hear "William Tell" at the Opera. Sumner tried to encourage his
friend about his difficulties of language: "I came to Berlin," or
Rome, or whatever place it was, as he said with his grand air of
mastery, "I came to Berlin, unable to say a word in the language;
and three months later when I went away, I talked it to my
cabman." Adams felt himself quite unable to attain in so short a
time such social advantages, and one day complained of his trials
to Mr. Robert Apthorp, of Boston, who was passing the winter in
Berlin for the sake of its music. Mr. Apthorp told of his own
similar struggle, and how he had entered a public school and sat
for months with ten-year-old-boys, reciting their lessons and
catching their phrases. The idea suited Adams's desperate frame
of mind. At least it ridded him of the university and the Civil
Law and American associations in beer-cellars. Mr. Apthorp took
the trouble to negotiate with the head-master of the
Friedrichs-Wilhelm-Werdersches Gymnasium for permission to Henry
Adams to attend the school as a member of the Ober-tertia, a
class of boys twelve or thirteen years old, and there Adams went
for three months as though he had not always avoided high schools
with singular antipathy. He never did anything else so foolish
but he was given a bit of education which served him some purpose
in life.

It was not merely the language, though three months passed in
such fashion would teach a poodle enough to talk with a cabman,
and this was all that foreign students could expect to do, for
they never by any chance would come in contact with German
society, if German society existed, about which they knew
nothing. Adams never learned to talk German well, but the same
might be said of his English, if he could believe Englishmen. He