title was by no means clear to me on matriculating in Berlin. In an indefinite sort of way I knew that it stood for certain learned acquirements, but what these amounted to puzzled me much at the time, and they do yet. Occasionally some visiting clergyman would preach for our local pastor in the American church, and I noticed that when a Ph.D. was a part of his title it was thought extremely good form to pay extra attention to his discourse.

I think this extra attention was partly due to the significance which our pastor gave to such decorations. He put much stress on learned institutions, their doctrines and teachings, and his discourses—many of them at least—might have been delivered in the university, so far as they patched up the spiritual wear and tear of his hearers. He was much given to quoting the professors of his university days, and, at his evening home-lectures, he could make himself very interesting telling us about the Germany of his youth and early manhood. One professor whose name he was continually mentioning was Tollock, or Toccoch, or something similar. I believe this gentleman had been noted as a theologian, but what I admired more than anything else was to hear our pastor roll out the name. His pronunciation of it seemed to me to incorporate the whole German language in one mouthful. With words, English or German, ending with a "d," the pastor had difficulty. In his prayers, for example, "Lord God" became "Lorn Gone," and I am afraid that some of us called the good man "Lorn Gone." He staid with us twenty years or more, I think, and he and his wife did much to get the money to build the present American Church. He very kindly took an interest in my selection of lectures at the university. For the life of me I cannot recall now why he or I chose Political Economy for my major. It may have been because my father had been much interested in this subject and had possessed a fine library on economic questions. It may also be accounted for by my cursory look into John Stuart Mill's book previous to leaving for Liverpool. Still, again, it may have been one of those haphazard selections which are resorted to in cases like mine; the subject was safe at least, and perhaps the good Doctor thought that studying might inculcate good principles in me about personal economy. Whatever the cause may have been, I was enrolled in der philosophischen FacultÄt, as an earnest delver into Theoretische und praktische national-ekonomic. I took two privatim twenty-mark lectures in my major, each semester that I was in the university. Professors Wagner and Schmoller were my instructors in these courses. With Professor Wagner I never became well acquainted, but an interview that I once had with Professor Schmoller has always remained memorable. I had spent twenty marks semester after semester on his lectures and it did not seem to me that I was getting on very fast in my subject. Being a near neighbor of ours, I resolved one day to call on him in his villa and find out whether the trouble was on his side or mine. I had other uses for the semester twenty marks, unless he absolutely needed them. He asked me point blank what my preparation for university work had been previous to matriculating at Berlin, and how it had come about that Political Economy had been selected as my major. I told him the truth, even resorting to anecdotes about riding freight cars, to make myself clear. He laughed.

"And what have you in mind as a topic for a thesis?" he asked me. I had been four semesters in the university, and it was time for me to begin to think seriously about a thesis if I intended to promoviren. My thoughts were very scattered on this point, but I finally managed to tell the professor that vagrancy and geography seemed to have considerable in common, and that I contemplated a thesis which would consolidate my learning on these subjects. Again the professor laughed. He finally delivered himself of this dictum: "Vagrancy and geography don't combine the way you infer at any German university. Geography and Political Economy, however, make excellent mates, and are well worth studying together. Perhaps you might find it easier to get your degree at one of the South German universities."

The insinuating suggestion at the last piqued me somewhat, but I continued to listen to Professor Schmoller for another long semester.

My minors—I hardly recall now what they were. One major and two or three minors were required, I believe, and one of the minors had to be the History of Philosophy. One semester in this subject was usually considered sufficient. So I must have listened to lectures on this subject, and I recall other courses in German Literature. But I am afraid that my professors at the time would be hard put to it, in looking over to-day the selected courses in my Anmelde-Buch, to make out what I was driving at. But in spite of all this confusion and floundering about, I was busy, after all, on my own private ends. I may not have got much from the lectures, but I came in contact with such men as Virchow, the pathologist; Kiepert, the geographer; Curtius, the Greek historian; Pfleiderer, the theologian; Helmholtz, the chemist, and I got glimpses of Mommsen. He was not reading in the university during my stay in Berlin, but he lived not far from my mother's home, and I used to see him in the street cars. He was a very much shriveled-up looking individual, and when sitting down looked very diminutive. He wore immense glasses, which gave his eyes an owlish appearance; I saw him to the best advantage one afternoon when we were riding alone in a street car through the Thiergarten. He had a corner in the front, and I had taken one in the rear. I hardly noticed him at first, and had opened a book to read, when suddenly the old gentleman began to mumble to himself and gesture. "Ya, ya, so ist es," I could hear him say. "So muss es sein," and he flourished his right hand about as if he were speaking to a collection of Roman senators. What it was that was "so," and why it had to be "so," I could not find out. Perhaps he was arguing a deep polemical point with an imaginary adversary, and perhaps he was merely having a little tiff with the police. He was the proud father of twelve children, more or less, and no Berlin landlord, so the story runs, would rent him a flat. He consequently lived in Charlottenburg, where, I have heard, that he told the police what he thought of them and their regulations.

The most interesting interview that I had with any of my professors was with Virchow. At the time of the interview I was corresponding for a New York newspaper intermittently, and, one day, word came from the editor that a "chat" with Virchow on the political situation would be "available." (This word available formerly troubled me a great deal in my encounters with editors, but I have at last come to terms with it. When an editor uses it, it pays to look into a good dictionary and see how many different applications it has. Its editorial significance is most elastic.) Virchow kindly granted me an interview and told me some interesting things about his fight for Liberal ideas. But he was most entertaining when talking "science." Our political chat finished, he asked me whether I was interested in Anthropology, advising me that the local Anthropological Society was to have a meeting that same evening, and that I would be welcome. I told him that I was interested in Anthropology in so far as it threw light on Criminology. The old gentleman must have mistaken my meaning, or I did not know myself what I was trying to say, for my reply startled him into what seemed to me unwonted nervous activity. During the political chat he had been very quiet and calm, talking even about Bismarck in a rather subdued voice. But when I ventured to connect Anthropology and Criminology, barely mentioning Lombroso's name, it was as if some one had thrown a stone through the window. Virchow jumped up from his chair, and cried: "There you are on false ground. Let me give you a pamphlet of mine that will put you right," and he rushed into his adjoining study for a paper that had something to do with cells, etc. I might understand it to-day, but it read like Sanscrit at the time. "There," said the little man, handing me the brochure. "That will give you my ideas on that subject." In other men this proceeding might have indicated conceit. With Virchow it was merely a friendly desire to set me right on a matter which he had thought a million times more about than I possibly could have. He seemed literally to feel aggrieved that anyone should be in the dark about a matter on which he had tried to shed light.

Later, when showing him a written copy of our political interview, I had to look him up in his famous den, in the Pathological Institute, I think it was. The room was so full of skulls, bones and "pickled" things that it was all one could do not to knock something over when moving about. I had to leave the manuscript with him for correction. He sent it to me a few days afterward with neatly written marginal notes in his own handwriting. Of all the men I met at the university, he was distinctly the most famous and affable.

His famous political antagonist, Bismarck, a man that Virchow seemed to hate, judging by his manner when discussing him, I saw but once. It was not long before his dismissal from office, and he was returning from the Emperor's palace, where he had gone to give him birthday congratulations. I was standing in front of the CafÉ Bauer on the Unter den Linden just as Bismarck's carriage came by. I shall always remember his strong face and remarkable big eyes, but this was about all that I saw. A woman recognized Bismarck just as I did, and ran toward his carriage, crying: "Oh, Prince Bismarck! Prince Bismarck!" There was something in her manner which made one think that she wanted to ask some favor of the great man, and had been waiting for his appearance. The mournful note in her voice might have meant anything—a son in prison, a dying soldier husband, a mere request for bread. The driver of the horses was taking no chances, however, and the great chancellor was whisked away toward Wilhelm Strasse.

The diminutive and modest Virchow could reconstruct our notions about pathology and medicine and at the same time be a great Liberal, but he could not tolerate Bismarck. The monstrous chancellor could reunite Germany, dictate her foreign policy for years, and hold his own, in and out of parliament, as a master mind, but he could not associate with Virchow. Two great Germans, both iconoclasts and builders, both dwellers in the same city, and both much admired and criticised—but they needed separate sides of the street when abroad—a fact, by the way, which goes much to help out the other fact demonstrating German Kleinlich Kelt—smallness.

When all is said and done about my university career I think that the good it did me was accomplished mainly in the Royal Library and in the Thiergarten—a natural park in the center of the city, where I could invite my soul comfortably in the winter, say at ten degrees above zero, and in summer at about seventy degrees of heat—all this—a la Fahrenheit, by the way, who has no following in Germany, either zero-wards or otherwise. The library advanced me ten books at a draw in any language I felt equal to, and the Thiergarten helped me to ponder over what I had read and did not understand. Certainly no professor ever felt more learned than I did when I tramped through the park to my home, with the ten books slung over my shoulder. My mother used to love to see me come into the house after this fashion, and even my fox-terrier, Spicer, put on a learned look peculiarly her own when she deigned to observe my studious tendencies. More anon about this almost human little creature, but I must say right here that, in her early days, she did not take kindly to my "shortening-up" habits. She believed in beer, much food and exercise, Uferlos pow-wowing.

What it was, in the Library or Thiergarten, that switched me, when reading, from Political Economy to Africa, Livingstone, Burton, Speke and Stanley, it is a little difficult to explain. In the final analysis I suppose it was mere temperament. By my third semester I knew ten times more about Africa than I knew about my own country, and an unfathomable number of times more than I ever will know about Political Economy. Burton was the man I particularly took to, and to this day he remains on a very high pinnacle in my estimation of men.

This kind of reading naturally did not bring me any nearer my Ph.D. But it taught me to keep quiet, dodge Die Ferne, and to take an interest in what other men had done—to remember that all the traveling in the world was never intended to be done by me. Of course, I had dreams of becoming an explorer, but they were harmless arm-chair efforts, that gave my mother no anxiety, and were profitable in so far as I seriously studied geography. Possibly, had a berth in an exploring expedition been offered me, I should have been tempted to take it; but no such opportunity came to hand.

My companions in the university were nearly all Streber, young men who were determined to promoviren. A more mixed collection of friends I have never had. My most intimate "pal" was a Japanese, the others next intimate were a Greek, a German-American, a British-American, some bona fide Teutons, and my dog Spicer—the latter being in the university by proxy, so to speak. In the early semesters we did pretty much what all students at German universities do. Here in the United States there are minute observers of college morals who would have said that we were all bound devil-wards. We attended Kneipen, spent our Sundays in the Gruhewald, and would schwÄnzen—omit attendance at lectures, when convenient. But all of my friends except one have done well. The unfortunate exception was probably the most strenuous streber in the company. He took his degree with all sails set for a promised professorship at home, went home, was disappointed in what he had been led to think he was to teach, became discouraged and despondent, and finally tossed himself in front of a train. Poor "Zink"! He had studied History and wanted to give lectures about it. The western college trustees, who had promised him a chair in History, insisted on his teaching Grammar also, or some other subject that he had paid no attention to since college days, and his sense of the fitness of things revolted. He had specialized honestly and fearlessly, and he desired to continue as a specialist. The college trustees wanted a complete faculty in one or two men, and "Zink" would not submit. If any man deserved fairer treatment, this old university friend did.

I believe that Spicer, my fox-terrier, is the only other member of the class that has quit the game completely. She stayed with my family for nine years, never comprehending the Germans as a people—she was English—and apparently never wanting to. Pilsner beer was the only German product she would succumb to. Three saucerfuls after each afternoon tramp constituted her portion. As she never staggered, and never misbehaved herself otherwise under the Pilsner influence, I think it agreed with her. In saying that she succumbed to the three saucerfuls, I merely mean that she knew when she had had enough.

If I could tell what "Pizey," as she was called later, meant to my family in ways that are dear and affectionate, and what she stood for in the "Colony," a great dog book would be the result. She came to us in a basket, after a serious tossing in the North Sea—a fat, pudgy little thing, full of John Bullism and herself. My mother and younger sister brought her to Berlin, and mother presented her to me, in the same language as in former days when she had given me "Major"—"Josiah, I've brought you a dog!" I rejoiced at twenty-two over such a gift as much as I did in my early teens. Little did I reckon then what it means to train a pup in a Berlin flat. With "Pizey" I would gladly go through the whole business again, but it is a task I feel that I must save my countrymen against. Even in Oskaloosa there are trying months ahead of him who rears a pup three flights up. (Fire escapes don't help a bit.)

"Pizey's" main interests were her own short tail and her long-tailed pups. When mother had nothing better to offer her guests by way of entertainment, "Pizey" was requisitioned, called into the parlor and made to chase her stub of a tail. If her guests were looking for other amusement they were disappointed, but "Pizey" wasn't, and I think that mother enjoyed the fracas. She once told the family physician that under no circumstances, no matter whether "Pizey" committed lesÉ majestÉ, would she destroy "Pizey," because she reminded her of Josiah, "when he was away from home."

"Pizey's" distinction as a member of the "Colony" lay almost entirely in her disregard of the Malthusian dream. She increased the Anglo-German entente by at least forty-seven little "Pizeys." Some of her progeny found their way into American homes and are trying to do right—perhaps a half-dozen. The remaining forty-one are auf der Wanderschaft.

"Pizey's" death was mysterious. I had long since left Berlin, and heard only infrequently about her. Finally the entire family moved away, and the dog was left in the old home, but under a new rÉgime; she absolutely refused to emigrate. They say that she was stricken with asthma, and had to be put out of the way. I only hope that she was put out of the way in a square deal. The German scientists are very much given to dissecting dogs like "Pizey" while they are yet alive. If any German scientist perpetrated such an outrage on Spicer, I trust that his science will fall to pieces—certainly those parts of it based on "Pizey's" evidence.