melodramatic entrance into Rome, or rather pretended entrance,
was the prelude to days of enchantment, and I returned to Europe
two years later in order to spend a winter there and to carry out
a great desire to systematically study the Catacombs. In spite of
my distrust of "advantages" I was apparently not yet so cured but
that I wanted more of them.

The two years which elapsed before I again found myself in Europe
brought their inevitable changes. Family arrangements had so
come about that I had spent three or four months of each of the
intervening winters in Baltimore, where I seemed to have reached
the nadir of my nervous depression and sense of maladjustment, in
spite of my interest in the fascinating lectures given there by
Lanciani of Rome, and a definite course of reading under the
guidance of a Johns Hopkins lecturer upon the United Italy
movement. In the latter I naturally encountered the influence of
Mazzini, which was a source of great comfort to me, although
perhaps I went too suddenly from a contemplation of his wonderful
ethical and philosophical appeal to the workingmen of Italy,
directly to the lecture rooms at Johns Hopkins University, for I
was certainly much disillusioned at this time as to the effect of
intellectual pursuits upon moral development.

The summers were spent in the old home in northern Illinois, and
one Sunday morning I received the rite of baptism and became a
member of the Presbyterian church in the village. At this time
there was certainly no outside pressure pushing me towards such a
decision, and at twenty-five one does not ordinarily take such a
step from a mere desire to conform. While I was not conscious of
any emotional "conversion," I took upon myself the outward