a hot brew incident to one stage of beer making. The women were
bent forward, not only under the weight which they were bearing,
but because the tanks were so high that it would have been
impossible for them to have lifted their heads. Their faces and
hands, reddened in the cold morning air, showed clearly the white
scars where they had previously been scalded by the hot stuff which
splashed if they stumbled ever so little on their way. Stung into
action by one of those sudden indignations against cruel conditions
which at times fill the young with unexpected energy, I found
myself across the square, in company with mine host, interviewing
the phlegmatic owner of the brewery who received us with
exasperating indifference, or rather received me, for the innkeeper
mysteriously slunk away as soon as the great magnate of the town
began to speak. I went back to a breakfast for which I had lost my
appetite, as I had for Gray's "Life of Prince Albert" and his
wonderful tutor, Baron Stockmar, which I had been reading late the
night before. The book had lost its fascination; how could a good
man, feeling so keenly his obligation "to make princely the mind of
his prince," ignore such conditions of life for the multitude of
humble, hard-working folk. We were spending two months in Dresden
that winter, given over to much reading of "The History of Art" and
after such an experience I would invariably suffer a moral
revulsion against this feverish search after culture. It was
doubtless in such moods that I founded my admiration for Albrecht
Durer, taking his wonderful pictures, however, in the most
unorthodox manner, merely as human documents. I was chiefly
appealed to by his unwillingness to lend himself to a smooth and
cultivated view of life, by his determination to record its
frustrations and even the hideous forms which darken the day for
our human imagination and to ignore no human complications. I