But I saw none of these things. My imagination gazed beyond these externals and saw the quaint and touching figures of those who had their abode in this secluded retreat, and I found myself wondering whether it would ever be my privilege to see the spot where mother’s cradle had stood, and to sojourn there where life flowed on in such pure and peaceful and virtuous channels, far away from the crush and the turmoil, the evil and the anguish of the great world, where the peasants were simple, honest folk and the Jews all faithful to their ancestral religion, where old age was venerated and childhood obedient and respectful, where such things as violating the Sabbath and eating _Trefoth_ were unknown. My opportunity came in my twenty-first year. Circumstances, the nature of which need not be dilated upon here, made it my privilege to spend several years in Europe in study. But while I awaited, in joyous anticipation, the day when I should enter upon my course at the North German University and Seminary, at which I was to prepare for my life’s vocation, it was with an absorbing interest, I might almost say with a passionate longing, that I looked forward to actually seeing Nordheim, and actually knowing the persons and conditions of which I had heard and dreamt so much. Never shall I forget the day when, having crossed the stormy Atlantic and travelled by train a day and a night southward from Hamburg, I alighted at Mellrichstadt, the railroad station nearest to Nordheim—four English miles—and saw upon the platform, waiting for me, a pleasant-faced, dark-complexioned youth, whom I had never seen before, and yet whom I at once recognized, for his features appeared in more than one counterfeit presentment in a well-worn family album, over which I had often pored more than three thousand miles away. It was Cousin Solomon, and he had come to the station, having been notified by letter of my prospective arrival, to meet his American relative, and to conduct him to Nordheim and the bosom of his family. Then and there I recognized the reality and the value of sentiment. Here were two persons, born in different and widely separated lands, speaking different mother tongues and citizens of different nations, who had never seen each other before; and yet so powerful were the ties of kinship and the remembrance of common blood and a common origin, that they sufficed to bridge over all that yawning gap of separation and to bring heart to heart and lip to lip in a union of truest love and affection. Our recognition was mutual and instantaneous. We pronounced each other’s names, fell upon each other’s necks, and a moment later were chatting as intimately as though we had met daily during all our previous lives. Three years long I spent my summer vacations at Nordheim, and I came to know and to love it and the surrounding region so well that when the hour of final parting came, it cost my heart more than one pang and drew more tears from my eyes