He bustled out and when he came back I threw a new bomb into camp. “May I wash my hands?” “Certainly, certainly,” he replied, “in a minute.” And he bounded upstairs. “Katrina! Katrina! Katrina!” I heard him call, “have Anna make the washroom ready. He wishes to wash his hands. Where are the towels? Where is the soap?” There was much clattering of feet overhead. I heard a door being opened and things being moved. Presently I heard him call, “Katrina, in God’s name, where is the soap!” More clattering of feet, and finally he came down, red and puffing. “Now, mein Herr, you can go up.” I went, concealing a secret grin, and found that I had dislocated a store-room, once a bath perhaps; that a baby-carriage had been removed from a table and on it pitcher, bowl, towel, and soap had been placed--a small piece of soap and cold water. Finally, after seeing me served properly, he sat down at his table again and sighed. The neighbor returned. Several more citizens dropped in to read and chat. The two youngest boys in the family came downstairs with their books to study. It was quite a typical German family scene. It was here that I made my first effort to learn something about the Dreiser family. “Do you know any one by the name of Dreiser, hereabouts?” I asked cautiously, afraid to talk too much for fear of incriminating myself. “Dreiser, Dreiser?” he said. “Is he in the furniture business?” “I don’t know. That is what I should like to find out. Do you know of any one by that name?” “Is not that the man, Henry,”--he turned to one of his guests--“who failed here last year for fifty thousand marks?” “The same,” said this other, solemnly (I fancied rather feelingly). “Goodness, gracious!” I thought. “This is the end. If he failed for fifty thousand marks in Germany he is in disgrace. To think a Dreiser should ever have had fifty thousand marks! Would that I had known him in his palmy days.” “There was a John Dreiser here,” my host said to me, “who failed for fifty thousand marks. He is gone though, now I think. I don’t know where he is.” It was not an auspicious beginning, and under the circumstances I thought it as well not to identify myself with this Dreiser too closely. I finished my meal and went out, wondering how, if at all, I was to secure any additional information. The rain had ceased and the sky was already clearing. It promised to be fine on the morrow. After more idle rambling through a world that was quite as old as Canterbury I came back finally to my hotel. My host was up and waiting for me. All but one guest had gone. “So you are from America,” he observed. “I would like very much to talk with you some more.” “Let me ask _you_ something,” I replied. “Do you know any one here in Mayen by the name of Dreiser?” “Dreiser--Dreiser? It seems to me there was some one here. He failed for a lot of money. You could find out at the _Mayener Zeitung_. Mr. Schroeder ought to know.”