prepared for the verdict of "_Summa cum laude_," the highest
accomplishment possible. I went up and down the main street of little
Swanage, announcing the tidings right and left. The community all knew
that Carl was in Germany to take some kind of an examination, though it
all seemed rather unexplainable. Yet they rejoiced with me,--the
butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,--without having the least
idea what they were rejoicing about. Mrs. Meber tore up and down Osborne
Road to have the fun of telling the immediate neighbors, all of whom
were utterly at a loss to know what it meant, the truth being that Mrs.
Meber herself was in that same state. But she had somehow caught my
excitement, and anything to tell was scarce in Swanage.

So the little family that fared forth from Oakland, California, that
February 1, for one year at Harvard had ended thus--almost four years
later a Ph.D. _summa cum laude_ from Heidelberg. Not Persia as we had
planned it nine years before--a deeper, finer life than anything we had
dreamed. We asked Professor Miller, after we got back to California, why
in the world he had said just "one year in Europe."

"If I had said more, I was afraid it would scare you altogether out of
ever starting; and I knew if you once got over there and were made of
the right stuff, you'd stay on for a Ph.D."

On December 12 Carl was to deliver one of a series of lectures in Munich
for the Handelshochschule, his subject being "Die Einwanderungs und
Siedelungspolitik in Amerika (Carleton Parker, Privatdocent,
California-Universität, St. Francisco)." That very day, however, the
Prince Regent died, and everything was called off. We had our glory--and
got our pay. Carl was so tired from his examination, that he did not
object to foregoing the delivery of a German address before an audience