I decided that I would appeal to Mr. Schroeder and his paper in the morning; and pretending to be very tired, in order to escape my host, who by now was a little tipsy. I went to the room assigned me, carrying a candle. That night I slept soundly, under an immense, stuffy feather-bed. The next morning at dawn I arose and was rewarded with the only truly satisfying medieval prospect I have ever seen in my life. It was strange, remote, Teutonic, Burgundian. The “grafs” and “burghers” of an older world might well have been enacting their life under my very eyes. Below me in a valley was Mayen,--its quaint towers and housetops spread out in the faint morning light. It was beautiful. Under my window tumbled the little stream that had served as a moat in earlier days--a good and natural defense. Opposite me was the massive Brückentor. Further on was a heavy circular sweep of wall and a handsome watch-tower. Over the wall, rising up a slope, could be seen the peak-roofed, gabled houses, of solid brick and stone with slate and tile roofs. Never before in my life had I looked on a truly medieval city of the castellated, Teutonic order. Nothing that I had seen in either France, England, or Italy had the peculiar quality of this remote spot. I escaped the opportunities of my talkative host by a ruse, putting the two marks charged for the room in an envelope and leaving it on the dresser. I went out and followed the stream in the pleasant morning light. I mailed post-cards at the local post-office to all and sundry of my relatives, stating the local condition of the Dreisers, as so far learned, and then sought out the office of the _Mayener Zeitung_, where I encountered one Herr Schroeder, but he could tell me nothing of any Dreisers save of that unfortunate one who had failed in the furniture business. He advised me to seek the curator of the local museum, a man who had the history of Mayen at his finger-tips. He was a cabinet-maker by trade. I could not find him at home and finally, after looking in the small local directory published by Mr. Schroeder and finding no Dreisers listed, I decided to give up and go back to Frankfort; but not without one last look at the private yard attached to the priest’s house and the cherry-tree which had been the cause of the trouncing, and lastly the local museum. It is curious how the most innocent and idle of sentiments will lead a person on in this way. In the little Brückentor Museum, before leaving, I studied with the greatest interest--because it was my father’s town--the ancient Celtic, Teutonic, Roman and Merovingian antiquities. It was here that I saw for the first time the much-talked-of wheat discovered in a Celtic funeral urn, which, although thousands of years have elapsed since it was harvested, is still--thanks to dryness, so the local savant assured me--fertile, and if planted would grow! Talk of suspended animation!