of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.

It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of
the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down
into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer
naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about.
It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of
North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year
of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children,
he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed
it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She
had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and
say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I
have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor!
Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could
the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood.

"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come
here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the
other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nicht
English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others
finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went right
home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself
understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and
made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to
learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are
six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't
make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all
about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy
about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough."