"No," he said, speaking seriously for a moment, "I went down to the Harvard quarters yesterday to see Tom Burch's son, who is in the crew, and, say, I hadn't been there five minutes when all the 'pep' began to ooze out of me. Those boys have been training for three weeks in this muggy climate, and it has sapped 'em. I don't say they could have won, anyway, for I understand that that Cambridge bunch is a hard proposition--one of the best crews they have turned out in years--but they might just as well have given our boys a dose of bromide every morning before breakfast as to train them in the Thames valley. If I had the handling of a crew over here, I'd put them on the river the day before the race, so as to learn their way through this winding creek they call a river, and the next day I'd call the race, while those boys still had some U.S. ozone in them. Well, it's all in the family," he continued, "and it will serve as a set-off to the cup races and the polo games, and as long as it was not a German crew that won, I don't much care." I saw by the twitching of his lips that there was a story coming, and was not disappointed. But it is too long for this letter, and so will have to be given in my next. XXVII THE CUSTOM-HOUSE "Mr. Siegel," I said, when tea was finished and we had lighted his cigars, "I thought you were 'German.'" "You did, hey? Well, I'm German the same way you are English! My grandfather was a _real_ German, but they ran him out in '48, and he went over with Schurz and the rest of that band, and if you can find better Americans than their descendants, I do not know where they are. The German of to-day is another creature, and I want nothing to do with him. Those people are the limit; '_verboten_' this and '_verboten_' that, till a man doesn't dare do anything without asking the policeman if he may. Women have to stand in the gutter till an officer goes by. Why, when we were in Berlin one of them would have run Maria through with his sword if I hadn't told him I was a friend of the Kaiser." "Jim," exclaimed Mrs. Siegel, "how you do talk! You know he never touched me, and you never spoke to the Kaiser!" "Well, _he_ didn't know it! And moreover, as I am a friend of Carnegie--now that he has gone out of business--and had on a good suit of clothes, and so looked as if I could lend money to his boss, he believed it was true, and so let you live. Oh, I can manage the army all right, it is the custom-house officer who 'gets my goat.' I understand how to deal with the American breed, but I am helpless with those fellows. However, I have got things fixed now, so that if we ever have to go back there, it will not be as bad as it was at Frankfort." "What happened at Frankfort?" I asked.