"Quarterly Journal of Economics" for May, 1910, on "The Decline of
Trade-Union Membership.") We had a tragic summer.

Carl felt that he must take his Master's degree, but he had no foreign
language. Three terrible, wicked, unforgivable professors assured him
that, if he could be in Germany six weeks during summer vacation, he
could get enough German to pass the examination for the A.M. We believed
them, and he went; though of all the partings we ever had, that was the
very worst. Almost at the last he just could not go; but we were so sure
that it would solve the whole A.M. problem. He went third class on a
German steamer, since we had money for nothing better. The food did
distress even his unfinicky soul. After a particularly sad offering of
salt herring, uncooked, on a particularly rough day, he wrote, "I find I
am not a good Hamburger German. The latter eat all things in all
weather."

Oh, the misery of that summer! We never talked about it much. He went to
Freiburg, to a German cobbler's family, but later changed, as the
cobbler's son looked upon him as a dispensation of Providence, sent to
practise his English upon. His heart was breaking, and mine was
breaking, and he was working at German (and languages came fearfully
hard for him) morning, afternoon, and night, with two lessons a day, his
only diversion being a daily walk up a hill, with a cake of soap and a
towel, to a secluded waterfall he discovered. He wrote a letter and a
postcard a day to the babe and me. I have just re-read all of them, and
my heart aches afresh for the homesickness that summer meant to both of
us.

He got back two days before our wedding anniversary--days like those
first few after our reunion are not given to many mortals. I would say