STEEPED IN GERMAN

I am living at a little private hotel just across from
the court house square with its scarlet geraniums and its
pretty fountain. The house is filled with German civil
engineers, mechanical engineers, and Herr Professors from
the German academy. On Sunday mornings we have
Pfannkuchen with currant jelly, and the Herr Professors
come down to breakfast in fearful flappy German slippers.
I'm the only creature in the place that isn't just over
from Germany. Even the dog is a dachshund. It is so
unbelievable that every day or two I go down to Wisconsin
Street and gaze at the stars and stripes floating from
the government building, in order to convince myself that
this is America. It needs only a Kaiser or so, and a bit
of Unter den Linden to be quite complete.

The little private hotel is kept by Herr and Frau
Knapf. After one has seen them, one quite understands why
the place is steeped in a German atmosphere up to its
eyebrows.

I never would have found it myself. It was Doctor
von Gerhard who had suggested Knapf's, and who had paved
the way for my coming here.

"You will find it quite unlike anything you have ever
tried before," he warned me. "Very German it is, and